Marvel Rivals Twitch streamer: I was kicked out of $40K tourney after urging a Widow main to switch
You’re playing a $40,000 Marvel Rivals competition where $18,000 goes to whoever takes first place. You see that your teammate is playing Black Widow, a sniper character notorious for having the worst win rate in the game across all platforms. Do you roll with the punches, or do you ask them to lock in and change heroes?
This is a simplification of what Twitch streamer Kingsman265 says he experienced recently. In an hour-long YouTube video, he detailed a breakdown in teammate synergy during a tournament hosted by a creator named BasimZB. The event was meant to celebrate the new Marvel Rivals hero, Deadpool, via a creator cup consisting of 48 influencers. By its nature, and despite the cash prizes, this tourney wasn’t necessarily meant to be a tryhard esports experience. But for Kingsman265, the Deadpool Creator Cup was a big deal. A win could catapult his career in a way that simply streaming Marvel Rivals on his lonesome couldn’t. The money would also be life-changing for him, as someone who doesn’t have any, he claimed.
Kingsman265 was drafted onto a team with another Twitch streamer named zazzastack, among other influencers. Things started cordially, as one can see in the video where Kingsman265 shows the verbal exchanges between the two creators. During a practice run, Kingsman265 began the match by telling his crew to take things seriously, and to play as if the scrim was the real deal. “I always do that,” zazzastack replied. The group was getting along fine at this point, cracking jokes with one another as they got together in a lobby.
zazzastack did not immediately respond to Polygon’s request for comment, but it’s probable that she was being sincere when she said she was going to give it her all. Here’s the thing: zazzastack is known for being a Black Widow player. Her preference for the character is the first thing she notes under her “about me” on her Twitch profile, and any video you click on her account will likely have a red-haired marksman running about in the bottom left corner. Possibly, zazzastack’s predilection for the unusual hero pick was one of the reasons she was invited to the event in the first place — it would make for an entertaining watch. And to her credit, in the initial match shown during Kingsman265’s YouTube video, zazz gets MVP at the end of the first bout. In the chat, someone on the enemy team even writes “widow mog,” which could be interpreted as acknowledgement of how resoundingly zazzastack outclassed her opponents.
But as things progressed, things started getting shaky between the team. Discussions quickly became about optimal team compositions, especially now that an entirely new character — Deadpool — was going to shake up the meta. The footage shows everyone arguing over whether they should be running a “triple support” team, meaning a team with three healers. Some, like zazzastack, reject it outright.
“This is going to be a hard tourney, then,” Kingsman265 replies. zazzastack replies by saying that she believes other people will be running “off-meta” compositions, so their team should be comfortable doing the same. It is here that someone else distills the crux of this conflict: people on the same team are going in with different mentalities about the best way to approach the tournament. While it’s possible some will play breezily, others will undoubtedly go into an event with thousands of dollars in prize money with a “sweaty” mentality.
Another teammate points out that, ultimately, whatever is optimal for winning doesn’t matter: The people involved are good at specific characters. Wouldn’t it make more sense to make the most of what they have? But even here, there’s friction. Many Marvel Rivals players believe that being a good team player means learning multiple characters. You might have a preference for a specific character, but there will be times when your team would benefit from a different class composition — and if no one is meeting that need, it’s on you to take up the mantle.
Early on, Kingsman265 can be seen asking zazzastack if she’s good with other characters who might be a good answer to popular hero picks. zazzastack answers by saying Black Widow can take those characters on, no problem.
Image: NetEase Entertainment
“You’re going to tilt me, bro,” zazzastack warns as Kingsman265 reiterates how he feels the game should be played. “Chill, chill, chill,” she cautions later on. A mere seven minutes into the hour-long video, zazz reveals that the group has had a discussion about team composition nearly a dozen times already. She was especially taken aback by Kingsman265’s insistence on switching things up when she was performing well during scrims.
Still, the next series of events will likely surprise no one. The more everyone played, the more animosity started to build. The discussions started getting loud and aggressive, often with multiple people talking at once. Notably, however, Kingsman265 kept playing the same character throughout the argument: Magik, the sword-wielding DPS. Magik is a popular pick in the meta, sure. But this does also mean that, as Kingsman265 kept trying to pressure other people to switch heroes, he himself was not switching.
Midway through the video, Kingsman265 loses his temper and stops practicing with his team. He decides to queue up for Ranked in an effort to direct his anger elsewhere. He points out that he’s been ranked in the top 500 in every single role, and has put thousands of hours into the game.
“I need that money, I’m fucking broke,” Kingsman265 says in the video. “I like money, and $3k, or $40k, which has a prize pool for first place of $3k, is a lot of money for me,” he says, likely in reference to how the money would break down once dispersed among a team of six people. “I could really use that to help pay my college. College tuition is very expensive.”
Image: NetEase Games/Marvel Games
Not long after, Kingsman265 says he was informed he was being kicked out of the event by the tournament host. Basim, the coordinator, recently addressed the controversy on his own Twitch stream. In the clip, Basim says that his decision to kick out Kingsman265 wasn’t influenced by anyone in particular.
“This is my decision, based on what I saw, off the clips and the VODs, and what I’ve seen from different perspectives,” Basim says. “When you’re drafted to the team, to the moment you finish the tournament, you are part of this tournament — and you gotta play by the rules … there’s a level of respect that you need to have amongst your teammates, and amongst staff.”
Basim goes on to say that, while he understands where Kingsman265 is coming from and doesn’t fault him for being competitive, ultimately he’s hosting a creator event. “If you really just want pure, pure competitiveness, then you would be a professional player, and you’d play in professional tournaments.”
The decision proved controversial almost immediately, with people in Basim’s own chat pushing back against his reasoning. The verdict has only grown into infamy since the tournament unfolded, and Kingsman265’s predictions proved true. Many of the teams in the event did run triple support compositions. zazzastack’s team finished in seventh place out of eight teams, only winning one out of nine matches. During the proceedings, zazzastack also had a ping of 177 milliseconds — meaning that her gameplay was far laggier than everyone else by orders of magnitude. zazzastack ended up with a negative K/D ratio as well, but captures, not kills, are what win matches in Marvel Rivals. And despite how much she pushed back, zazzastack did switch out of Widow during the actual tournament. Reducing a team’s loss to a single person’s performance also seems misguided given the fractious vibes leading up to the event.
In the stream for the tournament, zazzastack maintains that the matches were close, and that if her team had the chance to practice with the substitute players a little more, they might have stood a chance. She also feels that people judge what happened to Kingsman265 (and why it happened) don’t actually have the full picture.
“If you’re just going off his video, then you’re not fully informed,” she says. Later on, she says that Kingsman265 left out parts of matches where he “shit-talked” his teammates as well. Though Kingsman265’s video is lengthy, it is evident throughout that he has edited the matches down so that only specific exchanges are viewable.
Kingsman265 has also urged his followers and other onlookers to refrain from harassing zazz. Nonetheless, the unfolding of events has exploded within the Marvel Rivals community in part because it is emblematic of many of the issues fans face while playing Ranked, and the toxicity that follows those dynamics. zazz says she is currently getting inundated with “disgusting” comments from angry fans who feel Kingsman265’s ousting was unfair. She claims some people are subbing to her Twitch just to leave hate comments.
“The hate has been overwhelming and unfair.”
