s1mple banned from Twitch again, possibly facing permanent ban

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev has been banned from Twitch yet again.

The Natus Vincere star’s name popped up as being hit with a ban from Twitch, with his channel simply reading, “Sorry. Unless you’ve got a time machine, that content is unavailable.”

No other details are yet available on the reasoning behind the ban. It is uncertain what prompted the move or how long he might be removed from Twitch.

Despite being hit with the outwardly mysterious ban, s1mple cracked wise about the news in a statement on Twitter. While he didn’t shed any light as to what happened, he did give fans a chuckle by parodying the similarly mysterious recent ban of popular streamer Dr Disrespect:

This is s1mple’s third ban on Twitch, which could lead to a permanent ban for the CSGO star from the streaming platform. His previous bans came in 2019 due to the use of homophobic slurs. 

Catch up on the news:

• s1mple’s first ban from Twitch
• …followed by his second

The first such ban came in August and was directed at Na’Vi teammate Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhailov. The punishment came during a wider crackdown on hate speech on Twitch, something that impacted a number of other streamers. At the time, s1mple rejected the legitimacy of the ban and ranted against it by saying that Twitch was a “joke” and that he was simply joking around with a teammate when he uttered the punished speech.

The same thing happened again in November, leading to a second ban. Both bans lasted for seven days.

It is unknown whether s1mple was banned for similar reasons this time around.

Speculation points to s1mple being suspended for fake streams

Though there is no official explanation for the ban, some fans are speculating that s1mple is being wrongly punished for a series of fake streams broadcasted using his past videos. 

Twitch has had a major problem over recent months with scammers taking VODs from other popular streamers and rebroadcasting them. These restreams will typically have extra trappings for skin giveaways, both on the stream overlay and with bots on Twitch. From there, scammers can phish Steam accounts or otherwise attempt to gain users’ personal information.

This has become a major issue, particularly in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 communities. Numerous popular figures have had their content repurposed in this way, including ex-CSGO star Michael “shroud” Grzesiek and Dota 2’s winningest player, Johan “n0tail” Sundstein.

Whether that’s the case here is ultimately a mystery as Twitch does not give out definitive explanations regarding why its users are punished. That said, with this being s1mple’s third ban, it’s very possible that the CSGO star may be done on the platform.