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.
