Twitch streamer shocks viewers with gambling stakes worth several hundred million euros

Former Overwatch pro Félix “xQc” Lengyel (26) is one of the biggest streamers on Twitch. He now does gambling streams. A financial magazine mentioned him in an article about online casinos, but he didn’t agree with the numbers shown.

This is what casino streams are all about:

In Germany, too, such gambling streams were extremely successful for a while. You can read about how the whole thing looks legally here:

xQc on Bloomberg: “This is fictitious!”

What did the article say? On August 5th, American site Bloomberg had a report on online casino Stake and their deals with major Twitch streamers. The accusation: the streamers’ losses would be reimbursed, but their viewers would go bankrupt.

This part annoyed xQc: At one point, the Bloomberg article mentions a promo code that xQc viewers could use to sign up to the casino. This code has already raised Stake $119 million.

However, this information is intended to be deliberate misinformation in order to create a false narrative. xQc was outraged by this type of reporting. He couldn’t understand why Bloomberg would allow something like that.

What’s up with the number now? xQc then called up his stats at the online casino Stake. The sum to which the author of the article refers is his “wager amounts”, i.e. his own bets and not those of his viewers.

It’s so damn stupid. I won’t sue them, but it’s weak for a major media outlet like Bloomberg to let someone falsify information. […] As a journalist, you shouldn’t be allowed to do that, you should lose your job.

xQc via Twitch

When they saw the statistics, however, viewers were initially shocked by the actual size of the stakes.

xQc has gambled more than 660 million euros on the stake

This is what the stats look like: In more than 600,000 bets, xQc has wagered a total of $685 million. You can also see a soberingly low win rate of just under 10%.

These are the reactions: On Reddit where a clip from the stream in Live StreamFail had landed, users were shocked by the sum. Redditer michael_am summed it up eloquently, “Holy shit.”

Others sought clarification. This is not about the amount that xQc would have lost, but about his total bets. This also includes profits with which the streamer would then have continued to gamble.

Still others are unimpressed by the numbers: it’s just “Monopoly money” and xQc wouldn’t play with its own money anyway, but would be reimbursed for losses.

How much has xQc actually lost? This cannot be seen from the statistics. However, some arithmeticians on Reddit put actual losses at $30-45 million.

Even outside of its gambling streams, xQc is more often involved in controversy. In July, he commented on TwitchCon in Amsterdam and compared it to a zoo: “You only want to observe degraded species up close!”

If you have gambling problems yourself or are worried about someone close to you, contact the Federal Ministry’s hotline. The advisory team of the BZgA is available on the phone number 0800 1 37 27 00 accessible free of charge and anonymously. Office hours: Monday to Thursday 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Friday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., 363 days a year (except December 24th and 31st).