Deleted tweets from NRG's Rogue confirm this week's Tufi talk was fake news
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“Tufi is in jail.” “How inmate Tufi got baited.”
These evocative titles graced popular Reddit posts on Monday, when an unknown YouTuber spun up a story about the famous cheater, claiming to have exposed them after posing as a journalist. The news was quickly picked up by streamers and then the large news website Dexerto.
But if anyone got baited, it was the Apex community, as the poorly-researched, unsubstantiated claims gained traction across social media. Deleted tweets from NRG’s Rogue, one of the key figures who gave these rumors life, prove that this week’s Tufi talk was little more than a sham.
Tufi, as you may know, is a longtime Apex cheater whose uncanny staying power has acquired a mythic status in the community, a boogeyman blamed for anything from cheaters to server crashes. Tufi’s clashes with Shiv (which led to Shiv’s 7-day ban on Twitch after a cringe outburst on stream) and other content creators like NRG’s Rogue made Tufi a household name in Apex and led to the game’s issues with cheaters crossing over into what might be charitably called mainstream esports reporting.
“Infamous Apex Legends hacker Tufi allegedly jailed as EA takes legal action.” Dexerto was quick to jump on the sensational story, a tale supported entirely by Rogue’s statements on stream: “He’s in jail. That man is going through the court process right now, tried to warn him, tried to tell everybody, but yeah, our dude is now buried under legal fees…Not even joking. I’m not joking. EA got a hold of that dumb fuck. Straight punished his ass.” Rogue later clarified in a Reddit comment that he was “halfway memeing about the jail thing.”
Let’s take a step back. Dexerto runs the Twitter account @Titanfallblog, which is probably the most popular source of Apex news in the world, with over 700,000 followers on Twitter.
When Dexerto covers a story like this, it becomes grist for the YouTube content mill, the ‘news’ repeated in dozens of channels until it was inescapable for anyone following Apex on Monday. But even a modest amount of caution over the facts would have killed this story in its crib.
And the video claiming to expose Tufi was similarly dubious. More than two weeks ago, the same account had posted the video to the competitive Apex subreddit with the title “The naughty boy is gone!” At that time, commenters were highly skeptical. User xD1LL4N wondered, “If he [Tufi] really wanted to go to a journalist for clout why would he go to a small ass YouTube channel? This video was 100% fabricated for attempt at getting views.”
A cursory look at the content of the person who ‘caught Tufi’ would’ve cast further doubts on his claims. One of his YouTube videos features him pretending to hold a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone, interspersed with Overwatch gameplay—a similar conceit to the Tufi video.
Later on Monday afternoon, a YouTube channel called “Tufi In Da Game” (unsurprisingly) claimed they were Tufi. Whether this person was Tufi or not, it was unlikely they were in prison, uploading a video on Monday that showed fresh gameplay footage of cheating in Arenas with the very descriptive title “Tufi New mode gameplay S9 and showing some new skins (stop fake rumors am not in jail) xd.”
Despite the lack of any corroborating evidence for this person’s claims either, Dexerto quickly updated their story to reflect this new development: “Apex Legends hacker Tufi denies rumors he’s in jail.”
After deleting those tweets, Rogue later posted a GIF of the Rock saying “Know your role. Shut your mouth,” with the caption, “Thank you Mr. Rock, I shall take this advice.”
He may have heard his “jail” news from a legitimate source (he is friendly with Respawn employees on Twitter), seen the YouTube video and exaggerated it for his audience, or possibly some combination thereof. There may be real Tufi news at some point, and I’d look forward to reading it. (A Dot Esports article from Hunter Cooke later that day had Rogue clarify that though Tufi was “likely in big trouble,” any statements about jail had been a joke.) But it was disappointing to see the game’s biggest news outlet cover the story so credulously. The ultimate blame for this round of fake news rests squarely on Dexerto’s shoulders, not those of a professional entertainer.
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Dishonest numbers put Apex on top of Twitch
I wish that was the last word on fake news in Apex this week. But on Tuesday, another Dexerto tweet contorted statistics to put the game on top of the Twitch leaderboard.
Using the highly specific metric of “most streamed” game, @TitanfallBlog claimed that Apex had bested Fortnite and Warzone over the last seven days. But “most streamed,” as I tweeted at the time, is a disingenuous number that many interpreted as “most watched” or as a general measure of popularity.
This isn’t the case. By average viewers and total hours watched, Apex is in a healthy but by no means dominant place at #7—simply not as popular on Twitch as Fortnite and Warzone, where viewers have dedicated multiple millions more hours than Apex over the last week. The statistic about Apex being the “most streamed” game was literally true but highly misleading. If anything, it shows that despite streamers putting in more total hours on Apex than any other game, Apex had fewer viewers per stream than the others mentioned. I simply don’t see a need to misrepresent the success of the game, particularly when it's doing so well: getting called out on the EA earnings call yesterday for its spectacular performance, crushing it on Twitch, and building up its esports ecosystem.
We deserve better from the community’s largest news source.
What to watch this week: Lulu’s Throwdown
The popular stream Lulu is putting on a second Lulu’s Throwdown, where another $100,000 will be on the line. It will be casted by Team Liquid’s coach Hodsic and feature two days of competition. The first day is tomorrow (Thursday, May 13th) and it will continue on Friday. There doesn’t appear to be any information on the start time, which is frustrating, but when I know I’ll post it in the comments below.
Interestingly, this will include Arenas matches, marking the first Arenas bouts between pros where a significant amount of cash is up for grabs.
The tournament has a similar team composition format to her last organized outing: each team is required to field one female, one content creator, and one professional. To minimize the chance of overpowered teams dominating the competition (likely to happen regardless), only one player on each roster can have ever competed as a finalist in an EA tourney.
Everything else:
A great thread from Respawn balance designer John Larson explains a bit of the design philosophy behind the strength of the Bocek Bow on release, its nerf and the Spitfire nerf.
Famous Apex emigrant and popular variety streamer Aceu indelicately spoke his mind the other day about his Apex viewers on Twitch. “You guys are actually fucking retarded,” said the pub-stomper, who has been streaming some of the new season. “I’ve never read such a braindead chat until I came to Apex Legends…you guys want to know the reason I left? Because there’s so many braindead fucking idiots who play the game.”
A gift of Twitch subs worth thousands (and thousands) of dollars to popular streamer NiceWigg on his birthday ruffled some feathers in the community, particularly among those whose impolitic social media presence drives potential sponsors elsewhere. I’m considering about whether to write more about this, but maybe it’s just not worth the trouble…
So, what do we think? Are Apex players braindead idiots? Is it okay for Respawn to gift subs to whoever they like? More importantly, as we move toward Championship season, what else do you want to see being covered here? Let me know in the comments—I want subscribers to have their voices heard about the type of thing they like seeing here.
Looks like Lulu’s tourney begins at 4 PM EST today (1 PM PST, 9 PM GMT). I’ll probably post up around then for some live tweeting, should be fun to watch!