TFT gameplay director Mortdog is stepping away from social media and streams after being the target of player animosity.
Stephen "Mortdog" Mortimer, gameplay director for Teamfight Tactics, announced that he will no longer stream and post on social media. He has consistently talked about TFT on his streams and communicated about it on X, but this made him the target of animosity from players.
Mortdog steps away from posting, streams, and Patch Rundowns
At the end of his April 28, 2025 stream discussing TFT Cyber City, Mortdog announced the sad news.
The last few weeks, months, have been really rough in the spotlight as the target for a lot of the frustrations around TFT. All you have to do is click on any one of my Twitter posts recently and read the replies. I've been getting it a lot lately, to a point where I'm pretty burned out. I put a lot of extra effort in and sometimes... I've been advised that I put in too much effort. I don't know how else to phrase it other than "the haters win." They got to me, which sucks to admit after six years. I'm gonna take a break because I can't take much more of it.
From the way he said it, this doesn't seem to be a permanent decision. The posting, patch rundowns, and streams will be gone "for a while," Mortdog said. His streams may come back, but it won't be about Teamfight Tactics anymore.
"To be fair, I'm not entirely innocent here because I've been getting so much [animosity]. It has made me extra snappy, and sometimes I snap back and it's a recurring pattern that gets really bad," Mortdog said. "I think the right thing to do is take a break. We'll see how long it lasts."
Mortdog primarily streamed on his Twitch channel, which has garnered over 300k followers. He gives out patch rundowns and talks to the TFT playerbase with a lot of details and information we would otherwise not have.
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Community reacts to Mortdog stepping away
Needless to say, many are saddened by this news, but didn't blame Mort for his decision, either. The loss of knowing what the motivations behind the dev team's decisions, informative streams, and just fun gameplay was one that deeply embedded TFT players took to heart.
Dan "Frodan" Chou called it a "massive TFT community L."
Dumbs applauded and expressed respect for him. "There has never been a more open dev behind ANY GAME than Mortdog," he says.
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