PS4 Twitch streaming used as stand-in Chaturbate, Twitch wields ban hammer
Whereas the Xbox One focused on its cable pass-through and voice control, the PS4 focused on social gaming. You can yell at your Xbox One and get it to check what’s on Comedy Central, but with the PS4, you can watch your friend’s streaming game session then take control of it over the internet.
However, there’s an app on the PS4 that displays a large, live feed of whatever the PS Camera is pointed at — The Playroom – and since it’s technically a game, people realized they could stream feeds of themselves. Since this is the internet, some gamers have inevitably created their own little Chaturbate using the PS4, streaming things you wouldn’t want your parents to witness.
For the uninitiated (or really, people who pretend not to know), Chaturbate is a webcam service that features live strip and sex shows where the viewers tip the streamers with a virtual currency that can then be redeemed for real currency. The PS4′s Twitch streaming capability doesn’t allow for a virtual marketplace, but it does allow you to easily stream whatever you happen to be doing in front of the PS Camera.
Not all of the non-gaming streams are what you’d expect though, as two gamers hosted a live call-in talk show. However, one stream reportedly showed a married couple drinking until they passed out, but the husband waking up and stripping the wife naked on the stream. Another stream reportedly showed a person in a horse-head mask performing an act on a woman of which Vince Vaughn’s character in Wedding Crashers would be proud.
As time goes on and more people realize they can stream themselves using The Playroom, we’ll likely hear about more nefarious acts being broadcast. The problem here, though, isn’t really that those acts will be broadcast — that goes hand-in-hand with the capability to stream a live feed over the internet — but that this specific iteration of it will be tied to the PS4, Sony, and mainly video games in general.
It’s no secret that certain uninformed news outlets tend to blame video games for acts of depravity. The next time something wicked is streamed using the PS4 and those news outlets get wind of it, we’ll all have to deal with a storm of controversial negative press focused on video games yet again.
Twitch has been banning the offending accounts, but the easy solution on Twitch and Sony’s part is to simply remove The Playroom from being allowed on stream. Granted, self-censorship is unfortunate — especially when the software is currently the only one that really shows off the PS Camera’s features — but that’s perhaps better than a news storm
