Battlefield’s John Wick has been evading stream snipers for months

One of the best Battlefield pilots is being hunted by stream snipers without pause
Battlefield’s John Wick has been evading stream snipers for months
Battlefield’s John Wick has been evading stream snipers for months /

The advent of Twitch and other streaming platforms has led to all sorts of complications. One of the consequences of people playing video games on stream is the emergence of stream snipers – a form of harassment in which people try to get into the same lobby or match as a streamer by matching their search filter and timing their queues or simply joining the same server and then specifically going after them.

This is hard to avoid in many cases, with countermeasures like broadcast delays disrupting vital aspects of the job (or hobby) such as chat interactions.

While stream sniping can in some cases lead to fun interactions and scenes, if it happens in moderation, some people take this to the extreme. This is the case with AsheBF, who works a full time job and then streams Battlefield in the evenings to have some fun. He's known as one of the best helicopter pilots in Battlefield and unfortunately had to hone his skills over the last ten months to avoid a relentless horde of stream snipers going after him.

There is a group of players out there, who spend entire evenings or weekend days with the sole intention of hunting AsheBF down – full lobbies go after him sometimes, leading to incredible scenes in which he has to pull off sheer impossible aerial maneuvers. See one of these clips recorded by gaming creator Jake Lucky below:

This is bad enough, but some people just go overboard: The stream snipers have even taken to renaming themselves after a deceased friend of AsheBF. While some people might say that being stream sniped is something broadcasters have to deal with, this definitely crosses a line and is completely out of order, no matter how you see it.

Blocking people in Battlefield doesn’t really do much, unfortunately. It keeps them from chatting with you, but doesn’t hinder them from being in the same lobby or team, which is the crucial issue in this case. With little in terms of admin tools in place for servers in Battlefield 2042, the options for countermeasures against this kind of abuse are limited and rather impotent.

The reason behind this harassment, apparently, is that some players felt that AsheBF was too arrogant on stream. He also focuses on playing as a helicopter pilot almost exclusively, locking the vehicles down for himself whenever he's in a lobby, which made some people angry. Add the fact that some players absolutely hate being picked off by helicopters and you’ve got the recipe for this sort of irrational backlash.


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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg