Slots on Twitch: the dirty truth

From USA Today: "Twitch is one of the most important things to happen in games. Alongside the rise of esports, the proliferation of the battle royale genre, and the invention of the smartphone, it has had a huge impact (and arguably contributed to two out of those three). It’s made careers, brought games to the fore, raised millions upon millions of dollars for charity, saved lives, raised awareness, the list goes on. All that is now being tarnished by some of the platform’s biggest stars and the power of greed and gambling.

The Slots category is filled with gambling. Not the skill-based card games of the Poker category, or even the halfway-house of the stock market, and a million miles from the likes of Hearthstone, StarCraft, Counter-Strike, even FIFA Ultimate Team and the other games that built the platform. Pure gambling — slot machines, pachinko, wheels of fortune.

It’s not new. Eurogamer reported back in 2018 on how front-and-center this category was and the implications for the platform’s younger audience. It’s been festering along since then, but its growth rate accelerated quickly during the pandemic, much of it tied to the rise of crypto-currency and its gambling-adjacent investment model."