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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Video game live streaming service Twitch has banned the streaming [vice.com] of Yandere Simulator, a game currently being created by a lone developer with a significant following on YouTube [youtube.com]. It is currently unclear why the game is banned when raunchier titles like Grand Theft Auto V are safe to stream:

Just a few weeks ago we ran a story [vice.com] about Yandere Simulator, a game that revolves around a Japanese schoolgirl who murders anyone who gets between her and her high school crush. "Murder," though, is only part of it. As we related then, it also lets you gain the trust of people you encounter, which you can then use to lure them back to locked rooms where you torture them psychologically before sending them out to kill your rivals and then themselves.

Twitch, the video game streaming giant, apparently has a problem with this. As of late last week, anyone who broadcasts Yandere Simulator on Twitch will have their accounts banned. It's a distinction the PC game now shares with only 25 other titles [twitch.tv], which have decidedly ban-bait names like Battle Rape and RapeLay. (Second Life makes the list as well because cocks can happen at any moment [vice.com].) Twitch so far hasn't said exactly why it banned Yandere Simulator, though, and the company hasn't responded to a request for more information.

Twitch's Rules of Conduct [twitch.tv] provide some clues, but the conditions for banning are problematic. Yandere Simulator technically features nudity with an Easter egg that transforms the girls into naked giants (without nipples, genitalia, etc.), but it's arguably not a "core focus or feature of the game in question." It features plenty of violence and depictions of suicide, but so do some of the most popular games for broadcasting on Twitch. It's that vagueness that worries Alex, the 27-year-old Californian developer behind Yandere Simulator told Motherboard.

"It's possible that the decision-makers at Twitch are mistaken about the game's content," he said. He points out that Twitch might have thought his game was pornographic or sexually explicit, but he notes that "there are no nipples, genitalia, or sexual situations anywhere in the game." He considers that they may have thought it was too violent, but he points out that "Yandere Simulator currently contains no gore besides blood pools, and less violence than a Hitman [youtube.com] game."

This is the developer's 3:30 video [youtube.com] about the Twitch ban.

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