The Internet and new media have brought a lot of new things into the world. Now we get to find out if online accounts can be considered transferable property.
A Twitch streamer by the name of Ara_Gaming took a few months hiatus while she sorted out some things in her personal life, mainly divorce proceedings with her current husband. Yesterday that hiatus ended and the stream went live... only it wasn't "Ara" streaming.
It seems that the Twitch account was wholly owned by an LLC that had been set up in the names of both the husband and the streamer, and as part of the divorce proceedings the husband was awarded the account. Neither is the original streamer allowed to stream on any other account for five years as a part of a non-compete clause.
This information has come from 'nanospynet', a user who claims to be the said husband. Because he himself is not a streamer and no longer owns the LLC, he has asked his cousin to take on the account and it was her who streamed last night.
Understandably the nearly 30,000 followers of the account weren't happy and the chatroom moderators almost all chose to revolt against the new operator of the channel, other followers also took to Twitter to spread news of this 'injustice' via the #aragate hashtag.
Whether or not this is even allowed has also come into question, as Twitter's sign-up says that 'a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, freely revocable license' is granted to new broadcasters. The husband is apparently in talks with Twitch now to sort out that particular snarfu.
Either way, this is possibly one of the first of its kind to occur so who knows what'll happen. The original owner of the account seems to have stayed quiet so far, so maybe they've a different story.
We'll keep you updated if any more news emerges.