When streamer AestheticallyGeeky read the Dec. 13 announcement of new guidelines on Twitch, she was “excited.” In a blog post hidden alongside rules allowing creators to twerk, pole-dance, write on their breasts, and perform strip teases as long as they label their content mature, there were changes to artistic nudity. These changes allowed “fictionalized (drawn, animated, or sculpted)” nudity.
So the 26-year-old Twitch NSFW artist booted up her stream to her 15 usual viewers and started drawing a woman topless, feeling like she was abiding by these new rules by labeling the stream as mature. When she switched over to the “Art” category on Twitch, she joined the ranks of dozens of other streamers who were also drawing nudes to thousands of viewers. Her viewership skyrocketed to over 150 people, many sending her messages like, “You’re drawing porn, that’s not allowed!”
And they were right. While live, she received a three-day suspension for “Adult Nudity,” according to an email verified by Passionfruit. Multiple other art streamers who tested the waters on Dec. 14 also received temporary suspensions for their work. (Twitch streamer PayMoneyWubby even claimed he received a seven-day suspension for just looking at the Arts section while it was full of NSFW content.)
Less than 48 hours after the initial announcement, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy released a follow-up blog post, writing, “We are rolling back the artistic nudity changes” and that “depictions of real or fictional nudity won’t be allowed on Twitch.” The streamers who received suspensions did not have them lifted and had to serve out their sentence.
“This just absolutely solidifies that Twitch isn’t a good platform for artists, especially ones that want to draw artistic nudity,” AestheticallyGeeky told Passionfruit. “It honestly makes me feel like this site is a joke sometimes.”
Twitch has notoriously been an unsafe place for NSFW artists, with vague rules that streamers sometimes don’t realize they are breaking…