Getty The Twitch streaming platform.
Erik Estavillo, who on his YouTube channel describes himself as “famous for my gaming lawsuits!” is suing Twitch and accusing the streaming service of featuring female streamers who are triggering his sex addiction, according to documents from his lawsuit.
The California man is seeking $25 million from the platform.
In court documents, Estavillo blamed Twitch for failing to install a filter so that he can avoid female streamers and for failing to limit how many female streamers a user can follow (Estavillo said he was following 786). He also accused Twitch of operating its service no differently than a casino and not enforcing its rules on punishing streamers with sexual content.
Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, told the New York Post that “These claims are frivolous and have absolutely no merit.”
It is also not the first time he has sued large companies and he has been named as the plaintiff in lawsuits against Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony and Blizzard Entertainment, the Sun reported.
Estavillo’s Compared Twitch To A Casino
According to information from the 56 pages of court documents:
Mr. Estavillo suffers from Sex Addiction due to his Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder that makes him obsessed with sex and compulsions. Twitch has extremely exacerbated his condition by displaying many sexually suggestive women streamers through Twitch’s twisted programming and net code making it nearly impossible for the plaintiff to use Twitch without being exposed to such sexual suggestive content.
There is no way for the plaintiff to filter streams he’d like to watch based on gender, male or female, therefore the plaintiff has to choose a game and/or category to watch, with thumbnails showing these scantily clad women, alongside men … He cannot filter out the women on the site, no viewer can. Twitch doesn’t have a gender filter or preference for a viewer to choose to only watch men or women.
In addition, Twitch also takes advantage of the plaintiff and many other sexually addicted viewers by allowing them to “Subscribe, Donate, or Pay Bits” to these women streamers who are only streaming with the sole purpose of taking advantage of such disadvantaged individuals who just want to watch a video game stream through Twitch, but then are entice to spend money on these women for attention and sexual innuendo the streamer may do when donated to, i.e. blow a kiss into the camera and make sexual ASMR noises to entice the sexually addicted viewer to donate more.
To prove the existence of these sexually suggestive Twitch streamers, the lawsuit includes photos of Amouranth, Quqco, ST Peach, Pink_Sparkles, the Raychul and roughly 15 other women with a presence on the platform; the photos show women in scantily clad outfits or at times nude or half-nude and in sexually suggestive poses. Some Twitter users have said those photos were not even on Twitch.
Estavillo Says That He Was Harmed by the Platform
Holy SHIT someone sued twitch for having sexually suggestive content and all I’m saying is that you CANNOT make this shit up
The harm, Estavillo said in court documents, was that the images triggered him to overuse sex toys, leading to damage and infection of his genitals and the frequency of images led him to develop bloodshot and red eyes because he was unable to turn away. He also said that masturbating while watching the streamers led to damage of his PC monitor, “causing a short circuit and small fire within the electrical system of his gaming rig and causing his apartment to blackout temporarily.”
In the lawsuit, he said that his depression, agoraphobia, Chron’s disease and OCD keep him homebound and internet-surfing; his Youtube channel does feature videos of gameplay.
Twitch’s policy on this type of sexually suggestive material states:
In embedded media, such as videos and images, nudity and pornography are prohibited. In some situations, we may make exceptions on Twitch-owned and operated channels for content that is rated by a ratings body or otherwise pre-screened by Twitch.
(Around) User-Generated Sexual In-Game Content: Focusing your broadcast around sexual content or in-game nudity in an otherwise allowed game will result in enforcement action against your Twitch account.
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A Sex Addict Is Suing Twitch for Its ‘Sexually Suggestive’ Streamers