Overwatch pro turned Twitch streamer, Felix ‘xQc‘ Lengyel was accused of not paying creators for their emotes but has now explained his side of the story.
Not paying your artists for emotes can quickly lead to controversy, as xQc found out after a fan posted a clip to Livestream Fails alleging the streamer wasn’t paying his artists for emotes.
The title of the thread reads ‘xQc added new Twitch emotes without paying creators after promising to do so on stream‘ and says xQc promised to pay his artist after uploading emotes.
Did xQc refuse to pay an artist?
In the initial thread, many fans came to the defense of xQc by saying the clip shown was taken out of context and the artist who created xqcJoy, one of xQc’s emotes, responded saying he never expected to be paid in the first place.
“It already made my day that he added it but won’t say no to free money,” Reddit user mrmarvmarvv wrote. A user responded and said he earned the money, which is something the creator said he never thought of that way.
A viewer tipped off xQc about the LSF post and he had a response to it by saying the emote he uploaded was sitting in his subreddit from months ago and wasn’t part of a contest.
“The emotes that are on the thread are already posted from a while back,” he explained. “It was intended for us to use them in the first place.”
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He argues the original post was just created to fit a narrative and blast xQc, despite not knowing the complete context.
In the end, it seems like a no harm no foul type situation but xQc does raise a fair point about how easy it is to take information out of context based on a Twitch clip.
This incident seems to clear xQc of any wrongdoing but for those just seeing the initial clip, it’s easy to see how someone would think otherwise.
xQc removed the emote
In light of the controversy, xQc has taken down the emote.
While his fans and himself maintain it was a misunderstanding, in an effort to avoid further issues, the decision to remove it has been made.