Chess grandmaster and streamer Hikaru Nakamura has been banned from Twitch for streaming a chess game featuring Dr Disrespect.
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Dr Disrespect was dealt a permanent Twitch ban in mid-2020 during an exclusivity deal with the streaming service, for unknown reasons. Earlier this month, he confirmed his legal dispute with the service had been resolved, though he would not be returning to Twitch.
Now Nakamura has been met with a three day Twitch ban, starting March 22, after streaming a chess game between Dr Lupo and Dr Disrespect.
“Today I was banned from Twitch because I showed some chess games that were being played between Dr Disrespect and Dr Lupo on YouTube the other day,” Nakamura explained via a video on his own YouTube channel which you can see below.
Clicking on Nakamura’s Twitch channel currently results in a message that reads “This channel is temporarily unavailable due to a violation of Twitch’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service.” The same message appears when an account has been banned.
According to Dot Esports, viewers watching the Nakamura Twitch stream raised concerns over his streaming of the chess match. “Chill out, you guys,” he said. “Do you think I care? This is chess.”
Following the ban, the grandmaster tweeted: “The Doc tweeted that things are settled with Twitch… guess he was wrong,” referring to the statement that both Dr Disrespect and Twitch put out after their legal dispute was settled, which read: “No party admits to any wrongdoing.”
This is bad timing for Nakamura, as the FIDE Grand Prix chess tournaments are currently ongoing, meaning he cannot stream any content related to the games on Twitch.
