xQc

Félix Lengyel (French pronunciation: ​[feliks lɑ̃ʒɛl]; born November 12, 1995), better known by his online alias xQcOw or xQc, is a Canadian Twitch streamer, internet personality, and former professional Overwatch player. Lengyel played for the Dallas Fuel in the Overwatch League for part of the inaugural season, before being released due to repeated controversy. He later joined Gladiators Legion, an Overwatch Contenders team affiliated with Overwatch League's Los Angeles Gladiators, as a substitute. Lengyel has also played in the Overwatch World Cup for Team Canada in 2017, 2018 and 2019. He now streams full-time on Twitch.

xQc
Félix Lengyel
Personal information
BornNovember 12, 1995 (1995-11-12) (age 24)
HometownLaval, Quebec, Canada
NationalityCanadian
Career information
StatusInactive
GamesOverwatch
RoleTank
Career history
2016Q?
2016–2017Denial eSports
2017Arc 6
2017–2018Dallas Fuel
2018GOATS
2019Gladiators Legion
Career highlights and awards
Twitch information
Channel
Years active2014–present
Followers3.2 million
Total views172 million
Catchphrase(s)We go agane [sic].
Follower and view counts updated as of August 2020.
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2015–Present
Subscribers899K
Total views362 million
100,000 subscribers 2018
Updated August 2020

Early life

Lengyel was born on November 12, 1995 in Laval, Quebec, Canada, where he was also raised. His parents divorced when he was 1 year old and grew up with his brother Nicolas in shared custody.[1] At a young age, he developed a passion for skateboarding, snowboarding, trampolining and video games. He uploaded his tricks to YouTube.[2]

After completing his secondary school, he went on to study human science in CEGEP before switching to administration. He ended up dropping out after 3.5 years just before graduating.[3] He would then pursue a pro career as a League of Legends player and started streaming his games on Twitch.[4][5] In 2016, Lengyel discovered the game Overwatch and immediately fell in love with it. He then started playing the game competitively.[6]

Career

Overwatch

DatZit Gaming

Lengyel began his career as an Overwatch player as the main tank at DatZit Gaming, a semi-professional eSport organization based in Montreal, Canada. On August 13, 2016, Lengyel and his team won the Dreamhack Montreal 2016 Overwatch tournament.[7][8]

Denial eSports

Lengyel continued his career as a main tank player on the Overwatch team "Q?" which was later picked up by Denial eSports on October 12, 2016.[9]

Arc 6

After Denial eSports disbanded, Lengyel and the other members of the team played together under the name "YIKES!" which was later changed to "Arc 6" after being asked by Blizzard since the logo could not be used and the name was deemed unmarketable.[10][11][12] After qualifying, they played in Season Zero of Overwatch Contenders but were ultimately eliminated in the group stage. On July 9, 2017, Arc 6 participated in their last tournament, the Beat Invitational: Season 2 tournament, beating FNRGFE but losing to Rogue to take third place.[13] Eventually, Arc 6 went their separate ways to focus on tryouts for Season 1 of the Overwatch League. No official statements were released by Arc 6 or Lengyel regarding his departure from the team until it was announced that he would be part of the Dallas Fuel in October.[14]

Dallas Fuel

On October 28, 2017, Overwatch League franchise Dallas Fuel announced Lengyel would be joining their roster as their 9th player.[14] Lengyel played with the team for several matches before coming under fire due to homophobic remarks made on his Twitch stream directed against rival player Austin "Muma" Wilmot of the Houston Outlaws. Lengyel was suspended by the League for four matches and fined $2,000 for violating the Overwatch League Code of Conduct. The Dallas Fuel later extended the suspension to include the entirety of Stage 1. Lengyel made his return at the beginning of Stage 2, leading his team to victory against the Los Angeles Gladiators, and was chosen as Omen by HP's Player Of The Match.[15] Shortly after his return to the Dallas Fuel lineup, Lengyel received a second suspension and fine for multiple social media violations and use of disparaging language towards the Overwatch League casters.[16]

GOATS

Lengyel then said he was going to take a break from professional play, retiring to become a full-time streamer. He continued full-time streaming for several months, before making the decision to return to pro play, playing with the Contenders Trials NA team GOATS.[17]

Gladiators Legion

In February 2019, it was announced that Lengyel joined Gladiators Legion, the academy team of the Los Angeles Gladiators competing in Overwatch Contenders, as a substitute main tank.[18] In late 2019, the team announced that they would discontinue competing in Contenders.[19]

International career
xQc at the Overwatch World Cup

Lengyel also played for Team Canada in their 2017 Overwatch World Cup campaign. They qualified for the World Cup after beating the Netherlands by a score of 3-0. The team made it all the way to the finals of the tournament before being defeated by defending champions, South Korea.[20] Lengyel was named the event's most valuable player.[21]

In the 2018 Overwatch World Cup, Lengyel played as a main tank on the starting roster for Team Canada. Several months prior to the world cup, the head coach of team Canada, Justin "Jayne" Conroy announced on his Twitch stream that Lengyel, along with players Lucas "NotE" Meissner, Brady "Agilities" Girardi, Lane "Surefour" Roberts and Liam "Mangachu" Campbell, would be welcome to join the Canadian national team without going through the regular trialing process.[22][23] He played in the Los Angeles Group Stage, finishing second place to move on to the quarterfinals at BlizzCon.[24]

In July 2019, Team Canada announced that Lengyel would return as the starting main tank for the team at the 2019 Overwatch World Cup.[25] The team did not managed to pass the Group Stage after losing all four of its matches.[26]

Besides Overwatch

Twitch

In the wake of the suspension of the Legion's 2020 Contenders season, Lengyel chose to continue streaming full-time on Twitch. He streams every day for on average 10 hours and has a viewer count that regularly exceeds 30,000.[27] [28] In October 2019, Lengyel was the most watched Twitch streamer and ranked as the 29th most followed.[29] In addition, he is currently the third most subscribed streamer on Twitch with more than 35,000 subscribers.[30] While he still plays Overwatch, his streams are currently more focused on variety. He will often browse new releases on Steam and pick whatever game came out that day or take suggestions from his chat. He also plays games with other streamers like Sodapoppin, HasanAbi, m0xyy, Adeptthebest and Pokelawls. Lengyel also does IRL (In Real Life) streams for events like TwitchCon and BlizzCon, but also on some occasion with friends from his streaming circle like Adeptthebest, Pokelawls, Mizkif and Trainwreckstv.

Outside of his own stream, he is a regular guest on Trainwrecks's Scuffed Podcast.

In March 2020, Lengyel was invited by Riot Games to take part to the Valorant closed beta where viewers could obtain a beta access key by watching his stream. Between April 7 and 15, he streamed more than 112 hours of Valorant, of which includes 3 streams that went for more than 20 hours.[31] He also reached on April 9 his current all time peak in viewers (222,720) and total unique viewers in one stream (1,971,819).[32]

Towards the end of March 2020, Lengyel started playing chess on stream. On April 2, fellow streamer and Grand Master Hikaru Nakamura came on his stream to teach him how to play chess.[33] In the following months, Lengyel would include chess games in most of his streams trying to constantly improve his strategy. Clips from him playing chess started to gain a lot of traction on Reddit, especially on the subreddit r/LivestreamFail and got other streamers to gain interest in the game. This ultimately gave chess a lot of popularity on Twitch. On May 25, Hikaru announced his PogChamps events, where 16 streamers would compete in a chess tournament for a prize fund of $50,000.[34] Lengyel ended up being in the consolation bracket after losing every game in the Group Stage, but came back and won against Fuslie in quarterfinal.[35] He was defeated in the semifinals by Ludwig.[36]

Twitch bans

On July 31, 2019, xQc was banned for 3 days for showing "Safe for Work Nudity" as a joke requested by a viewer. There were multiple frames that weren't covered up and some NSFW content could be seen.[37]

On February 29, 2020, xQc was banned again for showing Nudity in an adult-themed game based on Connect Four. The AI took her clothes off after xQc won a game of Connect Four versus her. The ban was 3 days long.[38]

On June 12, 2020, xQc was banned once again for watching "explicit content" of a video of two gorillas appearing to be doing sexual activities. The ban only lasted 24 hours.[39]

YouTube

Lengyel also has a YouTube channel that he created back on March 8, 2015, where he uploads on a daily basis his stream highlights, reactions and full playthroughs of games he plays on stream.[40] Initially, he gave the task of editing and uploading new videos to the channel to his friend m0xyy, but had to switch to DailyDoseofxQc due to his lack of motivation.[41]

Controversies

Player account suspensions

Prior to major incidents in the Overwatch League, there were known cases of controversial acts. His account was suspended twice for violating Blizzard's Terms of Use. The first incident occurred on November 17, 2017, where Lengyel was booted mid-match from a competitive Overwatch game with a suspension message.[42] He was suspended for 72 hours for "misuse of the reporting system". Lengyel had used the in-game reporting system for reporting players for supposedly invalid reasons. He had reported a player for refusing to switch off of a hero, even after repeatedly dying.[43]

While streaming in December 2017, Lengyel threw a competitive game. Blizzard responded with a seven-day suspension, and Lengyel posted a video to publicly apologize for his behavior.[44][45]

On August 11, 2018, Lengyel's account was suspended once again for violating the Abusive Chat policy. He had apparently been reported by teammates several times for this offense. Overwatch World Cup issued an official warning for the suspension, but he was allowed to play.[46]

Overwatch League suspensions

Over the course of his time with the Dallas Fuel, Lengyel was suspended twice. His first suspension came after Dallas Fuel's loss to the Houston Outlaws in Stage 1. Lengyel made homophobic remarks towards openly gay Houston Outlaws player Austin "Muma" Wilmot after Wilmot used Lengyel's own catch phrase against him after the match (Lengyel did not play in that match). The Overwatch League then fined Lengyel $2,000 and suspended him for 4 matches. Dallas Fuel later extended that suspension to the remainder of Stage 1.[15]

Lengyel returned from his suspension in Stage 2 only to be fined and suspended again for using the Twitch emoticon TriHard in a "racially disparaging manner" in Twitch chat as African-American broadcaster Malik Forté appeared on stream and using disparaging language against Overwatch League casters and fellow players on social media and on his personal stream.[47] This time, Lengyel received a $4,000 fine and was suspended for four matches. On March 11, 2018, Dallas Fuel announced that the team and Lengyel had mutually parted ways.[48] In an interview, Lengyel said that although he likes to play at a professional level, he also enjoys creating content on Twitch. If he receives an offer to play in a professional team again, he said he would have to think about it for a while before making a decision.[49]

Awards and nominations
Year Ceremony Category Result Ref.
2018 2018 Esports Awards Streamer of the Year Nominated [50]
2020 Canadian Game Awards Streamer Nominated* [51]

*The ceremony was originally scheduled to take place on April 9, 2020, but has been postponed since March 25, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Winners of each categories have yet to be announced.[52]

References
  1. "Who is xQcOW?". YouTube. November 2, 2019. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  2. "xQc Reacts to 'Who is xQcOW?' by Mintino Gaming". YouTube. November 4, 2019. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  3. "Twitch Clip - CÉGEP". Twitch. June 2, 2020. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  4. "Twitch Clip - XQC on Dealing with Adversity". Twitch. June 2, 2020. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  5. "xQc Reacts to 'Who is xQcOW?' by Mintino Gaming". YouTube. November 4, 2019. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  6. "xQc Reacts to 'Who is xQcOW?' by Mintino Gaming". YouTube. November 4, 2019. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  7. "DreamHack Canada on Twitter". Twitter. August 14, 2016. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  8. "DatZit Gaming - About page". DatZit Gaming. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  9. "Denial.Overwatch Revealed". Denial eSports. October 12, 2016. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  10. "xQc on Twitter". Twitter. May 2, 2017. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  11. "Arc6OW on Twitter". Twitter. June 25, 2017. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  12. "xQc Reacts to 'Who is xQcOW?' by Mintino Gaming". YouTube. November 4, 2019. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  13. "Overwatch BEAT Invitational Season 2". over.gg. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  14. "Dallas Fuel on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved July 4, 2018.
  15. "Dallas Fuel on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved July 5, 2018.
  16. Wolf, Jacob (March 11, 2018). "xQc released from Dallas Fuel after receiving second Overwatch League suspension". ESPN. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  17. O'Brien, Joe (June 7, 2018). "Controversial Overwatch Streamer xQc is Returning to Competition". Dexerto. Archived from the original on July 5, 2018. Retrieved July 5, 2018.
  18. Abbas, Malcolm (February 12, 2019). "Popular Twitch streamer xQc joins Gladiators Legion as a substitute main-tank". Dot Esports. Retrieved February 13, 2019.
  19. Peres, Pedro (December 5, 2019). "XQc discovers he was dropped from Gladiators Legion on stream". Dot Esports. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  20. Van Allen, Eric (March 11, 2018). "Overwatch World Cup Comes Down To A Fight Over Meters". ESPN. Retrieved March 17, 2018.
  21. Wolf, Jacob (January 19, 2018). "Dallas Fuel suspend xQc for anti-gay slurs; Overwatch League fines player". ESPN. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  22. "Team Canada Coach Jayne announces xQc, NotE and more to join team roster". Overwatch Wire. June 3, 2018. Retrieved October 30, 2018.
  23. Brathwaite, Brandon (June 2, 2018). "XQc, NotE, Mangachu, Agilities, and Surefour Will Be Invited to Play for Overwatch Team Canada". DBLTAP. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  24. "Canada announce final starting roster for 2018 Overwatch World Cup". Overwatch Wire. July 10, 2018. Retrieved August 15, 2018.
  25. Gwilliam, Michael (July 29, 2019). "xQc makes Team Canada's final roster for Overwatch World Cup 2019". Dexerto. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  26. "2019 Overwatch World Cup - Group Stage Results". Overwatch League. November 2, 2019. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  27. "xQcOW Statistics". Twitch Tracker. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  28. "xQcOW Twitch Statistics". Twitch Tracker. July 16, 2020.
  29. Hore, Jamie (December 4, 2019). "XQc was the most watched streamer on Twitch last month". The Loadout. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  30. Glaze, Virginia (October 11, 2019). "xQc tops list of Twitch's most subscribed streamers". Dextero. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  31. "LIST OF STREAMS WHEN XQCOW PLAYED VALORANT". TwitchTracker. July 13, 2020. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  32. "STREAM ON APR 08, 2020 : 🔴VALORANT BETA DROPS HERE 🔴 BEST CHANCE TO GET IT XD". TwitchTracker. April 9, 2020. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  33. "Super Chess Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura Teaches xQc How to Play Chess". YouTube. April 3, 2020. Retrieved July 14, 2020.
  34. "Today: PogChamps Semifinals and Finals". Chess.com. June 19, 2020. Retrieved July 14, 2020.
  35. "xQc Through To Semis After Knocking Out Fuslie". Chess.com. June 18, 2020. Retrieved July 14, 2020.
  36. "VoyBoy, MoistCr1tikal Win Chess.com PogChamps Finals". Chess.com. June 23, 2020. Retrieved July 14, 2020.
  37. https://cogconnected.com/2019/07/twitch-streamer-banned-72-hours-watching-porn/
  38. https://dotesports.com/streaming/news/xqc-banned-on-twitch-again
  39. https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/xqc-banned-twitch-third-time-showing-explicit-content-1378331
  40. "xQcOW - About Section". YouTube. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  41. "xQc Reacts to 'Who is xQcOW?' by Mintino Gaming". YouTube. November 4, 2019. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  42. "xQc on Twitter". Twitter. November 17, 2017. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  43. Van Allen, Eric (November 18, 2017). "Overwatch Pro's Mid-Match Suspension Raises Questions About Blizzard's Reporting System". Compete. Retrieved July 5, 2018.
  44. "Suspended: My apology". YouTube. December 19, 2017. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  45. Carpenter, Nicole (December 18, 2017). "Dallas Fuel player xQc receives 7-day Overwatch suspension". Dot Esports. Retrieved July 5, 2018.
  46. Steiner, Dustin (August 21, 2018). "xQc Given Official Overwatch World Cup Warning After In-Game Ban - Unikrn News". Unikrn News. Retrieved August 25, 2018.
  47. Carpenter, Nicole (March 9, 2018). "Dallas Fuel player xQc suspended again from the Overwatch League, others fined". dotesports.com. Retrieved March 17, 2018.
  48. Wolf, Jacob (March 11, 2018). "xQc released from Dallas Fuel after receiving second Overwatch League suspension". ESPN. Retrieved March 17, 2018.
  49. Selk, Avi (March 14, 2018). "'I blame myself': A fallen e-sports star reflects on video gaming's image problems". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. Retrieved July 10, 2018.
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  51. "Streamer Nominee - xQc". Canadian Game Awards. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  52. "The Canadian Game Awards 2020 Indefinitely Postponed". Northern Arena. March 25, 2020. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
Awards and achievements
Preceded by
Gong "Miro" Jin-hyuk		 Overwatch World Cup MVP
2017		 Succeeded by
Bang "JJonak" Sung-hyeon
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