Why Can't Tyler1 Use Chat in Overwatch 2?

Tyler “Tyler1” Steinkamp is one of the most famous streamers in the world. His Twitch following is huge boasting over 5+ million people. He gets a lot of attention from League of Legends fans and other gamers and he has been around for many years.

During this time, Tyler has become known for several things, one of them being his raging episodes accompanied by rants. Arguably, a lot of gamers get angry when they compete, and almost all of us have flamed our teammates at least once. But Tyler1 goes a bit too far from time to time.

Another issue is that he represents, for better or worse, the face of LoL streaming. He has an added level of responsibility to the gaming community. If kids see him raging all the time and getting away with it, they might think that it’s perfectly fine to do the same.

Given Tyler1’s over-the-top persona (or maybe he’s 100% in real life the way he is on his streams), it’s not a big surprise that he got banned a few times. When typical gamers have a bad day and start raging, almost nobody will notice. It happens all the time and there are simply too many incidents of this type.

Companies like Riot Games and Blizzard cannot police their entire communities because they’re made up of tens of millions of people. In Riot’s case, we’re talking about nearly 140 million if we combine League of Legends and Valorant.

Tyler1’s Previous Bans

Tyler1 was banned for the first time in 2016, while he was playing League of Legends. And he was no longer able to compete in LoL because of that. So this was not just a casual 24 hour ban and not even a seven days ban. Furthermore, it wasn’t a ban that involved just his ability to chat inside the game. It was a complete ban.

Because he is a streamer, he wasn’t able to play LoL anymore. Because whenever he would play, his account would simply get banned again. Other people would have been able to circumvent the ban by changing their PC, internet provider, and LoL account. But Tyler1 was banned for good.

To protest against his ban, he even played Dota 2 for a while, raising the game’s popularity tremendously. Ultimately, Riot Games had to admit defeat and lift Tyler1’s ban. His return stream numbers were off-the-charts. Around 380.000 people tuned in to see the rebel’s return to LoL.

Tyler1 was also partially banned in Overwatch. This happened in part because of his LoL ban. Except that in this game, he’s only banned from using chat. He can play and stream, but he cannot talk to people.

Recently, it was revealed that Tyler1’s 10-year Overwatch ban had rolled over into the newest version of the game. His toxicity may get him banned for good, but for now, Blizzard actually decided to lift his ban as a gesture of goodwill. For how long? Until he starts raging again probably. Most of his fans would give him three months at best.

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