Summary
- Russian streamer lawsuit leads to an unrealistic sum larger than any money in existence.
- Russian courts demand Twitch to reinstate an account or pay a colossal sum.
Twitch has been sued, and allegedly owes more money than exists on the entire planet. However, Twitch isn’t taking it lying down, and has now filed a countersuit in an effort to fight against the judgment.
Back in 2022, websites and services like Twitch, YouTube, Valve, and Epic Games were required to follow sanctions on Russia and Russian individuals that were put in place due to the war in Ukraine. Individuals and companies located in or holding banking accounts within Russia were no longer able to receive payments following these sanctions. However, this has led to some backlash, and in this particular case, a Russian streamer has sued Twitch, leading to this gargantuan sum.
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As uncovered by Polygon, Twitch is countersuing following a lawsuit that would have it pay a streamer a sum “larger than all the money in the world.” Back in 2022, Russian League of Legends streamer Kirill Konstantinovich Malofeyev, aka Likkrit, sued Twitch in a Russian court due to having his Twitch account suspended. The suspension was tied to the aforementioned Russian sanctions, which reportedly labeled Malofeyev as being a Russian national who had a role in a “worldwide sanctions evasion and malign influence network” led by his Russian oligarch father. First in June and then October, Malofeyev and his father sued Twitch for the suspension and demonetization of his Twitch account. While the first suit was dismissed, the October 2022 lawsuit saw Russian courts demanding that Twitch reinstate the account or pay a compounding penalty of 100,000 rubles, or roughly $1,100 USD per day, doubling per week, leading to the tremendous sum Twitch is now fighting against.
Twitch Files Countersuit Against Russian Streamer Outcome
Now, Twitch is filing a countersuit, claiming it didn’t receive adequate notice of the hearing to begin with, and that the penalty is unjustified. According to Twitch, Malofeyev only generated around $2,000 USD in revenue from streaming before the service was suspended. In 2023, Malofeyev filed a Turkish Enforcement Action against Amazon’s Turkey offices in an effort to force the company to pay up, but Twitch claims that the streamer signed agreements with Twitch, not Amazon, which would mean these efforts are invalid. Twitch is asking for the U.S. courts to compel arbitration.
While Twitch’s parent company Amazon is estimated to have a market cap of over $2 trillion, it obviously can’t produce a fine larger than all the money in the world, even if the U.S. courts sided with the Russian court’s judgment. This isn’t the first time that an online streaming platform has been slapped with a demand for an amount like this by a Russian court. After YouTube banned two Russian channels due to the same sanctions, one of the channels sued, and the Russian courts decided in favor of the channel. As a result, compounding penalties led to YouTube owing more than the global GDP by the end of 2024, or about $20 decillion USD.