The streamer Asmongold has been clashing with his community over pay-to-win games and the recently released Diablo Immortal in particular. Asmongold has banned several users and removed multiple threads on his popular subreddit following intense criticism in the wake of a stream which saw the content creator making microtransactions and purchasing booster packs.
The developer behind the game, Blizzard Entertainment, has been coming under fire from fans of the franchise for having filled Diablo Immortal with a variety of different features described as pay to win. Diablo Immortal has been criticized for its focus on the mobile market as well.
Threads on the subreddit began appearing shortly after Asmongold finished streaming. These broadly condemned his actions, calling on the content creator to distance himself from Diablo Immortal. Several of them drew a connection between participating in pay-to-win gameplay and the highly controversial gambling streams which Asmongold has been calling out for weeks.
When asked about these problems in his community, Asmongold said in a stream that “I’ll just solve them the same way I always do which is delete all the threads and ban them. I don’t want to deal with it.”
Asmongold recently joined the chorus of content creators calling for a stop to gambling streams. “What does make a difference is if the rules change,” Asmongold pointed out. “Unless the rules change, nobody is going to stop gambling.” The streamer went on to describe how Twitch could put a stop to such streams. “Twitch could change the rules,” Asmongold noted. “Twitch could say ‘no, no more gambling’ and they could remove the slots category today and they could say ‘if you stream slots, you’re getting permabanned.’ And that’s it. That’s literally it. They could change that and you don’t need a government decision for this. They don’t need anything, right?”
The contention about gambling streams got started when xQc began accepting gambling sponsorships and handing out promotional codes for online casinos. The streamer later admitted to having a problem with gambling. “I’m just easily addicted, so I just shouldn’t gamble,” xQc said at the time. “I still do it. Is that good? No, that’s terrible. That’s an illness. That’s ill. I’m ill. But you know what? I can afford to be ill. I’m lucky.”