Last year, Twitch returned to live, in-person events holding them in San Diego and Amsterdam. The convention’s health policies caused controversy after Twitch announced that it would not require masks for either event. After considerable social media backlash, Twitch reversed its decision, mandating masks but only at TwitchCon San Diego. San Diego continued to make news when a streamer broke her back after falling off a mechanical bull at TwitchCon’s famous (now infamous) foam pit. This might only be a temporary change in venue. There’s a chance that Twitch could return to San Diego as it’s done in the past, returning to the city in 2019 after hosting events in San Jose and Long Beach, California.
Holding the US leg of the event in Las Vegas seems like an interesting choice, especially after Twitch banned certain forms of gambling streams from the platform. Despite the ban, which led a prominent gambling creator to stream on a rival site connected to Stake.com, one of the gambling websites explicitly banned, gambling streams are still popular on Twitch. And as livestreaming from TwitchCon is a popular pastime for the streamers in attendance, I don’t doubt that some of them will film themselves actually gambling. I wonder if that might fall afoul of Twitch’s ban. Guess we’ll find out in October.
