Pokimane’s Thoughts About Gambling

With a pointed call out during her most recent broadcast, Pokimane has gone on public claiming that streamers who accept gambling sponsorships are directly taking from their audience.

As the debate over the return of the gambling industry heats up, opinions and feelings are entwined with larger ideas that are continuously breaking into the public arena. With warnings accompanying gambling content to inform users that their odds of winning are slim, famous creators, including Ludwig, are pushing for the platform to be held accountable for the content it enables. 

Pokimane went live on May 19th with a scathing message for broadcasters who accept sponsorship deals, in addition to her assertions of Twitch’s responsibility. Accusing them of profiting at the expense of their audience. 

Pokimane dismissed the notion that both “bad” acts have similar moral standing in a discussion equating micro-transactions in mobile apps to gambling, a reference to an extreme comment posted by xQc to his Discord.

Here’s what she stated; “You’re comparing something that can be arguably bad, to something that’s really f**king bad. Why are people trying so hard to make gambling seem less worse by comparing it to other things. We can still all agree that this is really f**king bad, right?”

With no hard feelings, Imane lay the blame for the spread of gambling streams squarely on the shoulders of the streamers who profit from it. Calling out the sponsorship streams as a reverse Robin Hood, Imane stated “I’m for taking money from the rich and giving to the people, but you’re rich, and you’re gonna make millions off your viewers.” she continued, “cause that’s how it works. Your viewers lose money.”

Pokimane said that gambling sponsorship money derives from the following cycle, using a Microsoft Paint project to demonstrate her point.  

Pokimane completed her diatribe on the matter with an angry crescendo, adding, “Just because other things that are less bad are legal, the means we should allow worse things? That’s such terrible logic for a society.”