Blizzard pledges to work with Twitch on fighting harassment in Esports scene

A shameful act was witnessed by thousands at DreamHack Austin’s Hearthstone tournament where Terrence Miller, the runner-up who lost the finals to Keaton “Chakki” Gill received racist and hateful comments during the livestream on Twitch. This wasn’t the first time, but it certainly was the last straw to stop similar situations from happening again.

“We’re extremely disappointed by the hateful, offensive language used by some of the online viewers during the DreamHack Austin event the weekend before last.” Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said in a statement. “One of our company values is ‘Play Nice; Play Fair’; we feel there’s no place for racism, sexism, harassment, or other discriminatory behavior, in or outside of the gaming community.”

According to Mike Morhaime, Blizzard has reached out to players, streamers and community members as well as Twitch and DreamHack to investigate new ways of combating harassment. Twitch is currently working on ways to “streamline moderation and combat ban evasion”, and Blizzard will be updating its tournament rules to prevent toxicity in upcoming events.