Twitch streamer Félix “xQc” Lengyel recently imparted some wisdom regarding his thoughts about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. While streaming on Twitch, a fan highlighted how the music he was playing could get him hit with a DMCA notice after the fact, but our favorite Canadian streamer seemed rather unperturbed by the prospect.
“Hey, listen kid, have you seen the sub count lately, dude?” xQc asked. “You think— You think I’m affected by DMCA? I could watch porn on stream and pull my d*** out and not get banned. I don’t give a f***, bro! We own this s***, we own this s***!”
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Of course, Twitch chat being Twitch chat, they immediately encouraged him to go ahead and do that with a flurry of messages. xQc, thankfully, had the sense to not do any of the things that he (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) boasted that he could get away with.
Watching the clip, it’s clear that this statement was made by Mr. Lengyel in jest and with his usual overabundance of energy. However, it has also (perhaps unintentionally) highlighted a serious problem with how Twitch treats its biggest stars.
One of the somewhat more recent examples is that of Alinity, a streamer who got into hot water publicly for appearing to abuse her cat. She had tossed the animal over the back of her chair in annoyance in one clip, and irate viewers had discovered that she had drank vodka and kissed her cat, annoying the creature but also potentially risking injury to the animal. The furor over this incident led to a petition for her to be banned, but no public or overt action was seemingly taken by Twitch.
While xQc was almost certainly joking, he has once again highlighted an apparent double standard on Twitch when it comes to popular (and therefore highly profitable) streamers. I’m sure he’ll have the sense to never actually try the things he boasted about, but one wonders if he really would get punished at all.
