Twitch allegedly blocked in Slovakia over Czech streamer illegally playing Poker

Earlier today, it was reported that Twitch had been banned in the European country of Slovakia, after a single streamer was caught playing Poker live, which was in violation of the country’s gambling laws.

The URHH, the gambling regulatory authority of Slovakia, issued a court order asking Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block the profile of Twitch streamer “dDandis.” The URHH lists dDandis’ Twitch channel as a banned website as the streamer allegedly played Poker on Twitch.

Currently, the ISP, O2, has already banned Twitch entirely due to dDandis in the whole of Slovakia. Other ISPs have not banned the platform as of now, but are expected to do so in the coming days.

Slovakia bans Twitch after one streamer played Poker on the platform

dDandis is a Twitch streamer with more than 35k followers on the platform. He plays a variety of games, such as CS: GO, Z1: Battle Royale and PUBG. However, the streamer has also posted around 974 hours’ worth of Poker streams on Twitch. Around 15% of the overall streams that dDandis has posted on the platform pertained to Poker.

However, as Slovakia’s gambling laws do not allow the promotion of Poker, dDandis’ streams have led to the suspension of the entire platform in the country. URHH’s court order has already been executed by O2, with the ISP not allowing users to access the platform, allegedly since yesterday, 23rd June 2021.

It has also been said that other ISPs are expected to follow suit in the coming days and ban the platform entirely. URHH has, in the past, banned innumerable gambling sites in the country, but this is the first time that Twitch is being suspended in a specific region. dDandis does not appear to post any other kind of gambling streams.

The streamer has hosted multiple “Poker” streams in the past few weeks, with quite a few VODs still available to be viewed on his Twitch account. More information is expected to be released about the controversy in the coming days.