The Nick “NICKMERCS” Kolcheff controversy continues to rock the streaming and gaming world. This time, Activision has removed Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar’s skin from Call of Duty as well.
NICKMERCS’ pride month tweet has split the CoD community in two. Some are siding with the FPS streamer, while others are calling him a bigot or “anti-LGBTQ.” While Nick himself has denied his tweet being anti-LGBTQ, he has refused to apologize. Still, he has plenty of support from fans and fellow streamers.
After his tweet on June 7, Activision removed the NICKMERCS bundle from CoD, pushing many streamers, including Herschel “Dr Disrespect” Beahm , to uninstall the game. Now, TimTheTatman’s skin is also gone from the joint store. To show support for his friend, the streamer had asked Activision to remove his skin as well, and Activision delivered in less than 24 hours.
“Nick has been my friend for years. We went in getting our CoD operators together. It feels wrong for me to have mine and him no longer have his. In support of my friend, please remove the timTheTatman bundle,” Tim said.
This was met with mixed reactions. Fans of the streamers were enraged at the developer for not respecting personal views, whereas others applauded Activision for standing shoulder to shoulder with the LGBTQ community. Neutral fans of the game are just upset at losing Operator skins and not purchasing them in time.
After June 11, CoD players can no longer purchase Tim’s Operator. It’s unclear what would happen to the existing skins in player inventories. But they’ll likely continue to exist as rare items. However, others regret not buying them when they were available.
In any case, this controversy has earned Nick more than 50,000 new followers within a few days, according to Social Blade. The community awaits a proper response from Nick, which may come in his next live stream, whenever that happens.
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