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Facebook said on June 22 it suspended streamer Michael “Thinnd” McMahon while it investigates abuse allegations from an ex-partner. We believe in love, integrity, and pushing people in a positive way to reach their goals. asks Chip. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring stories in RPGs so he can make up his own. In the past month, dozens of women -- often, former girlfriends or fellow streamers -- have accused more than 150 people of everything from rape to groping underage girls to cheating. "Just stream with a delay!" PC Gamer is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. He currently isn’t allowed to upload any new content while Facebook is conducting the investigation. Is being a badass streamer, not a cheating scrub dude, Those guys were not cheating, but we run into three cheaters today. New York, Future US, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, Grand Theft Auto 5. THINND has also responded to the allegations on Facebook, which he posted 15 hours ago, writing, “A statement from a past relationship has come up and called to question my character as a person you look up to. Thank you. Season 5 Warzone LIVE | THINND Official S5 Tips, Tricks, Techniques, Tactics, Teamwork Stream! A classic "you won't believe this shit … Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. Things such as UI elements, server messages, and player names.". "I could tell the time of day on the server by the position of the sun," says Ray. The same guy queuing against me like every day or every second day. Sometimes it's something obvious a player does that gives away that he is sniping, other times it is a pattern of behavior across games from an individual. Players must have played at least 1 match of Warzone since Feb 10 to appear on our leaderboards. But out of nowhere, things flipped, the moment I would show some kind of emotion I was labeled as weak, an attention whore, crazy, a bitch.”, She continued, “After he would lash out at me, he would go ahead and ask me if I was done being upset and proceed to have sex with me, as if it was a solution for what I was going through. The partner in question has been suspended while we investigate. "As streamers, we've played games both on and off-stream for thousands of hours," Reynad says. Popular streamers not only draw snipers, but can find themselves hounded by the same stream-snipers again and again. I always recommended help, professionally as I did not want anything else to happen.”, He continued, “Furthermore, when I would ask the accuser to leave I was met with resistance and self harm in retaliation. ", Typically, Ray says he didn't just hunt the streamers down to kill them, but to interact with them. Part of the fun of playing with streamers, as KBubblez said, is finding out how good they really are. Banning players proven to be snipers might eventually dissuade some from the practice, but banning without concrete proof isn't fair, and that proof is nearly impossible to come by. It seems to me like unless it's directly [affecting] the way you yourself play, like scripts in League or aimbots in CS:GO, it should be completely fine to use. It is incredibly frustrating, and demoralizing as a streamer. yeah. That's a portion of Bluehole's statement on why they banned a player from PUBG after detecting them trying to join the lobby of a streamer. An example needs to be made. His boldness has certainly worked out for him, as he now has a sizeable following on Facebook. Some of the accused streamers have posted lengthy apologies. Finally, Facebook streamer THINND was accused of domestic abuse by his ex-partner Luxeum. "I was an avid player of DayZ, and after about 3000-4000 hours of gameplay, I had been to every city, every corner of the map, found every item, and been in hundreds upon hundreds of shootouts." THINND | Season 6 Warzone LIVE stream. More often than not you encounter your average young kid, looking to ruin someone's fun or get their five seconds of fame. Current streamer and former stream-sniper KBubblez contacted me to say she used to target a particular well-known streamer "everytime he played H1Z1". THINND's page, which has almost 940,000 followers, is essentially a space where Michael streamed the video games he played while followers watched and engaged. ", Ray feels differently, provided developers can find proof of sniping. He used the force of his body to break in - I was in shock. A statement from a past relationship has come up and called to question my... Online streaming merch company Streamer Loot has ended their partnership with THINND "effective immediately," tweeting, "We take proud in our community at StreamerLoot. For that I am sorry.”. This is to prevent cheaters from staying our leaderboards forever. "Watch a streamer queue up a game of agar.io and see how the server changes to nothing but Twitch emote characters hunting him," Reynad says. ", Mike "StaX" Baxter, chief creative officer of SetToDestroyX, says "Permanent bans from chat would be an alright punishment, but nothing can really combat it. If I was to offer my hand to my opponent in poker they would opt to see it every time. Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors. I asked the accuser multiple times to leave because they were fired from their full-time job, and their continual refusal to apply for full time work placed an undue financial burden upon me. I can personally think of a non-nefarious reason someone might want to locate a streamer's server: to simply play with them. In Kripp's case, the lengths players are willing to go in order to stream-snipe him are extreme, to the degree that a 'sniper guild' had actually formed (which Kripp then, somewhat amusingly, infiltrated). Cheat: Nick Breckon's troll clone nightmare. cw// domestic abuse, self-harm, depression, narcissismRead: https://t.co/YYXWGKg0JT, Theresa wrote that moving in with Michael was initially good for her. American-Taiwanese streamer Thinnd claims to have started his streaming career as a dare, buying an Xbox and later taking out a loan for a gaming PC. Pro players like Shroud and THINND have both seen their fair share of hackers in PUBG and Warzone, respectively. Please refresh the page and try again. Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB review Zotac Twin Edge, Secretlab Titan SoftWeave gaming chair review. She wasn’t living in a healthy environment with her family, and when Michael offered her his place to live, she gladly accepted. One former sniper, now a streamer that I'll call 'Ray' for the purposes of anonymity, said he started sniping simply because he was bored. He has been stood down by Facebook Gaming pending an investigation, and several of his sponsors have already abandoned him. Players must have played at least 1 match of Warzone since Feb 11 to appear on our leaderboards. Official Cold War Warzone Tips, Tricks, Techniques, Tactics, Teamwork Stream! Facebook immediately suspends Thinnd for being a piece of shit male in the gaming industry. If you're gonna broadcast yourself online and have a following, you have to understand that there are going to be trolls. If I was to offer my hand to my opponent in poker they would opt to see it every time. "However unfortunately, that always ends up being the exception and not the rule. Other quotes are taken from emails and Twitter DMs, including from a number of snipers, current and former—many who now stream games themselves. I could tell the time of day on the server by the position of the sun. There was a problem. ", Brian Hicks notes that punishment of stream-snipers just isn't viable without developers having proof and not just suspicion. He continued, “Here is my side: Consistent with the accuser’s statement, there was absolutely no physical abuse. I never did this, and I like to think that if I had, I would have turned off the stream once I'd joined the server they were on. And the next thing I hear is him screaming, ‘why the f**k is the door locked, get out.’ Before I knew it the shower curtains were being ripped from their hooks.”, Theresa detailed other times when Michael would threaten to kick her out because her voice “peaked through his stream.” Facebook Gaming immediately responded on Twitter, saying, “We're sorry to hear that this happened to you. That's the trade off you get for being a streamer. It's a conundrum: proving someone is stream-sniping is difficult—perhaps impossible—and banning players from a game without proof they have violated the rules is, in my opinion at least, a highly questionable and unfair policy. It terrified me that she would go too far. I got you. In other games, there are far more obvious signs. I mainly assumed stream-sniping happened for attention or laughs, or out of some personal dislike for particular streamers, but the snipers I talked to gave me a number of different reasons. "Things like heatmaps help, but in the end—on a larger scale it's really down to user reporting. Something that is not in line with the game experience off-stream.". Meanwhile, streamers who are vocal about stream-sniping are often criticized for complaining or being paranoid. He was down. Just absolutely ridiculous.". “I heard loud banging at the bathroom door, as I turned toward the door it was literally slammed open. | #1 Ranked 2019 THINND | Call of Duty Warzone Battle Royale. Some games, like Hearthstone, don't have set rules about stream-sniping, so it's debatable whether stream-sniping can even be considered cheating in … Stream-sniping—the practice of playing a game against a streamer while watching their broadcast to gain an advantage—is nothing new for those who play games on Twitch or other streaming services for large audiences. Others deny any wrongdoing. "For a whale streamer, someone at literally 10K concurrents or higher, in a hundred-person game [of PUBG] at least 10 people [in the match] will be watching on stream, ballpark," Reynad says in his video. Thank you for signing up to PC Gamer. Let me be perfectly clear; no physical abuse. Holy shit Yo Chris is halfway to Pineapple club already. That's where he went. ", "You take the trade of making 100 thousand dollars a year to someone seeing your cards in your hand," Chips says, in this case directly referring to Reynad's video (above) about stream-sniping. I heard back from Brian Hicks, creative director of DayZ (and avid streamer himself), Hearthstone pro Andrey "Reynad" Yanuk (who also plays PUBG, which has recently seen the rise of a new form of griefing—'stream-honking'), and Hearthstone streamer Octavian "Kripparrian" Morosan (Kripp) who recently discovered a sniper 'guild' had formed against him. Thank you for bringing this to our attention; we take this very seriously. "To the best of my knowledge," says Hicks," the only gains we have made in combating stream sniping have been in aiding content creators in removing identifying information on screen. That's why I was like grabbing all my stuff and I was trying to stack plates. Developers, too, have attempted to find ways to detect streamers beyond just letting players report them. We asked developers, streamers, and the snipers themselves about the issue of stream-sniping. COD Warzone Stats tracker reveals all of the possible stat metrics for Call of Duty Warzone players. is a common suggestion, but as we'll see below, that's not really a viable solution for streamers whose livelihoods depend on engaging in real-time with their audiences—and often doesn't even prevent stream-sniping anyway. "I would put on different accents and screw with them by picking nonsensical arguments or introducing myself as an annoyingly persistent hat salesman, or whatever other routine I had settled on for the day.". Especially in competitive games where people are playing for rank, and also especially in repeat cases where one person is stalking and ruining games for a specific streamer. "After that much time playing, any streamer of any game will tell you the difference between playing on and off stream. Most importantly, Theresa seems to be in a safe space, but has refrained from streaming, telling her Twitter fans, “I’m not streaming this whole week. "I have been experiencing, in the last few months, even with my efforts, playing against the same players every night in some cases. THINND's page, which has almost 940,000 followers, is essentially a space where Michael streamed the video games he played while followers watched and engaged. You will receive a verification email shortly. The only one taking acting against these fucking idiots. This attention to detail allowed me to find them in minutes every time, no matter how much effort they put into hiding it. He now advertises his YouTube channel on Twitter, instead. "DayZ hands down has suffered from stream sniping as an issue all the way back to the earliest builds of the mod," says Brian Hicks, who says he's been dealing with it as a developer since 2012. To the Thinnd Community: Kripp mailed me a link to his video, and his quotes in this article are taken from that. For instance, in Hearthstone, when the opposing player holds back a card that would be heavily punished by a card in the streamer's hand. Now the delay is fairly short, rarely do I have it over ten seconds, but if I have a five second delay one day and then the next day I have a twenty second delay, then you're just not going to be able to queue against me because you don't know when I'm queuing. "That's the trade off you get for being a streamer. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. The video above is fascinating and well-worth watching to understand how these Hearthstone snipers work and why Kripp playing with a delay didn't stop them. (2019) Ranks: #1 global Modern Warfare 2019 (wins) Apex Predator S1-S2 PUBG Lone Survivor S4. Another sniper claims he stream-sniped one streamer so often the streamer gave up playing games on Twitch entirely. "It's a game. ...any streamer of any game will tell you the difference between playing on and off stream. The people who defend this behavior truly puzzle me; it's not very different from going into someone's workplace and stalking them for hours on end. Visit our corporate site. Players can be compared by our rating and the best Warzone players in … I remember throughout almost a full month, like a quarter of my losses were to the same person. When dealing with user reports, you also run into the obvious methods of abuse and larger content creators having the audience (fully outside their control) that can tip the scale and make things clearly unfair. "While we understand we cannot prove that this player was watching the target stream's broadcast, we see no other reason why they would consistently attempt to be in the same lobby as someone who is broadcasting live other than to have an advantage in the game." True proof of stream-sniping may be impossible to obtain, but bans simply shouldn't happen without it. It's been getting a bit more attention recently due to some controversy in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds: a player was recently banned by Bluehole for stream-sniping in PUBG, despite the developer stating they didn't have real proof of the offense, just suspicion. ", Stream-sniper Chip doesn't feel that his sniping in Hearthstone is cheating in the first place, because Hearthstone doesn't have a specific rule against it. COD: Ranked #1 in the world for wins! THINND | Cold War Warzone S1 LIVE stream. I used to watch several DayZ streamers religiously and often considered trying to join the server they were on. Using that program to directly affect how you play each game and giving yourself a huge advantage," he says. The partner in question has been suspended while we investigate.”. Thank you for bringing this to our attention; we take this very seriously. ", Even with those measures, Kripp has found the problem persists. Michael “THINND” McMahon, who has a streaming partnership with Facebook on Facebook Gaming, has been suspended due to abuse allegations coming from Michaels’ ex-partner. Hands down.". Well, yeah. In some cases the quotes have been lightly edited or rearranged for clarity. "In front of the other viewers who are watching and see the sniping happening with no consequence will just cause more of a problem. Details can be found at the following link: Facebook Gaming suspends THINND after ex-partner alleges he abused her | Dexerto.com What an amazing swift move by the best gaming platform. It is an incredibly frequent issue." … For the stream sniper this is a heart-pounding moment of excitement, watching on one monitor as they sneak closer and closer to the content creator—enabling themselves to have a direct impact on the stream, and feel powerful. We will always choose to stand with the women in our community.". "Broadcast messages, fire off gunshots, or use VOIP to receive instant feedback on the stream that they are in fact on target. "Why is [it] up to me to say, well, I better not take this free advantage being offered to me?" I even had an Excel spreadsheet with a list of the top 40 streamers for the game and which servers they frequented. We're sorry to hear that this happened to you. @thinnd on all socials "You have to keep in mind a few things," says Kripp about Hearthstone snipers. We’ve ended our partnership with Thinnd effective immediately. "They play [Hearthstone] Arena all day until they get really good decks, and they wait until I get a deck that's weak to it, so if they get like a really good tempo Rogue, well, they'll wait until I play Priest that doesn't have much early game," Kripp says in his video. Meanwhile, Doug (also of SetToDestroyX) thinks progressive bans are the way to go, with more harsh bans if the sniper doesn't get the message. Streamers, while making a living and entertaining their followers, are also voluntarily handing an opportunity to their opponents. "I don't think stream snipers should have any punishment," says KBubblez. "Some games do have rules on third party programs, for example, League of Legends has a rule about no scripting. But [I sniped] mostly for the reactions, it's very funny." Lux, you don’t know me but I’m so proud of you. One Hearthstone sniper—I'll refer to him here as Chip—says that for him, stream-sniping is about one thing and one thing only: winning. StDxDougisRaw, pro H1Z1 player for team SetToDestroyX, says, "For me, streaming sniping doesn't happen on a regular [basis] so I'd go on a limb here and say half the time.". "That rule seems completely reasonable. Just understand that this shit is heavy guys.”. This was done six times, with varying levels of secrecy to hide the scars so I wouldn’t notice, but the accuser did it once when she was in the shower with a shaving razor, hence the story.”. ", For many, though, stream-sniping is just another path to entertainment and fun. Developers can make changes to a game and invent tools to try to detect it, and streamers can hide server details, change their usernames, and even play with delays, but none of these measures seem particularly effective against the dedicated and resourceful stream-snipers (past and present) we've heard from. "And then on top of that they'll know my hand, they'll know my deck, they'll know all my answers, and I'm expected to actually do well against these people.". Michael McMahon has been accused of domestic assault by his live-in partner, “Luxeum”/Theresa who, on June 23, said that THINND (Michael) would, according to Dexerto, “lash out at her, before turning on his stream and acting in a completely different manner in an attempt to ‘save face.’” Theresa bravely took to Twitter to share her whole story, linking out to a longer post to tell the full story. ", "You can't really quantify how 'big' of an issue it is," Hearthstone streamer Reynad told me via Twitter. She wrote, “Michael helped me through a lot of my breakdowns at first. And it happens like a hundred times more than you'd expect.". Is it annoying—yes. The lengths snipers will go to to locate their targets is pretty staggering and, in some cases, quite impressive. "I changed my username on Battle.net several times, even throughout [a long period of being stream-sniped], and I do often, not always, but almost every day I stream with a delay. In the next breath, however, she admits "Sniping in general can also be annoying though, it gets on your nerves when people are always coming after you, it makes it not fun and it's definitely not fair.". "I had every common server bookmarked, I could rapidly spot fake Steam profiles, and could look at their bio pages on Twitch to see what part of the world they lived in and know which regions their servers would be on. As long as you press 'Start Streaming' people will find a way into your channel." Not every sniper is out for laughs or fun. ", In other games, streamers don't just use detective work but patience, setting up an ambush and lying in wait. Another sniper claims he stream-sniped one streamer so often the streamer gave up playing games on Twitch entirely. "Personally, I've always wanted to be able to find a position where we can punish folks abusing the advantage of live streamed content (what I like to equate to the type of people who would screen peek during coop games in the 16-bit and later eras) however I have yet to find a position we can do this from, while retaining the moral high ground. "If the developers have the tools to detect stream sniping and can enforce it, then it's healthy for the game to prevent that kind of cheating. ", Reynad, frustrated as he might be about the issue, says: "I don't advocate banning players in these scenarios, because even as streamers we cannot be 100% sure it is happening.".