A gaming YouTuber with 7 million subscribers apologized for screaming 'go do your husband's dishes' at a female player

• On April 6, a clip of YouTube streamer Darren Watkins circulated on Twitter.
• It showed him telling a female player to go do her husband's dishes and using expletives.

Darren Watkins, a gaming YouTuber who owns the channel IShowSpeed, has apologized after a clip of him making explicit and gendered comments towards a female gamer circulated on Twitter on April 6.

In the clip, Watkins, who has 7 million YouTube subscribers, can be heard calling the female player a "bitch" and telling her to "get off the fucking game and do your husband's dishes."

—Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) April 6, 2022

The clip was posted by esports commentator Jake Lucky, who has 230,000 Twitter followers. In the footage, Watkins was playing Valorant, a first-person shooter game. The YouTuber could be heard screaming "shut up" and using explicit language toward other players over the voice chat feature, which enables gamers to talk to each other during the game.

When a female streamer told Watkins "you suck ass," the YouTuber responded by yelling, "Is a bitch talking to me, is a female talking to me?" and added, "Get off the fucking game and do your husband's dishes, bitch."

Lucky's tweet, in which he said Valorant streams are often "unbelievably toxic," received 165,000 likes and 28,000 retweets.

Sara Dafadshar, whose Twitter bio and LinkedIn profile say she is a game producer at Riot Games, which developed Valorant, responded to Lucky's tweet in a comment that has 37,000 likes, saying, "We do NOT want players like this in our community at all," and that she has permanently banned Watkins' account from Valorant and other games developed by Riot.

—Speed⭐️ (@IShowSpeed) April 7, 2022

On April 7, an hour after Dafadshar's tweet, Watkins uploaded a video on Twitter captioned "sorry," apologizing for his comments. The YouTuber said the clip was from a video he filmed months ago and said he "wasn't having a good day" at the time because he says he was receiving racist comments from other players.

He added, "I was completely wrong in that situation right there. I can't say anything to justify that situation," and said he "grew" and "changed" since the video was filmed. He also said he would "love to hear from" the woman he screamed at in case she had anything to say to him.

Over the past few years, women across the gaming community on YouTube and Twitch have accused male streamers of sexist and abusive attitudes, and on Twitter, many said Watkins showcased a "toxic" behavior that is rampant in the gaming world.

Watkins is well known on YouTube for streaming popular video games like Fortnite and NBA 2K. In July 2021, Dexerto reported that he was able to gain a million YouTube subscribers in under a week after going viral on TikTok.

According to Dexerto, he was permanently banned from Twitch in December 2021 for "sexual coercion" towards a female gamer, due to a comment he made about wanting to have sex with her when he appeared on her livestream. The YouTuber tweeted appearing to confirm he was banned by Twitch on December 14, but did not comment further at the time.

Insider reached out to Watkins, Riot Games, and YouTube for comment.

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