Twitch Also Bans Art Games With Subversive Sexual Focus

Leigh Alexander has a really good Boing Boing post on Twitch TV's latest banhammer move against a series of games by Robert Yang which simulate interactive male nudity and sexuality for provocative, artistic ends:

These games are playful, funny, and sexy, and they provoke reflection and dialogue. Yang often reveals a thought process behind the technical decisions in his work that can be fascinatingly-congruent with the spiritual ones. But just four days after its release, Rinse and Repeat was banned from all broadcast on the online streaming community Twitch, just as Cobra Club previously was. Yang is among the most-banned developers on Twitch—perhaps an exciting status for an artist, but evidence of troubled standards for content. Twitch rules say that while occurrences of nudity or sex acts in games are "okay, so long as you do not make them a primary focus of your stream," games with nudity as a "core focus or feature" are disallowed. Under this rule, video games that feature sexualized bodies (usually women) for titillation are okay to stream, but that Yang's work centers on the vulnerability of nudity in a consensual space and other meaningful issues apparently makes it obscene.

As NWN readers know, Twitch banned Second Life from their service on similar grounds, even though SL is abundant with art installations (along with content where nudity and sex is a core feature). Fortunately, Twitch competitor YouTube Gaming has raised no such objections -- even against impromptu penis.

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Comments

[Ciaran Laval]

I'd say there's a difference between the Second Life band and this ban.

Nudity is without a doubt a core feature in Rinse and Repeat, at least their policy looks consistent here, with Second Life it's laughingly inconsistent.

[Ciaran Laval]

Ah wait, Leigh has accused them of banning gay nudity, it will be interesting to see the response to this.

They banned Second Life for potential nudity of any kind.

[Nathan Adored]

There is also this article over at Ars Technica on this latest Twitch issue:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/09/twitchs-hypocritical-nudity-policy-shows-its-out-of-touch-with-the-modern-world/

I'm actually wondering if their overreaction to nudity in games isn't going to start backfiring on them, considering that the likes of Ars Technica are now taking interest in it. oO

[Iggy]

How much graphic violence do they permit?

That's always the glaring hypocrisy I see in entertainment: exploding heads? No prob. Nipple? BAN.