Was the *Death Stranding 2* livestream banned? It was so realistic that even the system got fooled.

After Death Stranding 2: On the Beach ended its PS5 exclusivity and officially launched on PC, this journey about “connection” has welcomed a new wave of travelers. Steam data shows that the game’s peak concurrent player count has already surpassed 55,000, with both its popularity and reputation holding strong. But what no one expected was that the most dramatic recent discussion would center neither on the combat system nor on story analysis, but in livestream rooms.

Recently, quite a few players reported being suddenly banned while livestreaming Death Stranding 2 on Douyin. Based on feedback from multiple sources, the issue likely stems from the in-game child character “Lou”: the character is rendered so realistically that the platform’s automated review system appears to have identified it as a real underage person appearing on stream. Douyin has always enforced strict restrictions on minors appearing in livestreams, with anyone under 16 prohibited from participating, so once the system detects footage resembling a “real baby,” it may directly trigger the moderation mechanism.

What makes this incident so absurd is precisely that it is not entirely illogical. In Death Stranding 2, the “BB” from the previous game has grown into “Lou,” who is being raised by Sam, and this close relationship is one of the emotional cores of the story. So when streamers linger on scenes of holding the child, feeding, and interacting, what the system sees as “risky footage” is, to players, simply part of Kojima Productions’ storytelling.

Looking one step deeper into this mix-up, it can also be seen as an accidental endorsement of Death Stranding 2’s technical prowess. The series is built on the Decima engine, developed by Guerrilla Games, which has long been known for its visual performance and open-world optimization. Kojima Productions CTO Akio Sakamoto has also mentioned that while Decima is not the easiest engine to learn, it is well suited to the kind of results the team wants to achieve. Judging by this incident, those “results” are apparently so convincing that even an automated moderation system briefly failed to distinguish between the virtual and the real.

For players, this incident also highlights a practical issue: with the PC version still gaining momentum, livestream content that includes close-up interactions with “Lou” may be more likely to trigger the platform’s automated review system. If you are planning to stream, it is best to pay attention to how long such scenes remain on screen and what exactly the camera is showing, so as to avoid unnecessary ban risks.

Judging from community discussions, people are complaining about how “ridiculous” it is while at the same time becoming even more impressed by the game’s level of detail. In a sense, this really is the kind of dark humor unique to Death Stranding 2: it is a story about people reconnecting with one another and with the world, yet in reality, its very first obstacle turned out to be an algorithm mistaking it for reality.