Less than a week after announcing his massive deal with the new streaming platform, xQc is already openly defyingKickstaff and potentially exposing himself and the company to legal threats. Despite already being told thatwatchingThe Dark Knightviolated Kick’s DMCA policy, he recently streamed himself watching AMC’sBreaking Bad.Launched a mere six months ago in December 2022, Kick is a livestreaming service founded as a direct competitor to Amazon-ownedTwitch. Kick’s strategy includes enticing several big names to abandon the older platform, including Adin Ross, BruceDropEmOff, and most recently xQc and Amouranth. Many of these big names were brought over by Kick’s multi-million-dollar contracts. Kick also offers generous revenue sharing, with the platform only taking 5%. By comparison, YouTube takes 30% of the money from livestreams. Meanwhile, Twitch only recently introduced a 70-30 split, which only applies to some streamers and reverts to 50-50 for revenue over $100,000.RELATED:Asmongold Responds to Speculation Regarding Him Moving to KickLast week,Felix “xQc” Lengyel signed a two-year $70 million contract with Kick, with an additional $30 million in potential performance-based bonuses. This makes it one of the biggest deals in entertainment, comparable to some of America’s top professional athletes. However, xQc is playing fast and loose with Kick’s DMCA policy, streaming himself watching episodes of AMC’s hit crime dramaBreaking Bad. This is only a few days after Kick asked him to stop watchingThe Dark Knightbecause it violated DMCA policy.
The Digital Millennium Copywrite Act, or DMCA, is a 1998 law that serves as the basis for modern US copyright law. The law protects platforms like Kick from liability if users upload copyrighted material. However, it also requires Kick to cooperate with takedown requests from the copyright holder. Therefore, many platforms, Kick included, disallow users from uploading or streaming copyrighted material.
xQc complied with Kick’s first request regarding copyrighted content, immediately stopping hisDark Knightstream after receiving a message from Kick’s staff. However, he’s already back to doing the same thing only a few days later. The former Twitch streamer said he moved to Kick because it let him engage in activities he couldn’t on the other platform. However,Kick still has rules and moderation, and regardless of one’s personal opinion on copyright laws, this isn’t the kind of content that a major streaming site wants.
This is also some pretty reckless behavior from theformer Twitch streamer, leaving some Twitter users to wonder if xQc was trying to get himself suspended on purpose. This seems unlikely given the amount of money involved, but it isn’t impossible if xQc has second thoughts about the contract. That is nothing more than idle speculation, however.
