Trainwrecks has turned on his own corner of the streaming world. The gambling streamer and longtime Kick cheerleader publicly tore into the platform during a recent broadcast, saying Kick is now stuck with the same advertising headaches that pushed creators away from Twitch in the first place.
The rant came after Kick started rolling out ads that viewers say are showing up mostly on gambling and slots streams. That’s the exact category Trainwrecks lives in, so he’s catching the rollout head-on. Viewers have also reported that some of these ads are house ads promoting Kick itself, including spots featuring clips of creators like xQc, and that even paying subscribers are reportedly seeing them.
This is a big shift in tone. Kick built its entire identity around being the anti-Twitch. The 95/5 subscription split, the lighter ad load, the looser content rules, the Kick Creator Incentive Program. All of it was sold as a streamer-first deal. Trainwrecks himself was one of the loudest voices selling that story.
The platform launched in late 2022 with heavy backing tied to Stake, the crypto casino co-founded by Ed Craven. It scooped up huge names like xQc on a reported deal worth up to $100m, plus Adin Ross, and a wave of gambling streamers who left Twitch after Amazon cracked down on unlicensed casino content in 2022.
But running a livestreaming platform is brutally expensive. Real-time 1080p video, bandwidth, moderation, payment systems, and creator payouts. None of it is cheap, and Twitch has been bleeding money for years even with Amazon’s wallet behind it. A 95/5 split with almost no ads was never going to last forever.
Trainwrecks’ problem seems to be less about ads existing and more about how they’re being slapped onto streams. Mid-roll ads on live content remain one of the biggest complaints on Twitch because viewers miss the actual live moments, the reactions, the wins, the chaos. If Kick copies that playbook, its main selling point against Twitch quietly disappears.
