League of Legends streamer Trick2g has been banned from Twitch after he finished a huge 24 hour stream with a fake swatting that saw him dragged from his desk by heavily armed ‘police officers’. Trick2g’s channel is now offline, and the streamer is banned from using Twitch for a currently undetermined amount of time.
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Swatting, for anyone who doesn’t know, is when malicious viewers of streams call the police and report a violent crime from the address of the streamer. This generally leads to a pretty traumatic time for the streamer as a bunch of machinegun-wielding cops in body armour burst into their house and arrest them. The whole thing is normally caught on camera as the webcam carries on running during the arrest.
Trick2g thought it would be hilarious to finish his stream with a mock swat, but doing so breaches Twitch’s Terms of Service, leading to his ban.
The swatting itself can be seen in the above video at the three-minute mark.
In response to the incident and ban, Trick2g’s manager Cher Gambino released a statement, pointing out that people are taking the whole thing too seriously. “Trick is an entertainer and that is just how it is, he streams 12 – 14 hours a day and brings constant laughter throughout each and every stream,” Gambino wrote.
“Now, I know some of you are saying…’Cher it is not funny to make a joke about being swatted. There is always someone that thinks only their sense of humor is what matters and if they don’t think it is funny then it couldn’t possibly be. That is why our Country is in the shape it is now, because we fear making light of anything that might be thought of as controversial.”
Gambino doesn’t understand why the whole thing is considered offensive, and notes that the swatting was carried out by people who had previously appeared in the stream, and at the exact scheduled time of the stream end. “The ending was scheduled for 3PM which again if thought process was used in any way, one would know that a swat team would not wait until the end of a stream to engage,” she stated.
Of course, people are upset, notably professional player Marcel Feldkamp, who said “whoever that person is is stupid as fuck, how is it oversensitive when its a traumatizing experience for real swats” on Twitter.
Trick2g has plenty of supporters though, with a #freetrick hashtag having been created on Twitter.
Talking to Kotaku, Gambino said that they were “not sure” how long the ban would last, but they are “working on the details” of potentially transferring to a different streaming service.