Overwatch casters, players point to Twitch chat toxicity in wake of xQc departure

The Dallas Fuel’s dismissal of its most controversial player, Félix “xQc” Lengyel, sent fans and critics of the Overwatch League into overdrive.

Lengyel’s ongoing behavioral problems led to questions over his inability to stay out of trouble. No one is defending Lengyel’s actions or behavior, but grouped it into a bigger discussion over toxicity and meme culture that breeds, manifests and spreads like a virus in Twitch chat.

Lengyel is a self-proclaimed child of Twitch. He speaks in emotes and memes. It wasn’t until he became a professional esports athlete in the Overwatch League that his behavior came into question. He received two suspensions and $6,000 in fines for his repeated offensive behavior; the latter of which essentially boiled down to embracing the most toxic elements of Twitch and internet culture. Lengyel called professional broadcasters “cancer” and “repeatedly used an emote in a racially disparaging manner on the league’s stream and on social media,” according to an official Overwatch League post.

The emote in question is TriHard. Based on the popular Twitch streamer TriHex, the TriHard emote (often written in chat as TriHard 7), is controversial. TriHex addressed the growing dispute over use of the emote in chat late last year, pointing out that “it’s not the emote’s fault that it’s being used for racist things,” adding that he didn’t see anything blatantly racist about the emote based on him but was worried about the behavior associated with its usage.

“It is used for racism a lot,” TriHex said.

Others feel differently. Popular Starcraft 2 streamer Deejay Knight told Kotaku that he banned people using the TriHard emote in his chat.

“If you let people say whatever they like, they’ll walk all over you, and I have no intention of giving power to racists,” Knight said. “There is also a penchant for some Twitch communities to be very racist. That exists everywhere in life, it would be no different within Twitch.”

It comes down to context, and playing ignorant to how people are using an emote apparently isn’t something the Overwatch community will let Lengyel get away with. Lengyel was spamming the emote in Twitch chat while Malik Forte, an emcee for the Overwatch League, was on camera. When Forte called out people in Twitch chat spamming the emote, it renewed discussion about the use of specific emotes in Twitch chat — especially when used by professional Overwatch League players.

Lengyel addressed his own use of the emote in one of his personal streams.

“The fallout of it was preventable, dude,” Lengyel says in the clip below. “I just simply wish that at some point, someone simply said, ‘Look dude ... I don’t know man, these [Trihard] emotes you always post in chat, it’s gotta stop man.’ Like I wish someone just said something, man. I was fucking born and raised by Twitch chat, dude.

“I’m literally a walking Twitch chat — and it’s fixable.”

Lengyel’s comments drew some amount of sympathy from those in the league — including from Forte. Forte tweeted about Lengyel’s parting with the Overwatch League, suggesting that he felt bad for the player who needed some guidance. Forte went one step further and blamed part of Lengyel’s community who egged on his childish behavior, trying to turn him into Overwatch League’s villain.

Twitch chat has always been a problem. Twitch has tried to tidy up its toxicity problem by giving tools to streamers as a way to help censor certain emotes or terms, but it’s nearly impossible to break the feedback loop. Twitch chat spurs on streamers, and streamers spur on Twitch chat. It’s only now that Twitch is asking creators to be aware of their communities, threatening consequences for any streamer who doesn’t try to curb their viewers inappropriate behavior.

It’s Lengyel’s lack of ownership over his community and his actions, at the time, that Forte initially found to be a problem.

“Is the Trihard emote racist? No,” Forte tweeted. “But spamming it whenever a black person is on the screen and only then is 100 percent racially insensitive, rather that’s the intent or not. To me, it’s a sly way of saying ‘hey gais, luk! A black guy heheh.’ It’s been happening to me for about 3 years. I don’t think xqc had any ill intent when he was throwing up that emote ... but dude is in a position where he has a lot of folks that hang onto his every action. I’m not a fan of his follow up to the situation.

“He apparently didn’t know that the TriHard spam was used in such an insensitive manner, but kept trying to defend it as ‘his salute.’”

Others, like professional Overwatch player, Jake Lyon, point out that if a meme or emote has racially insensitive connotations, streamers should know to stay away from using it. Someone who was born and raised on Twitch, like Lengyel proclaims to be, should have known that TriHard is seen by many people of color on Twitch as an offensive emote.

“It’s because of the color of his skin that people are doing that,” Lyon said, referring to Forte, during one of his Twitch streams, “which is obviously what makes it a racially charged meme. I don’t think xQc was doing it to imply that same intent, but it’s very risky to be using the same meme to imply something that is not racist when other people are using it to be racist — it’s something you want to stay away from.”

The bottom line is that Lengyel is aware of the influence he has over his community, but he’s only now stepping in to address how people should behave. Lengyel spoke about his dismissal during a personal stream last night and pleaded with people to not seek out vengeance over the decision.

Even if he never specifically calls out the community and Twitch chat for its toxic behavior, he’s finally admitting that some of their actions are indefensible.

“Please don’t spam the Fuel and be mad about it, dude,” Lengyel says in the clip above. “Please don’t send people death threats, again, to people I guess. And try to be as reasonable as possible.”

The next question now is what the Overwatch League and Twitch will do about the use of emotes in chat and what further action will be taken to keep the viewing experience as clean as possible. Polygon has reached out to both Blizzard and Twitch for comment.