A Singaporean professional Dota 2 player had his account banned on live streaming video platform Twitch after he was caught saying a racial slur while playing a round of the game last night.
Daryl “iceiceice” Koh had been streaming his game when the topic of his son’s name came up in a group chat — a teammate suggested that the child be named “Daryl Jr”. That’s when the 27-year-old professional gamer suddenly felt the need to express a racist reason for hating his own name.
“I don’t even like the name Daryl. Daryl is like a n****r’s name. It’s not an… OK, it’s a black person’s name. I’m not a big fan of like, Daryl. My parents named me Daryl after watching a show.”
Kotaku reported that Koh’s Twitch channel was closed soon after due to “terms of service violations”. The section of the stream that contained Koh’s problematic comments, however, remain up on YouTube.
Currently playing professionally in Southeast Asia-based team Mineski — who emerged top dogs in this year’s Dota 2 Asia Championships — iceiceice is considered one of Singapore’s pioneering pro gamers who has made over a million dollars from playing competitively in League of Legends, Dota 2, Heroes of Newerth, and Starcraft 2. Mineski has since issued a statement about the incident, stating that it has reprimanded Koh for the racist statement.
Koh, however, remains silent on social media about his actions and the take-down of his Twitch channel — a platform that enabled him to monetize his streams. He’s also endorsed by gaming chair makers Secretlab, who just happened to publish an interview with him earlier this week.
We’ve since reached out to Secretlab to see if they’re considering taking action as well.
The N-word and video game streamers
Of course, iceiceice is far from the first famous professional gamer who’s dropped the N-word while streaming. YouTube’s biggest breakout star Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg caused an uproar when he casually dropped the slur while live streaming a tense moment during a round of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds. More recently, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins dropped the N-word while rapping along to a Logic tune during a Fortnite stream.
Welp…looks like Ninja already dropped the N-word…smh and I had high hopes for him ughh @Nadeshot get ya mans ♂️ @Ninja pic.twitter.com/tETY8OunYQ
— J.D. (@jdwitherspoon) March 28, 2018
Both personalities apologized for using racial expletives, and their careers didn’t take much damage from the controversies. Unlike Koh, however, Blevin’s Twitch channel remains alive and well — perhaps a testament to his role as the biggest Twitch personality right now, with hundreds of thousands of people tuning in to his streams each day.
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