Twitch has announced changes to its policies whereby certain types of sexual content that were previously prohibited will now be allowed if properly labeled. “There is a thriving community of artists on Twitch, and this policy was overly punitive and did not reflect the impact of the content,” the company said in a blog post.
According to the new rules, “artistic” representations (drawn, animated or sculpted) of “completely exposed female breasts and/or genitals or buttocks, regardless of their sex” are now allowed if creators label the content as sexually themed. However, fictional sexual acts or masturbation are still prohibited.
However, Twitch still does not allow streamers to be fully or partially naked. At most, it now allows content that “deliberately highlights breasts, buttocks, or pelvic region”, as well as “body writing” and body painting on “female breasts and/or buttocks, regardless of gender” with a sexual theme tag. In addition, dances such as “twerking, grinding, and pole dancing” are now allowed without a tag.
On the other hand, there are no changes in Twitch’s policy regarding games “with nudity, pornography, sex or sexual violence as the main theme or feature”, which are still completely prohibited. In the case of games where nudity is not the central element, the adult content rating tag is sufficient for incidental nudity.
Twitch launched the Content Classification Labels (CCL) in June “in recognition that some content allowed on our service may not be suitable for all audiences,” according to Angela Hession, Twitch’s Director of Trust and Safety. “We believe that accurate content labeling is key to helping viewers get the experience they expect, and now that we can allow proper labeling of sexual content using CCL, we believe that some of the restrictions from our previous policies are no longer necessary.”
When a creator applies a content rating tag, viewers must give their explicit consent before they can start watching a broadcast. From now on, Twitch live streams tagged as “Drugs, intoxication or excessive tobacco consumption”, “Violent and graphic representations”, “Gambling” or “Sexual themes” will no longer be included in the homepage recommendations due to “the visual nature of those topics”, according to Twitch.
According to Twitch, if streamers do not use a content rating tag correctly, they will receive warnings and “Twitch will apply the correct CCL to the stream”. If streamers repeatedly fail to apply the correct CCL, a tag on the stream will be temporarily blocked, but it will not result in a suspension.
