xQc breaks silence following Twitch ban over FIFA World Cup streams

Félix "xQc" Lengyel is no stranger to bans in the streaming world, yet his latest Twitch suspension took him by surprise as he watched footage from the FIFA World Cup, with the social media star now breaking his silence in response.

Dealing with copyrighted content on while streaming is something that many social media creators stay away from, yet sometimes – as xQc found out last night – you find yourself subject to strikes in rather unexpected ways.

While he wasn't actively watching France take on Iraq at the World Cup, he did manage to catch a short clip of Kylian Mbappé in action after he netted a wonder goal to open up the scoring.

It doesn't necessarily appear to be against the rules for streamers to watch highlights from football's biggest tournament while live on air, but the situation involving this game in particular saw xQc hit with the ban hammer before it was swiftly reversed by Twitch shortly after.

Why was xQc banned last night?

As the game was technically still ongoing – extended heavily after severe weather caused significant delays at half time – FIFA seemingly deemed xQc broadcasting a clip from the game to be a copyright infringement, issuing a DMCA strike against his channel.

This took his stream off the air immediately afterwards, and he also received a short ban from Twitch as a result – something he has become innately familiar with over the years – although the streamer himself believes that this was purely to prevent any further infractions from happening, as per Dexerto.

How has xQc responded to the ban?

His immediate response to the ban was that of shock, as he didn't seem to think that he was doing anything wrong in the first place. He was multi-streaming across both Twitch and rival site Kick at the time, meaning that his live reaction was captured as the ban hit.

"Twitch ban? Wait, what? Maybe DMCA, wait, why?" the streamer questioned after being notified of the strike, and he then showed his audience the email that he received linking the ban to the World Cup and a man named Jonathan Schmitz.

This isn't the first time that Schmitz has seemingly been linked to World Cup-related copyright infringements, with a post on X back in 2022 pointing towards 'Jonathan Schmitz of Athletia Sports' as the official representative who took down footage shared from the tournament in Qatar.

Lengyel appeared to be understanding of Twitch's decision to briefly ban him, however, remarking: "it's not like real real. The reason they ban is so your channel isn't live and you don't make more infractions.

"If you made more infractions in the same stream, Twitch would have to ban you permanently. They stop the stream when you get a strike, so it's a live strike."

That didn't stop him from expressing his disappointment relative to viewing World Cup content, however, as he noted:

"Well, GGs, I guess. It really sucks because I waited as much as I could. Chat, it's that one f***ing clip! It's the one f***ing clip," referencing the short Mbappé video at the heart of it all.