Spanish Twitch streamer Rubius has lost his Twitch partnership and has been banned from Twitch after purportedly breaking an embargo with Sega by streaming Sonic Frontiers before the game was officially released.
Boasting over 13 million followers on Twitch, Rubius is by far one of the most popular Spanish-speaking streamers on the video livestreaming platform. Fans were shocked when on Nov. 7, the popular content creator was both banned and stripped of his partnership status shortly after going live.
Before the incident occurred, Rubius tweeted that he intended to go live with a crudely drawn picture of Sonic the Hedgehog, writing “gotta go fast.” Quickly amassing over 30,000 viewers and loading up Sonic Frontiers, which is set to release tomorrow, Nov. 8, the Spanish streamer’s channel was just as quickly taken down.
Rubius immediately claimed on Twitter that Sega informed him that he’d be able to stream the game after installing it. “Sega sent me a code for Sonic Frontiers. In the email, they told me that there is no embargo and I can stream it now. Sega proceeds to ban me from Twitch. WTF,” Rubius said, according to Twitter’s translation. Along with his statement, Rubius also attached a screengrab of Sega’s email, which appears to corroborate his claim.
Fans quickly rallied around the immensely popular Twitch star, shocked that the streamer has not only been banned from the platform but also lost his partnership, presumably temporarily. Right now, Rubius’ channel still remains down, reading only “content from this channel has been removed at the request of the copyright holder.”
There is some hope that Rubius’ channel could be restored in the near future. The social media manager for Sonic the Hedgehog, KatieChrz, responded under Rubius’ tweet, saying she’d look into the apparent miscommunication between Rubius and Sega.
