Twitch streamer James “PhantomLord” Varga is suing the site as a result of it banning his channel in 2016, with him attempting to claim damages from the platform in a recently filed lawsuit.
PhantomLord filed the lawsuit on February 14th, 2018, alleging that Twitch had breached its contract with him. The court documents go on to claim: “Twitch improperly suspended Varga’s Twitch.tv account and then terminated the contract.”
“Twitch has never provided any formal explanation for his suspension,” the filing reads. “Instead, Twitch has made only vague and ever-changing allegations of breaches of the Terms of Service.”
PhantomLord was one of the most popular streamers in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive eSports, though found himself in the center of controversy after being named in 2016’s CSGOShuffle.com scandal, with journalist Richard Lewis reportedly finding evidence that PhantomLord was privy to insider information regarding the virtual currency gambling site. In the lawsuit, the streamer calls the claims “unsubstantiated, false allegations leveled at Varga by a third party, whose accusations were the culmination of an effort to publicly disparage Varga and take advantage of his popularity.”
“Twitch has attempted to excuse its conduct by alleging that Varga broadcast improper content,” the filing reads. “Yet, Varga broadcasted content similar to what many other popular Twitch content providers also broadcast, and in fact, during the course of Varga’s performance of his contractual obligations as a content provider, representatives from Twitch repeatedly informed Varga that he was permitted to broadcast the very content that they later used as an excuse to illegally terminate his contract.”
PhantomLord continues to stream on YouTube, where he has over 500,000 subscribers. He continues to gamble on this channel, with him recently posting a video titled ‘THE NEW CSGOSHUFFLE?‘ in which he plays another Counter-Strike virtual currency gambling game.
If PhantomLord is successful in the lawsuit, it would be a landmark moment for Twitch. With the streamer’s claim effectively laying the blame on Twitch’s vague terms of service, if the court rules in his favor, Twitch would therefore likely have to change its approach to bans and suspensions in the future. Twitch has yet to respond to PhantomLord’s claims.
