382,000 people tune in to watch the return of notoriously toxic LoL player

Tyler1, the infamously toxic League of Legends streamer who was hit with an indefinite ban in 2016 for "verbal abuse, intentional feeding, as well as account sharing/purchasing, evasion of sportsmanship systems, and player harassment," was recently reinstated by Riot. Today marked his official return to the game on Twitch, in full Draven cosplay with a Wonder Woman tiara, and it's fair to say quite a few people tuned in hoping for fireworks.

The concurrent viewer number is bouncing around, as they do, but at one point moved past 382,000. That's well off the overall record numbers—Twitch's E3 2017 coverage peaked at 1.1 million—but it absolutely crushes Faker's 245,000 concurrent viewer count set in early 2017, which was at the time a record for an individual streamer. In fact, Twitch just confirmed that Tyler1's return stream has set a new record for most concurrent viewers on an individual's channel.

It's also fair to say that these numbers are piling up more thanks to Tyler1's reputation for misbehavior than due to his LoL skills, impressive though they may be. Prior to his reinstatement, he was indirectly thrust back into the spotlight when developer Aaron "Riot Sanjuro" Rutledge was dismissed from Riot after predicting that Tyler1 will "die from a coke overdose or testicular cancer." That angry outburst was prompted by a redditor's request for Tyler1's return, prompting Rutledge to say, "I've spent many many hours of my work day dealing with his bullshit. if games had terrorists..." 

Nonetheless, the fans are in a forgiving mood.