In a post on Twitter, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player and Twitch streamer Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostylie slams the site for allowing scammers to impersonate him on the site. The streamer says that he sees “fake profiles on twitch scamming people” every day and asks “isn’t it your responsibility to protect your own people?”
A thread on Reddit reveals that these fake s1mple profiles have been running since November, when the CS:GO player was banned from Twitch for using a homophobic slur in a stream. More of these may have been created as Twitch has banned s1mple for a third time for saying the same slur.
These profiles use videos from real s1mple streams to make viewers think that they are the real player. They also use names like s1mple so that the profiles look more real. The streams send viewers to sites that get them to log in with their Steam accounts, potentially allowing those accounts to be stolen from them.
S1mple has criticized Twitch before and while he was banned in November, he called the site “terrible” and asked them to release him from Twitch Partners. Many Twitch Partners have a contract to stream exclusively on Twitch and this is why Trainwreckstv had to turn down a million dollar deal to stream somewhere else.
If s1mple was no longer a Twitch Partner, it would allow him to move to a site like Mixer. Several responses to s1mple’s tweet about Twitch’s fake profiles do ask the streamer to move to Mixer, which is where popular streamers such as Ninja, shroud, and King Gothalion have moved.