Former Dallas Fuel player Felix "xQc" Lengyel has had his Twitch channel (opens in new tab) temporarily suspended, and the reason might surprise you. He's been suspended from professional Overwatch play and Twitch streaming in the past for homophobia (opens in new tab), racism (opens in new tab), persistent abusiveness (opens in new tab), and sharing inappropriate content on stream, but this most recent event came about because he was caught stream sniping in, uh, Fall Guys (opens in new tab).
The incident, which took place during a Twitch Rivals tournament at GlitchCon, was reported over the weekend by Dot Esports (opens in new tab). xQc and his team stream-sniped a team made up of DrLupo, Shroud, and Tyler1, eliminating them from the competition, although xQc's team ultimately failed to claim the victory. Afterward, Shroud pointed out that because it was a competitive tournament with a cash prize, xQc could face a ban for his actions.
His prediction turned out to be right on the money. "/xQcOW's actions during the tiebreaker of the Fall Guys Match on November 14, 2020 violated the Official Tournament Code of Conduct and Game Play Rules found in Section 7 of the Official Tournament Rules," Twitch Rivals ruled. "As a result and effective immediately, /xQcOW will (I) receive a six-month ban from Twitch Rivals and (ii) will forfeit prize winnings from the GlitchCon event.
At GlitchCon our player conduct rules were violated. We require all participants to abide by the same rules in order to play in a tournament. As a result, xQc has been issued a temporary Twitch account suspension, a temporary Twitch Rivals ban & forfeited associated prize money. pic.twitter.com/SA8umOdS9ENovember 18, 2020
"Furthermore, /xQcOW violated Twitch policies around stream sniping in an online game … As a result and effective immediately, /xQcOW will receive a temporary Twitch account suspension. We take Twitch Rivals Player Conduct extremely seriously. This type of behavior is unacceptable and will not be taken lightly We reserve the right to impose any additional penalties at our sole discretion."
xQc apologized (opens in new tab) for his actions shortly after the event, saying that he shouldn't have done it but "thought it would be funny." He apologized again following the announcement of the suspension, which will apparently last for one week.
What I did had no impact on the outcome but it was wrong. Sorry again, I wasn't trying to cheat out of malice I was just trying to entertain. 7 days suspension for now. Ride like lightning, crash like thunder. Go agane. PS: Give my winning to charity and i'll match it pic.twitter.com/48hgZQoyg0November 18, 2020
This is xQc's fourth suspension from Twitch: He was given a 72-hour vacation in July 2019 for streaming a pornographic video (opens in new tab), got a second suspension in February 2020 for playing Connect 4 with a nude AI (opens in new tab), and a third in June 2020, apparently for showing a brief clip of two gorillas having sex (opens in new tab). Despite (or, I suppose, because of) that bumpy history, he remains one of Twitch's most popular streamers.
