On Thursday, a large number of streamers from the Middle East were banned. The stream bans appear to be related to tax avoidance, according to streamer journalist Zach Bussey, though Twitch has not confirmed this. The bans come after several streamers in the region complained about not being paid last month.
Over 200 accounts were banned from Twitter on Thursday morning, all within minutes of each other, based on the Twitter account streamer bans.
In February, many streamers in the region received a similar message from Twitch regarding their monetization, which stated that due to a discrepancy with certain tax information provided during the onboarding process, their account has been blocked from receiving payouts and that they are unable to make payment due to the said discrepancy.
Due to apparent tax issues, Twitch is withholding payments rather than completely demonetizing the streamers based on that message.
