A few days after the blow-up involving a Twitch streamer who was kicked from a Marvel Rivals tournament, Basim, the organizer who set the events into motion, has publicly acknowledged that he made a bad disciplinary call. On a recent broadcast, Basim told viewers who were upset with the ban that they were totally “justified” in feeling that no one should get banned for respectfully asking a teammate to switch off a bad hero pick.
To quickly recap: Last weekend, Basim hosted a $40,000 Marvel Rivals tournament where dozens of Twitch streamers came together to show off the game’s newest hero, Deadpool. One of the event’s former participants, Kingsman265, made a video about the occasion where he claimed that he had been removed from the event after urging a teammate, zazzastack, to play a character other than Black Widow. Widow is a hero notorious for having the worst win rate in the game — but zazzastack is known for playing that specific character. As the group practiced playing together, Kingsman265 argued that enemy teams will likely have specific characters on their roster, so his group should prepare proper counter picks. His teammates, however, refused to switch up their play style.
The group bickered enough that word of the discord reached Basim, and he banned Kingsman265 from the tournament. At the time, Basim defended the call by claiming he had seen footage of the group’s exchanges. Ultimately, he argued, his event wasn’t meant to be a hyper-competitive one — and if anyone felt otherwise, they should be participating in esports matches instead. Kingsman265, however, took umbrage: Participating in the event could mean winning thousands of dollars, which he wanted to use to pay for his college tuition. News of the ban exploded in the community once the actual event ended, and zazzastack finished with a negative kill/death ratio after losing nearly all of her matches.
Fast-forward a couple of days later, Basim is now changing up his tune.
“They’re absolutely right, 100 percent, no question about it,” Basim said during a Twitch broadcast, in reference to critics who felt he made the wrong call for Kingsman. “There’s no beating around the bush. I don’t know why it’s difficult to admit when you’re wrong and when you fucked up. I made a decision based off of haste and based off misinformation.”
Though footage of the exchanges between teammates saw everyone getting heated during arguments, Kingsman265 claimed that his teammates were being toxic and dismissive toward him. At least one teammate said that she bullied Kingsman265, an admission that makes Kingsman265’s on-stream reactions seem measured by comparison. Nonetheless, Kingsman265 has continued telling his viewers to refrain from harassing the people at the center of the controversy, especially after some of them have reportedly received death threats.
Getting kicked out of the tournament may have been the best possible outcome for Kingsman265, however. His video exposing the ban has racked up 1.5 million views, and videos from influencers have also been watched millions of times. Kingsman265’s Twitch stream has exploded as well. In December 2025, Twitch stats show Kingsman265 was averaging just under 200 concurrent viewers per stream. Now, however, Kingsman265 is pulling thousands of viewers per broadcast, recently reaching a high of 15,000 concurrents. Getting over 10,000 live viewers has thus catapulted Kingsman265 into the top 0.03% of Twitch streamers. It seems unlikely that Kingsman265 would have reached anywhere near that number had he simply participated in the Marvel Rivals tournament, where there was no guarantee his group would have done well enough to win money at all.
Kingsman265 has also recouped the $3,000 he lost from being pulled off the tournament just from one generous benefactor — never mind what he’s now getting from new subscribers and donations. As noted by Kotaku, the wronged Marvel Rivals player has started telling his viewers to stop sending him money altogether.
Word of the drama has apparently reached NetEase, the developer of Marvel Rivals. In a recent broadcast, Kingsman265 says that he was sent credits by NetEase to buy skins for his main character, Magik.
“No fucking way, there’s no way that’s real,” Kingsman265 said in disbelief. Despite all the attention, however, Kingsman265 says he is sticking to his original plan and finishing his college degree.
