Artour “Arteezy” Babaev, a professional Dota 2 player and streamer, recently added to the Twitch exodus, opting to instead join its new rival, Kick. While his new agreement is likely much more lucrative, it is also likely the reason for his new gambling streams, to the dismay of some of his fans.
Kick is an emerging streaming platform backed by the crypto gambling giant Stake.com. It has quickly cemented itself as one of Twitch’s main rivals thanks to the lucrative deals it offers to its content creators. However, Kick’s freedom of speech and its ties to the gambling industry don’t sit well with some players.
While Arteezy has not outright confirmed that his gambling streams are a result of his deal with Kick, xQc and NICKMERCS have previously talked about their own contracts, saying that they are expected to gamble on stream.
While most of Arteezy’s content is still focused on Dota 2, some people are not on board with his gambling streams and have expressed their disappointment with the new content.
Dota 2 Has Been Embracing the Gambling Sector’s Support
Gambling has been a controversial matter within the streaming community as many have claimed that streams encourage problem gambling among younger audiences. Because of that, Twitch tried to introduce stricter restrictions on gambling streams, seeking to protect viewers from harm.
However, Twitch’s crackdown on gambling also deprived certain content creators of their main source of revenue, prompting the creation of Kick as a rival platform. Despite that, many of Arteezy’s fans are unwilling to go to Kick to watch his streams there, as demonstrated by his viewership numbers on the two platforms.
While some fans expressed their disappointment, the normalization of gambling within the esports community definitely cushioned the reaction. Dota 2 has been becoming more and more open to sponsorships from the gambling and cryptocurrency sector, which 7BALL CX is why Arteezy’s streams didn’t spark an outrage.
Some people even pointed out the alleged hypocrisy of those disgruntled by Arteezy’s gambling streams, saying that the Dota sector has been becoming more and more intertwined with the gambling scene.
In other news, xQc recently responded to some of the remarks his fellow streamers Ninja, Hasan and Pokimane made about his contract with Kick. The celebrity slammed the content creators for making misleading comments about his $100 million deal and asked them to sign an NDA so he could show them that they were wrong.
