It’s not often that a rapper goes to bat for a video game developer after a disgruntled fan base enacts gross harassment, but not all rappers are built like T-Pain.
In a recent Tweet, the autotune wordsmith issued a statement in solidarity with Respawn, the developers behind the popular battle royale-hero shooter, Apex Legends. The developer has been trying to iron out the game’s busted audio, bad matchmaking, and bugs that negatively affect exploration and hit markers in Apex Legends, which somehow led to an uptick in online harassment toward its dev team. T-Pain’s response to that situation was tantamount to telling the arseholes who’ve been harassing the Apex Legends devs to go outside and touch some grass.
Bro y’all have to fucking chill out. It’s a fucking game my dude. Play something else if you hate it so much bro. Walk away from your pc/console if you’ve become so consumed by a game that you feel the need to threaten the ppl that work hard to make it. Chill bro pic.twitter.com/8W8uTlPT1E
— T-Pain (@TPAIN) September 24, 2022
“Bro y’all have to fucking chill out. It’s a fucking game my dude. Play something else if you hate it so much bro,” T-Pain said in the tweet. “Walk away from your pc/console if you’ve become so consumed by a game that you feel the need to threaten the ppl that work hard to make it. Chill bro.”
The screenshotted message in T-Pain’s tweet came from a recent statement from Respawn’s official Twitter account. In it, the game-maker addressed a rise in harassment towards its development team. Respawn told players it welcomes constructive criticism towards the game but has a “zero tolerance policy for threats and the harassment” of its developers and that it will “take appropriate action to ensure the health and safety” of its team.
“We love hearing feedback and will continue to work alongside our community to foster a respectful, collaborative environment, and uphold the competitive integrity of our game,” Respawn said in the Tweet.
Kotaku reached out to T-Pain and Respawn for comment.
The official Twitter account for Bungie, the Destiny 2 developer, replied in solidarity to Respawn’s Tweet, saying “standing against toxicity and harassment takes all of us working together to build healthier communities. We are with you in that effort @respawn.”
Much like Respawn, Bungie has recently been on the receiving end of harassment, most notably from a serial cheater and harasser who Bungie sued for threatening to commit arson to its office in July.
Read More: Apex Legends Casuals Think Pros Are Ruining The Game
This isn’t the first time that the multi-Grammy award-winning rapper has publicly aired out gamers for their shitty takes on social media. In April last year, T-Pain uploaded a TikTok video where he called out some racist Call of Duty players. Warning for headphone users, T-Pain peaks his microphone a bunch while dog walking said racist arseholes.
Harassment aside, T-Pain is no stranger to the inner machinations of the gaming community. In the past, “T(ylenol) Pain(relief)” donned arguably one of the best cosplays ever as Tekken’s Wing Chun expert, Leroy, and most recently dubbed himself as the “Emperor of the Booty Papacy” during a promotional video for Crusader Kings 3.
T-Pain first launched his own Twitch channel back in April of 2021. When T-Pain isn’t listening to samples of viewers’ raps during his Just Chatting streams, he’s playing video games like Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Among Us. Since starting his gaming channel, T-Pain has amassed 868,000 followers on Twitch and nearly 7,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, Nappy Boy Gaming.
Leave a Reply