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The illegal UFC 3 streamer has been issued a temporary Twitch ban

UFC 3

Update, December 5: AJ Lester has been issued a Twitch ban for illegally broadcasting a UFC match.

A Twitch streamer who illegally broadcast a pay-per-view UFC match by pretending he was playing EA Sports’ UFC 3 has reportedly been issued a 24-hour ban from the platform. 

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Lester’s Twitch channel is currently unavailable, but in a periscope stream last night, he said he had gained 1,000 YouTube subscribers since a clip of him pretending to play UFC 3 went viral. He’s also gained 3,000 followers on both Twitter and Twitch.

Of his new-found fame, Lester says he’ll simply “ride the wave and pray I don’t go to jail or get sued,” but claims his practices are so common that “if they want to get me, they got to get everyone else who’s streaming.”

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Original story, December 4:A Twitch streamer managed to broadcast an entire pay-per-view UFC fight via the platform over the weekend. AJ Lester managed to dodge Twitch’s moderation of illegally-broadcasting live sports events by pretending he was playing EA’s UFC 3.

Saturday night saw the broadcast of UFC 218, with the main event being the fight between UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway and challenger Jose Aldo. In a tweet containing a clip from Lester’s stream, which has since been taken down, the two could be seen facing off, accompanied by Lester, controller in hand, in the bottom right-hand corner.

To make his charade more believable, Lester even accompanied his ‘gameplay’ with sound effects. At one point he even calls himself out for not blocking an attack.

Since the tweet he was featured in went viral, Lester has deleted the VOD of the fight. But in a follow-up stream, he claimed he hadn’t heard from Twitch, UFC, or any other authority on the matter. Lester has, however, found some success from his endeavours; his follower count – which he says has been stuck at 2,000 for several years – has more than doubled since saturday night, and has now reached nearly 5,000.