The battle between Twitch and fake streamers of the card game Artifact might be coming to an end with the streaming platform as the winner.
Twitch announced today that all new streamers will be forced to set up two-factor authentication for their accounts to be able to stream. This comes two days after Twitch suspended new accounts from streaming to stop the Artifact category from being spammed by trolls.
Valve’s Dota 2 card game Artifact has been in decline in terms of players since its release in November 2018, which also affects how many people are streaming and watching the game on Twitch. The game reached zero hours watched on the platform on May 17.
Some Twitch users took advantage of the abandoned Artifact section to livestream content that’s banned by Twitch’s Terms of Service, from copyrighted movies and anime to gruesome pornography.
Twitch staff spent nearly a week banning channels nonstop in the Artifact category. Several users just created new accounts when the staff banned the one they were using, and a few of them were trying to “speedrun” Twitch bans by streaming illegal content and hoping to get banned quickly. There was a Discord community dedicated to flooding Artifact on Twitch with forbidden content.
With the two-factor authentication requirement, Twitch ensures new streamers must have a unique device or phone number per account to stream. The company sends a unique code via app or text message that the user must open to type into a field. That means someone who wants to create 100 Twitch accounts, for instance, would need 100 phone numbers to stream.
At the time of writing, there are 208 people watching eight legit Artifact livestreams on Twitch and no channels with forbidden content.
Published: May 30, 2019 11:44 am