Can an Admin/Cohh explain what the situation is with Giveaways?

Feel free to post about anything here.
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mrwishe
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Joined: Tue Feb 25, 2014 4:10 pm
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There is so much information going back and forth, and so much is it is from people that I doubt actually know what's going on. Tomorrow was going to be a huge day for subscribers as well as a great way to gain more subs and really promote the channel.

What's going down?
dspradau
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Joined: Thu Jan 30, 2014 1:41 pm
Location: Wisconsin

Basically, there are laws that state you cannot perform giveaways (sweepstakes) that involve a sort of "pay-in". While most of the Twitch community sees sub-only GA's as just a perk, under law, it's paying for the opportunity to win. I believe Chapter 10 Section F of the Twitch ToS states a lot of this sort of thing. Note, the ToS also states only legal residents of the USA that are 18 years and older are eligible for promotions. At the moment this is all very grey and I don't think Twitch has said much on the subject.

Back story, while not really confirmed to be the reason, someone sent a very short email to the California DoJ stating a Twitch streamer (named Towlliee) was performing illegal sweepstakes on his stream. The assumption was the DoJ contacted Twitch (which is based out of California), and they put their foot down to protect themselves.

So at this point the ONLY safe bet is to do giveaways to ALL FOLLOWERS (that fall under the ToS guidelines)! Since this is such a grey area at the moment, most streamers are holding of on any form of giveaways. Hopefully Twitch comes out and explains this in black and white. There are so many bits of red tape surrounding this situation.

On another unrelated note, forum admins, should regular users have permission to post in this sub-fourm? I can see it being abused by potential spambots to spam their nonsense on the front page?
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mrwishe
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I see what you're saying, it makes sense. I'm guessing that Cohh is holding back on giveaways because of this?

Also, I didn't know where to post the topic >.< hope it won't cause a ruckus.
dspradau
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Joined: Thu Jan 30, 2014 1:41 pm
Location: Wisconsin

mrwishe wrote:I see what you're saying, it makes sense. I'm guessing that Cohh is holding back on giveaways because of this?

Also, I didn't know where to post the topic >.< hope it won't cause a ruckus.
Yeah, no one wants to incidentally get involved with this legally to much until the dust settles and we figure out what can be done. Don't fret about posting it. I'm sure a lot of people are confused as well.
Phobic_panda
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Joined: Sat Jan 11, 2014 12:01 pm

it only takes one party pooper to ruin the fun, thanks for the explanation it was very thorough
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