Nickmercs has doubled down and has refused to apologize for his comment.
Nick “Nickmercs” Kolcheff’s Call of Duty skin bundle was removed by Activision Blizzard following controversial transphobic remarks on Twitter. The official Call of Duty Twitter account responded to a CharlieIntel tweet about the skin removal, in which they noted that the company is “focused on celebrating PRIDE with our employees and our community.”
The original tweet by Nickmercs was in response to caster Chris Puckett’s tweet about a recent fight between “Anti-LGBT protestors” and “Pro-LGBT demonstrators” outside of a school board meeting after the anti-LGBT protestors attacked the demonstrators. For context, the school board meeting was to decide whether or not to recognize June as Pride Month. Following the unanimous vote, Pride Month was recognized by the school district.
Nickmercs tweeted, “They should leave little children alone. That’s the real issue.”
There was immediate community backlash to this reply.
Related articles
The Public backlash
The backlash to this comment followed right away. Most significantly, Puckett asked, “Who is this they and what terrible act is everyone afraid of? "I think/hope the goal of most of “them” is to reduce child suicides. This is done through acceptance and removing the stigma of feeling/being different,” Puckett continued.
Many other members of the Call of Duty community, as well as the general esports community, expressed their disappointment in Nickmercs' comments. Additionally, Levi "Loopy" Arnett, a coach for Vexed Gaming tweeted that he would "never work/watch a MFAM event again." The most significant backlash came when Activision Blizzard removed the Nickmercs Call of Duty skin bundle.
Activision Blizzard removes Nickmercs' Call of Duty skin
So far, Nickmercs has staunchly refused to apologize for his comment. He stated, “I’m not apologizing about the tweet because I don’t feel like it’s wrong.” With an audience of 6.7 million followers on Twitch and 2.1 million followers on Twitter, these kinds of comments are especially harmful to the LGBTQ+ community.
So far, it's unclear if this is a permanent decision by Activision Blizzard to remove the Nickmercs Call of Duty skin bundle. Moreover, the streamer skins only debuted recently on May 31, 2023. Nevertheless, Nickmercs has not yet commented on the removal of his bundle yesterday although he has been streaming regularly.
For more gaming and esports news, check back here on esports.gg!
