A female Overwatch Twitch streamer has shared a collection of clips of her on the receiving end of sexist harassment, revealing the abhorrent abuse she receives from other players.
29-year-old Twitch streamer Nicole, who runs the popular channel nweatherservice, uploaded a collection of clips taken from her streams by her fans. The clips each show other players hurling sexist insults in her direction, with one calling her a “dumb c***” while another tells her her that she “doesn’t belong in Trump’s America.”
In one match a teammate launches into a sexist tirade against her, saying: “I think Mercy’s not working out for you, you dumb c***. Learn how to play a proper character, 45 hours and you still suck, I guess girls just suck at games in general you stupid dumb wh***.” In a separate match, another teammate responds to her discussing tactics by telling her to “get back in the kitchen.”
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In another exchange, a teammate tells her to “play some more support characters like a female typically would play.” “Why are you attacking me for being a girl?” Nicole responds, at which point another player abruptly tells her to “just mute them and move on, it’s fine.” Another teammate says “this is the reason why girls should not do anything, do not play Overwatch” before calling Nicole a “fat, ugly, pimple-ridden face wh***.”
When a teammate tells her that her “opinion doesn’t matter” because of her “oestrogen,” Nicole responds by telling him to give her his “worst insult.” The player replies: “In Trump’s America you don’t belong,” before saying “your boobs are tiny.”
The footage was posted to Overwatch Reddit, with many players expressing shock at the level of abuse she had received while playing. “God damn this is cringe worthy how can anyone actually think like that?” one Reddit user wrote. “What’s more alarming (and disproves the people who say “oh it’s general toxicity not sexism”) is that most of those clips start at warm up,” another added. “I mean she didn’t do anything bad at the game so the toxic guy attacked her gender because he find it easy, the guys literally got triggered because a woman was in their game and found it appropriate to tell her to go back in the kitchen. Pathetic.”
The video, which contains strong language and repeated sexist remarks, can be viewed below:
Overwatch‘s Game Director Jeff Kaplan made an appeal to the Overwatch community last month, encouraging them to “play nice, play fair.” Kaplan revealed that as a result of Blizzard having to curb the extensive amount of toxicity present in the community, it is negatively impacting upon their ability to release new content for the game, such as new maps and new heroes. Blizzard have already introduced a new reporting system to the console version of the game, with the developer stating that they are looking to crack down on toxic players and abusive behavior in the game.
