Imane “Pokimane” Anys is a professional streamer who is seen regularly streaming on Twitch and has been a part of the VALORANT play-test since the game was in alpha. The 23-year-old Canadian streamer has recently resorted to Twitter to speak up against the sexist remarks she regularly gets while playing VALORANT.
Now toxicity in competitive multiplayer games aren’t rare. If you’re a regular player of any popular title like CSGO or League, chances are you’ve come across some form of toxicity and insults; Riot’s new title wasn’t an exception to this either.
Females have always been the prime victims of insults and vulgar remarks online, especially in video games. Only a few days ago, a League of Legends developer, Riot Greenily was harassed in VALORANT while livestreaming the game. This time it’s Pokimane who raised her voice against such acts.
Pokimane being an insanely popular streamer, has it even worse. She claimed to have gotten tired of sexist remarks like “skank, thot or other rude and vulgar things” even when she doesn’t use her microphone in-game. As a solution to this she demands Riot to implement an “anonymous mode” for the game. Such a mode could potentially be helpful to every big streamer, especially females who would want to play for anonymity.
Initially, Pokimane was advised by one of his fans to turn the voice chat off to prevent her from hearing her teammates’ remarks on her. But Pokimane mentioned how this wasn’t an efficient solution since she’d be “missing out on important call outs/information.” This is true, because in a competitive game like VALORANT callouts are the key to locating your enemies on the map.
A Riot dev had previously assured players that they were looking for “long-term solutions” to this issue.
For now, fans of the franchise can only wait for Riot to come up with a solution to this toxicity problem which is discouraging a big part of the female player base to play the game.
