The American streaming service Twitch has blocked dozens of Russian content creators who were broadcasting the Alabuga Polytech Cup esports tournament with Counter-Strike 2. In addition to the game broadcasts themselves, the creators were distributing advertisements for the Alabuga Polytech college, which is directly involved in the production of military drones for the needs of the Russian army.
The American streaming service Twitch has blocked dozens of Russian content creators who were broadcasting the Alabuga Polytech Cup esports tournament with Counter-Strike 2. In addition to the game broadcasts themselves, the creators were distributing advertisements for the Alabuga Polytech college, which is directly involved in the production of military drones for the needs of the Russian army.
The reason for the sanctions from the platform was that the venue of the competition and the educational institution itself are under sanctions from the USA, EU and Great Britain. It is known that the official channel of the tournament was blocked, as well as 14 accounts of streamers and professional e-sportsmen for a period of 30 days. The final decision on the deletion of these accounts will be made by the moderators later.
Twitch’s reaction came after social media coverage and appeals from the Ukrainian esports community. In particular, Ukrainian commentator Oleksiy «uHo» Maletskyi publicly called on CS2 developers and Twitch administration to pay attention to the use of the game to promote the aggressor’s military institutions.
«Your platform is being used to recruit young people to create strike drones that kill Ukrainians every day. Please pay attention to this,» Maletskyi emphasized in his address.
At first, Twitch did not respond to user complaints, but later the service began to clean up the channels involved.
«Alabuga» is a special economic zone in Tatarstan, which is used for the production of kamikaze drones. According to the international intelligence community InformNapalm, there is reason to believe that it is at the Albatross plant in «Alabuga» that the Russians assemble Iranian Shahed-136s. In the spring of 2024, it was first attacked by Ukrainian drones, and several more such attacks were carried out later.
