Nobody Knows Why Twitch Banned This Homicidal Schoolgirl Simulator

Just a few weeks ago we ran a story 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, 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.) 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 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 game." He even entertains the idea that Twitch may have simply taken it down under the belief that the technically unreleased game is still under embargo, but he adds that "This would not be true, since I do not discourage anyone from broadcasting the game."

Twitch almost certainly has to know the last point—millions of people have already watched Pewdiepie's multiple Yandere Simulator videos and many other such videos rub shoulders on YouTube. Alex's Patreon account for the project pulls in $4,821 per month, up over $1,000 from our December coverage.

"In short, none of Yandere Simulator's content is worse than content which can be found in games that Twitch does permit people to stream, such as Grand Theft Auto 5 and Witcher 3," Alex says. "While reviewing Twitch's code of conduct, I can't find any justification for banning Yandere Simulator."

Alex acknowledges that it's not impossible for Twitch to unban a game and reapprove it for broadcasting, citing Senran Kagura: Estival Versus, one of the entries in a racy but nudity-free series about a band of female ninjas. A bug once caused the characters to go nude, he says, and Twitch unbanned broadcasts last April after the developers fixed it. "I'd like to remain hopeful that Yandere Simulator can be unbanned, but I have no idea what the chances of this are," he says.

Frustrated with Twitch's silence, Alex released a video on Friday (above) expressing his concerns, in which he pulled in clips from what he called Grand Theft Auto V's "interactive torture scene" and "first-person sex scenes." These are fair game for Twitch broadcasts, and Alex expresses disbelief that Yandere Simulator is "somehow even worse."

If Twitch would only provide a reason, he says, he might be able to fix it. He does toy with the idea that the panty shots may have been responsible, but he asserts that he's "not going to remove any features from the game just so that Twitch will approve of it."

It's possible Alex will never receive a response. As Twitch's own Rules of Conduct page says, "we at Twitch reserve the right to suspend any account at any time for any conduct that we determine to be inappropriate or harmful. You are free to appeal your suspension, but we are not required to provide a reason for our decision." Twitch may find itself thinking otherwise, though, considering the storm it stirred up. A Reddit thread on the subject, for instance, has already pushed past 2,100 total comments.

"It's extremely rare for me to hear someone express a negative attitude towards Yandere Simulator," Alex says. "Occasionally, someone will call it 'creepy" or 'perverted,' but this is very uncommon. Most reasonable, rationally-thinking people understand that it's just a video game, that it's not reality, and that it doesn't need to be taken too seriously."