The Rust Twitch Rivals event was intended to be a lighthearted battle between 40 North American streamers and 40 streamers from Spain and Latin America, but the activity quickly turned sour after multiple of the largest Spanish-speaking streamers decided to quit the 48-hour event early. This left many of the NA streamers feeling like their time had been wasted.
One of these streamers was popular FPS player Mendo, who didn’t mince words when calling out the Spanish streamers for their behavior: “It is spineless, it is childish, and I cannot believe that actually happened with a set of streamers that are grown adults when they call us 14-year-olds,” Mendo said.
The streamer explained the racism and offenses he and his fellow NA streamers had to endure from viewers of some of the top Spanish streamers that came into their Twitch chats.
Even Twitch veteran Shroud shared his thoughts on the drama. He believes the Spanish streamers that quit the Twitch Rivals tournament will not be invited to any events hosted by the Amazon-owned platform in the future, and that it’s “a really bad look for all those involved.”
XQc also criticized the streamers’ decision to withdraw from the competition ahead of its planned end, saying the other teams could take advantage of the time differences and raid opposing bases while the NA streamers slept.
As the streamer who first approached Twitch about the event and helped get the idea off the ground, DisguisedToast also addressed the controversy. However, he seemed predominantly disappointed. The 30-year-old explained that streamers are “blessed” to be in the positions that they are in and that he wished viewers got the chance to witness the planned climactic final battle of the Rust event.
Despite the conclusion to DisguisedToast’s Rust tournament, the streamer hopes to create more Twitch Rivals events in the future.
