Whether you’re a hardcore gamer or just a casual video game enthusiast, you most certainly have heard about Twitch.tv, a video game streaming platform created in 2011 (and acquired by Amazon in 2014 for $970 million) where anyone can host a gameplay session to help or amuse fellow gamers. It can also play host to so-called esports competitions, where players compete against each other in their favorite games just like athletes during the Olympic Games. You can watch both live and on-demand streams of your favorite players either for free or via a monthly subscription. Using the latter option allows you to watch anything you like on the website for as long as you want without getting disturbed by the always annoying ads, which are displayed randomly during a stream.
Even though Twitch.tv is a great place to ‘hang out’, it is also one of the first additions to some countries, schools and employers’ blacklists, preventing users from enjoying their favorite content. Fortunately, VPNs can help you overcome this matter, even without compromising your internet speed.
If we’re writing an article about it then you can bet that Twitch is not available for everyone. In fact, just like any other website aimed at providing entertainment, some of the world’s most repressive countries include Twitch.tv on their blacklist, making it almost impossible for their citizens to enjoy video game content on the site. In the same measure, schools and employers apply the same blocking methods, so even if you have a couple of hours to spare you can forget about spending them on Twitch. And due to the fact that Twitch.tv is a streaming website, therefore requiring a high amount of bandwidth consumption, ISPs can throttle your connection and limit your access to the platform.
Lucky for you, VPNs can remove of all of these restrictions. To bypass any geo-restriction all you need is to connect to a VPN server in a country where Twitch.tv is not blocked. And in those situations where you don’t have issues with geo-blocking but, instead, encounter forced blocks – such as at your workplace or in school – then connecting to a server in the same country or city that you live in will open access to Twitch without experiencing any major speed loss or lag. In addition to this, since the vast majority of VPN providers impose no bandwidth limits, whenever you’re connected to one of the company’s servers you can rest assured that there will be no ISP throttling.
However, one of the biggest features of Twitch is the fact that viewers can interact with streamers via live chat. This feature also allows streamers, or the portal itself, to ban those who don’t behave or comply with the community guidelines and the site’s terms of service. The most common reasons for account suspensions vary between offensive comments, harassment, impersonations or threats to other users to not following the DMCA copyright guidelines. Although the vast majority of offenders receive a temporary block, your IP address will become the ultimate barrier between you and the gates of video game heaven. Using a VPN can bypass these bans too, since with every connection you make you’ll be given a new, foreign IP address.
Twitch Prime is aimed at those who want to show their appreciation to the site by contributing to the whole streaming experience via monetary donations. Some of the benefits of Twitch Prime include an exclusive button badge on the streamer’s chat, extra emoticons, the ability to change your nickname’s color and the freedom to watch any stream without ads. Although this service comes with every Amazon Prime membership, it is only available in a couple of countries.
This means that you’ll have to change your virtual location with the help of a VPN. On the one hand, you can get a subscription for both Amazon and Twitch Prime. On the other hand, however, you are still obliged to provide a billing address of an eligible country which, due to being verified by the website’s services, leaves virtually no place for such ‘cheating’.
As more and more people start to move to other platforms for their video streaming, Twitch.tv has made itself fully compatible with other devices, too. In fact, you can combine the power of multi-platform VPN providers like IPVanish, PureVPN, or ExpressVPN with the video game streaming platform to enjoy fully unblocked content on your mobile device, smart TV or game console. Whether you’re watching Twitch on your desktop or from your smart device, all you need to do is to turn on the VPN client before heading to Twitch and have it running in the background while you enjoy the stream.
As for other devices such as smart TVs, game consoles and anything that is unable to run a VPN directly, for these you will have to use a VPN router. A highly valuable investment, a VPN router is able to protect your entire home network since the protection is coming directly from the source of the signal.
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