Twitch Rivals League draft falls apart as players refuse to play with YourPrincess

Twitch Rivals tournaments are usually on the more casual side of esports, pro players and content creators get together to duke it out on their favourite games, earn some money, and entertain their viewers.

Few could have foreseen what happened yesterday (11th January) during the drafting process of the Twitch Rivals: League of Legends Series 1, except perhaps those with deep connections in the League of Legends community, as many of the participants withdrew their commitment to play after they learned that Jayden "YourPrincess" Diaz had drafted them into her team.

(Picture: Twitch)

The disdain for YourPriness stemming from an accusation of sexual misconduct levelled at Jean-Sébastien "Tuesday" Thery back in July 2020, at a time when gaming was having a #MeToo moment. While we are not in a position to pass veracity on YourPrincess' claims, which centred around Tuesday making her "feel uncomfortable", evidence emerged later that led many in the League community to feel she was untruthful in her account of what happened.

With many players unwilling to play with YourPrincess Twitch found themselves in an awkward position, and as players withdrew, namely LL Stylish who announced it on stream, so did YourPrincess, with Twitch now making a statement saying the tournament will go ahead but after the usually live-streamed drafting process taking place offline.

"Due to changes in the participant list, we've decided to hold a redraft in the interest of competitive integrity," said Twitch in a statement. "This draft will occur off-stream, and the new teams will be shared once they have been formed."

"Additionally, YourPrincess has decided to step down as a Captain so as not to distract from the tournament."

Twitch released a statement via their Twitter Twitch Rival Twitter channel. (Picture: Twitch)

YourPrincess revealed she would no longer be taking part in the tournament during a short ten-minute stream.

Explaing how events went down she said: "I choose a couple of people for my team, and this person ended up declining. They (the person who declined) talked about it on their stream and I messaged them to let them know it was okay."

YourPrincess then claimed that "public backlash" pressured other members of her team to pull out and with that being the case she decided to withdraw from the tournament.

Adressing Twitch Rivals - YourPrincess on TwitchYourPrincess went live on Twitch. Catch up on their VOD now.YourPrincessTwitch

"I am not doing this (withdrawing) because people say I lied about something, it's because I want to make it easier for other people."

YourPrincess also explained that she had apologised to Tuesday on the day of her original accusation and that both "had moved on".

Twitch and YourPrincess also faced accusations of banning Tuesday's name from the official broadcast's chat, however, Twitch claim this was merely the effects of an auto-moderation bot that stops viewers spamming the same messages in the chat.

"We have a number of auto-mod settings in place to keep Twitch chat safe and limit spam, which sometimes results in messages that appear to be spam not going through."

Twitch Rivals: League of Legends Series 1 is set to kick off on the 13th January and will run until the 28th.