Most people would tell you toxicity is something we should strive to avoid in games. One big YouTuber, however, doesn’t just embrace toxicity — he thinks it’s one of the few things that make games like League of Legends fun.
Last week, we wrote about Dunkey, a YouTube jokester who had been banned from League of Legends due to “toxic behaviour.” Last weekend, he actually shared what actually got him banned. In his own words, this is what was said right before he got banned:
It’s no wonder Dunkey was banned — it’s a pretty over-the-top message, even if the other player was “feeding” the other team kills. Dunkey doubles down on his shit talk in the following video, and lashes out at Riot for banning him:
His rationale? Not only did Dunkey’s teammate deserve those harsh words, trash talking actually makes the game more fun for Dunkey.
“I can understand being banned for cheating, or going AFK…or feeding on purpose,” Dunkey said. “But talking shit to some guy that is a total dumbass? What is this, fucking arse pussy baby preschool time?
“Talking shit is probably one of the only fun parts of this boring arse game. I might as well play the box if you want people to act like robots, Riot. I wonder if [Riot] understand[s] that the root of toxicity is the game, it’s just not fun and it pisses people off.
“Let me be serious here, League of Legends doesn’t work as a competitive game or a fun party game to play with your friends. As of today, I have more than eight thousand matches played on this game, so I have some legitimate grounds to review the game on,” Dunkey said, before explaining some of the design decisions he takes issue with within League of Legends.
Dunkey goes on to say that he’s put in a lot of work and time into making his League of Legends videos, something which he feels makes him entitled to be treated differently than other players.
“I’ve been consistently putting out League videos since I started out on YouTube,” Dunkey, who has 1.8 million followers on YouTube, said. “So I emailed Riot, I said hey, can you guys unban me so I can finish this video up?
“Now keep in mind, during my whole career of being the top guy promoting their game, for four years, Riot has done almost nothing to help me out or promote me. And I emailed them for this first and only favour, and they respond to me, ‘nope, you’re toxic.’
“And that’s when I realised that this company doesn’t appreciate me at all, or anything I stand for. I think multiplayer games should reward the time and practice you put into them, and that you should be able to call other people scum fuck bastards, and connect with your friends and have fun playing with them. And League of Legends offers none of these things. So I’m done with it.”
Dunkey says that while he will continue making gaming videos on YouTube, League of Legends will not be a game that he covers anymore.
In the comments, his fans seem divided on the issue. Some obviously support him no matter what he does, and think he is in the right here. Others are surprised that he could behave in this way.
“Is this real? You got to be kidding me! Dunkey is the only reason why I play League,” one commenter wrote.
“The salty tears are delicious,” wrote another commenter. “If Dunkey really was toxic in most of his game, and chat logs would certainly indicate so, he deserved a punishment. He makes fun videos, but that doesn’t mean he should be immune to rules. Pro players and their teams get punished if they’re overly toxic and behave badly, and those are players who make a living off of this game. So why in the world would Riot punish them and treat entertainers like royalty?”
Riot, meanwhile, is not only steadfast in its banning decision — they’re also pushing back on some of the details of Dunkey’s story.
Many of us love Dunkey’s content. We can discuss the contents of his Reform Card, but hate speech isn’t OK in real life and isn’t OK online.
— Jeffrey Lin (@RiotLyte) September 13, 2015
“We really can’t show favoritism to someone just because they are a pro or a known content creator,” Jeffrey Lin, lead game designer of social systems on League of Legends, wrote on Ask.Fm. Lin notes that whether or not trashtalking is OK in League is not up for debate, especially if hate speech or slurs are involved.
“We have a zero tolerance policy against hate speech, racism, homophobia, and sexism and that policy stands whether you’re a random player, a pro player, or a Youtube celebrity,” Lin said. Lin also alleged that the player that Dunkey describes in his video didn’t exist in the game that actually got him banned — and that ultimately, even if he did, that would not be enough grounds to shit talk in the game.
“We know that players have been asking us to be more aggressive against intentional feeders for a while, and it has taken us a bit longer than we’d like,” Lin admitted. To this end, Lin says that they are launching a new system that can detect when people are feeding the other team intentionally, which will hopefully be able to ban such players “within 15 minutes of matches.” The system will be a cautious one, Lin says, and will hopefully not ding players who are just having an occasional bad game.
“At the end of the day, this incident sucks for everyone,” Lin said. “We respect that Dunkey hasn’t posted his Reform Card, and I’m not going to post it either. Best wishes to him in the future.”
Comments
52 responses to “Banned League Of Legends YouTuber Defends His Trash Talking”
Sounds like a tantrum to me. If the only reason you’re playing a game is to be a dick to other people, everyone’s better off with you not playing at all. There are hundreds of thousands of games out there that are fun to play and don’t require you to be a fuck knuckle in the process.
Sounds like someone wanted to be the big man right up until the point he had to take his medicine and face some consequences then the whining just keeps on coming.
“What is this, fucking arse pussy baby preschool time?”
Yes… yes apparently it is, and not only that: you are repeating a year,
Rather simplistic view to take. Without knowledge of the reform card, we can only go on what is being said. Dunkey’s comment, while toxic, is not hate speech, racist, homophobic, or sexist. He also has 1.8m followers who specifically follow him for his style of play and his comments in particular. He is correct in that his behaviour is more due to the nature of the game than anything else.
Also worthy of note is that Dunkey is attacking a feeder, and Lin acknowledges that Riot are yet to actually do anything to alleviate that problem, which is heavily impacting a significant proportion of LOL games.
They’re two separate issues though, and in every case neither instance is to be condoned. Doesn’t matter how much of a following he has – toxic behaviour is toxic behaviour, and the ‘Summoner’s Code’ is pretty clear about Riot’s perspective on it.
Having lots of followers doesn’t make what you do acceptable though, just look at Justin Bieber. But that aside, I don’t watch his videos but the few that I’ve seen don’t rely on the kind of abuse above as the basis for his humour. There’s never an excuse to talk to someone the way he did.
Well, 1.8m find his behaviour acceptable enough to watch it consistently. And Riot are particularly crap at preventing unacceptable behaviour.
What’s Bieber got to do with it?
An example of how someone terrible who should definitely stop trying to do things can have millions of followers. It was a light hearted comparison.
But I don’t agree. Followers don’t translate to acceptance, I follow some people just to watch them train wreck every time they post something, not because I like or agree with them. From what I can see this kind of thing isn’t the basis of his humour or appeal either so it’s not like him having followers for other things means they condone everything he does.
Despite the fact that you may deem him terrible, as a musician he is incredibly talented at piano, guitar, and drums. Go ahead and look up some videos of him using those specific instruments.
You can watch them trainwreck, however you giving them views and advertising earnings ultimately just adds to their level of acceptance. And its been proven that the more people agree with an incorrect statement, the more individuals will go along with it even when they personally disagree. Which is essentially acceptance.
Sorry, no. There’s zero connection between views and acceptance. The view count on any ISIS beheading video will easily attest to this. Watching something doesn’t mean endorsing it, condoning it or agreeing with it. Retweets and links aren’t endorsements either.
I don’t give anyone advertising earnings, I use Adblock.
Uh, you might be confusing the concept of acceptance and support. The first westerner beheading video shocked the world and had world leaders loud in condemnation. Nowadays it is accepted that there are beheadings that occur in parts of the world. Its no longer a shock and only sometimes newsworthy. You see, your personal acceptance is separate to a social acceptance by the wider populace. Remember how americans supporting the nazi party was not only acceptable, but encouraged? Remember how african americans owning their own property was once unacceptable to white americans? The fact that he has so many people watching his videos and not demanding them to be removed demonstrates acceptance of his behaviour as legit.
No point arguing so far OT, but at its simplest, any view raises the video’s profile and results in better search engine results, generating more views and revenue.
@234oufablrha987 I believe I have the meaning right. OED offers the definition “agreement with or belief in an idea or explanation”, or alternatively, “the process or fact of being received as adequate, valid, or suitable”. The word is synonymous with approval.
I stand by my earlier statements. Having followers doesn’t make one’s actions acceptable. Followers are in no way an indication of acceptability, nor are views, mentions, retweets or links. People are more than capable of watching a video, reading an essay, listening to a speech or even sharing these things with others independently of whether they consider its content acceptable.
@zombiejesus
Its clear you are looking at the only interpretation as it pertains to you and your opinion.
Good day.
@234oufablrha987 Considering I was the one who used the word in this conversation thread, I’d say it’s pretty much a given that its meaning would be in the context I used it. That said, I don’t see any definitions of the word that fit your interpretation. Can you reference one? The way you used it in your post doesn’t fit with the typical meaning of the word as I understand it.
@zombiejesus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance
People often feed in these games BECAUSE of the verbal abuse.
So… why not stop and go play something you can actually enjoy on its own merits rather than waste your life playing a game that you seem to hate so much?
This guy sounds like he needs to take a step back, take a few deep breaths and find some perspective.
Because he gets money from his youtube? And he won’t get paid as much for vids of him playing pokemon?
bye felicia
Sounds like the “I never liked it anyway…” argument.
They don’t. You are a toxic player who actively makes the game worse for other players. Nobody appreciates that and if it’s what you “stand for”, then no wonder they don’t support you and the ban makes total sense.
1.8m followers apparently do. That is not a small number.
With how toxic a significant portion of the community is I’d vouch that the number then makes sense. 😉
Can’t really take that sample for quality, though. It’s easy to follow a page, and people may not put as much thought into it as you’d think. I’ve never heard of him but from what I’ve read there’s something to be enjoyed from his videos – a bit surprising after reading about his attitude, but there are a lot of people on this earth, and a fair few of them play or watch league.
All that means is that there are 1.8 other little douchebags who condone this crap.
I watch shows about criminals, doesn’t mean I condone crime?
And yes, a significant portion of the community is toxic. Which makes this ban a little peculiar? Its hard not to argue that the specifics of the game generate these toxic behaviours or attract this toxic community. Riot don’t seem to be focusing on fixing the problem, just the symptom.
That is a crap analogy. Crime shows whether fictional or non fictional do not endorse crime. They tell a story. Supporting some asshat’s wallet and ego on YouTube just fuels the notion that this behaviour is somehow ok.
And people should vote with their attention. Dickheads like this thrive on attention so not giving him any will castrate his power.
And that’s a horribly huge number, true. That still leaves several billion who aren’t douchebags. 🙂
It’s ” I might as well play the bots” not “box” P.S the bots are robots that don’t have emotions this is why he references them not boxes.
Boxes don’t have emotions either. 😛
I find it funny he asks if it’s preschool, while throwing a tantrum and behaving like a preschooler who got caught doing something wrong.
What a twat. It’s as simple as that. No loss on Riot’s part – if anything, they earn brownie points from those of us who grow tired of playing with children with shitty attitudes.
nawe. is he like 12??? jesus christ. gets banned for being a tantrum throwing asshole and then throws a tantrum about it.
What a bell end.
Nah I’m on Dukey’s side here.
To be clear, I’m not a fan, I’ve seen like 3 of his videos, all via Kotaku articles and none of them to do with League.
If the malphite player was just trying and doing poorly and Dunkey put shit on him like this then that would be one thing, but this was very clearly not the case.
The malphite player really was being a complete ass and very, very obviously doing everything he could to sabotage his team. When you act like that in a team based game at a level beyond beginner you deserve to be shit-talked to, the people who are having a bad time and have lost 20+ minutes of their lives to your dickery should be able to spew vulgar shit at you.
What’s worse is the Malphite player getting shit talked to almost certainly doesn’t care and if he does it’s only because he’s laughing his ass off at how mad he made Dunkey. Nobody was being hurt by Dunkey here, a troll was being a dick and got exactly the reaction he was aiming for.
People say this guy’s throwing a tantrum but seriously, League is a stressfull game, it’s very easy to get mad playing it without deliberate provocation, so I don’t blame someone for being mad that they got punished for venting at an obvious troll.
Malphite’s conduct was pretty poor, but I’d argue Dukey stooped even lower by resorting to toxic behaviour. I’m sorry he can’t control himself, but perhaps if video games affect him so, he should consider taking a break once in a while.
They are two separate issues. It’s not up to him to ‘police’ in game behaviour. Especially if his answer is to be an abusive jerk. He’s using it an excuse to validate his infantile and shitty actions. People like him deserve to suffer consequences. You don’t see the game developers calling people who use exploits names. They ban them. And he should be banned for being abusive.
And I’m arguing that no abuse is taking place. Yes he used hurtful language but there is a pretty damn low chance that that the guy those words were directed was in any way hurt by them. Far more likely the opposite in fact and he probably knew that too. That’s not an attempt at policing, that’s venting understandable frustration.
These aren’t infantile actions, they’re human actions. Yes they’re over the top and generally unnecessary but Riot is just going way too far in their “anti-toxic” campaign. It’s not like he spouted racist or homophobic remarks here and calling someone braindead scum with some additional ‘F’ bombs thrown in just isn’t on that level in the slightest.
Many in this situation are seeing Riot as this stern figure looking down on the childlike behavior of one of its players. But to me they just come across as uncaring, unwilling to accept the game they police is naturally anger-inducing and that maybe their stance against shit-talking is too broad sweeping.
You don’t see the gunned down in the street line as over the top?
Is it over the top? yes.
Is it an actual death threat or a racist/homophobic/generally discriminatory epithet actually deserving of a ban? no.
I wouldn’t even label it as ‘toxic’. At least not in the way I understand the word is intended to be used by the league powers that be, considering I always considered toxic behavior to be the kind of thing that diminishes another player’s experience, whereas this is just an angry reaction to actual toxic behavior.
Feeding of this uncaring and unnecessary caliber is done purely to get exactly the reaction Dunkey gave, so who exactly was Dunkey hurting with his words? cause it sure wasn’t the guy playing malphite.
Without watching a replay of the whole game, it’s pretty difficult for anyone to really comment on whether or not Malphite was intentionally feeding…. but that’s totally beside the point.
When you sign up for League you agree to the Terms and Conditions, which state that Riot can pretty much nuke your account for no reason, but reasons do include violating the EULA:
Section V Part E.
So Riot pulled the trigger because he broke the rules that he agreed to.
Getting mad is one thing, taking it out on someone else is another. He showed a lack of self control. It isn’t a mystical ethereal thing out of reach, it’s something we expect everyone to have, pretty much all the time. You might want to punch that guy in the face because he insulted your girlfriend but you don’t, because you have self control. Someone took your parking spot and you might feel the urge to key his car but you won’t, because you have self control. Someone wastes 20 minutes of your time by making your match a nightmare to play? Sure it’s frustrating, but it happens. You ignore it, you quit or you buck up and wait for the match to end so you can join a better one next time. Because you have self control. It’s not that hard.
The difference between those examples and this is obvious intent of the opposing party.
If a guy sets out to insult someone’s girlfriend and keeps doing it, hoping that the other party will snap at them, Guess what? the other party often snaps. We don’t have constant self control, least of all when someone sets out to attack that self control and to pretend like we do, especially while playing a team-based game, is just unreasonable. Especially since at the end of the day, nobody was harmed by Dunkey venting at this guy.
If you think for a second that ass playing malphite was even a little hurt by Dunkey’s words than you are just plain wrong. Dunkey should have gotten a suspension for this, the ban was enforcement purely for the sake of it with no regard to context or suiting the punishment to fit the offense.
As I said in an earlier post, many are seeing Riot as a stern source of unbending law in this case but to me all I see is a profound lack of care.
You can’t control other people, only your own actions. If I snap, I know it’s because my control failed and it’s my problem/fault. I can blame the other person for provoking me but at the end of the day it’s an excuse to try to absolve myself of responsibility. The truth is I could have held my peace but I didn’t, and that’s on me, not them.
Totally deserve it. Even after being banned and know himself as being toxic he can still try to justify it. Might as well just kill someone and say you are not a murderer.
I find it funny that so many people are jumping at the chance to call him a toxic piece of shit and throw rotten fruit at him. He responds to a troll by yelling abuse, which brands him as toxic and enables all of us to do whatever we want to him guilt free. It always seems to happen when League of Legends comes up.
This guy sounds like an absolute tool, but there seems to be a portion of the League of Legends fanbase that’s just itching for an excuse to lynch a player and he had the misfortune of getting their attention. There’s this rage under the surface of it all that spews out the second it can be justified. I can take out all my anger and frustration on this guy right now, alongside a million other equally vocal people, and walk away feeling like I stood up for what’s right.
I can’t speak for others but I’ve been specifically critical of his behaviour, not him personally. It doesn’t really matter to me if he’s internet-famous or a nobody, I hold everyone, myself included, to the same standard. I think it’s a pretty fair, easily met standard, and I look pretty dimly on people who are incapable or unwilling to meet it.
You seem pretty level headed about it and he has certainly said a lot of things that deserve some pretty harsh criticism, but I still feel like a big part of the campaign against toxic behaviour is scapegoating. In a lot of cases it’s encouraging the victims to take out their frustration in a negative way rather than resolving the actual problems.
Well according to riot that person didn’t actually exist and do what was stated. And based on the fact Dunkey only showed one little clip of them tower diving once we can’t be sure. Although he was lvl 1 compared to lvl 4s around him so who knows
This is such a sticky issue to me. I’m a fan or him videos and I suppose that, by extension, I appreciate his attitude. I mean, as someone who can’t stomach MOBAs what I like best about his League vids is the complete lack of care about the game’s “sport” and that he can have fun, play well and just get what he wants out of it. That means then, that he’ll naturally not care one bit about how he acts in the game, or what he says.
On the other hand, nobody can refute that the his words were vitriolic.
However I’ve gotta agree that this literal genre of gaming is self-destructive if you’re referring to toxicity. Both Dunkey’s words and the reactions of his fellow players and the developers who make the game and rules that banned him are all symptoms of this type of game. I mean I hate to rag on an entire variety of video games but I suppose I will. There’s an incredible amount of effort on behalf of players to make these games enjoyable. The baseline is negative: a newbie is both inundated with mechanics and complexity and simultaneously a detriment to their team. Matches take ages but are often decided in minutes. High level play requires either an massive push by a single player who will carry, or a brillant team cohesion. The amount of systems running in this quasi-RTS style are reliant on mechanics spanning twitch, RNG, RPG stat maths, resource management, base-building, single tactics, team tactics and mind games.
There’s no other type of game I’ve played that actually gives as many excuses to be angry. The structure of win/loss in these somehow also taps into the worst level of poor-sportsmanship, where winning is exceptionally grandiose and losing is a black mark. Dunkey’s vids at least show to me that the only way to really have ‘fun’ in MOBAs is to play well/get lucky or troll a lot.
Trash talk can be witty, incisive, clever, and I’m a big supporter of witty, incisive, clever trash talk. That said what Dunkey described is verbal diarrhea, and the problem is it’s virtually impossible to establish a set of rules to punish the latter while retaining the former.
Play Dota… It’s clearly better
You get feeders and trolls in games all the time; the appropriate response is to either to politely tell that person how they might improve and play better for the team, or file a report for their behaviour. Under no circumstances is it ever right for any player to lash out at someone with vile language, even as a retaliation.
But just like what most people have commented above, this guy is seriously acting like an immature kid, not only his response to his ban, but also how he interacts with the community of gamers he plays with. People like him seriously need to grow up and learn to how to help people, not tear them down.
Tell me more, well-adjusted person who played 8 thousand matches of something he doesn’t find fun.