EDM artist Deadmau5 is quitting the video game streaming platform Twitch after being suspended for using a hateful homophobic slur toward another player while streaming a game of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
Said Deadmau5 (known IRL as Joel Zimmerman) to a “stream sniper”: “Is that some f**king c**ksucking stream sniper f**? He followed it up by telling the player, “Daddy touches you because your mom's a f**king drunk.”
According to Polygon, “Stream sniping is a contentious form of, essentially, cheating in multiplayer games with big livestream audiences. Stream snipers are those who watch a Twitch stream of a game while playing it themselves to get a read on where another player is so that they can go take them down.”
EDM.com adds: ‘In October of last year he made remarks considered transphobicby some, only to call a Slushii song “autistic shit” a matter of days later. He subsequently announced a Twitter hiatus, and his account is now overseen by a member of his team.'
Deadmau5 took to Reddit and left a comment (since deleted but screenshot below) defending himself, writing: “I'm not going to stand for Twitch's double standard when it comes to censoring and suspending me for harmless sh*t…While it was intended to insult a fucking assh*t who was being a f**king assh*t…it wasn't ‘directed at an entire group of people who have a sexual orientation that differs from my own' f**k off with that sh*t.”