Twitch streamer KingRichard responds to scamming allegations from unpaid artists

Alan Bernal

Popular Twitch streamer Richard ‘KingRichard’ Nelson and his team are allegedly refusing to pay for work commissioned by the streamer, according to major esports artist Gabe ‘G4K Motion Designer.’

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The Controversy

When Twitch personalities and content creators grow their following, they typically enlist professional artists to create everything from custom emblems/icons, motion graphics and the like. But a fair price usually accompanies quality work.

Creative Grenade, the artistic team behind some of KingRichard’s latest graphics, is now claiming that the Twitch streamer and his management team have been avoiding to pay their part of a deal that produced numerous custom elements for him to use.

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G4K Motion DesignerG4K alleges that KingRichard not only didn’t pay for the work, but that he used it on his Twitch stream.

In a humor-laced but revealing video (that has since been deleted), G4K took his team’s predicament public to look for some form of recompense after the streamer had discontinued communication with the allegedly unpaid artists.

“[After all the work had been approved], one day the manager of Richard comes out with a cute wall of text that I summarize with this,” G4K said. “Now we no more like it, we are not going to pay. We said yes, but it was no.’”

After taking a 10% upfront fee, the artist got to work on a “full rebrand” that KingRichard was looking to make, but alleges that KingRichard did not provide any further payment for any of the work upon its completion. He also alleges that KingRichard actually used the assets on stream for over a week, which can be seen in the image above. 

KingRichard Responds

After the initial shock of the controversy had leaked onto KingRichard’s April 2 stream, the streamer gave an emotional take on the events that had unfolded.

“I reached out to [G4k], I sent him a DM on Twitter,” KingRichard said. “But that’s kind of fucked up to straight up say ‘yeah, he’s a scammer….’ These fuckers didn’t do half the shit they were supposed to do. It took them five months to get to this point… I would never scam anybody, I am not that type of person.”

KingRichard said that he and his manager have been getting harassed because of the ordeal that they say is fabricated.

“If this particular artist wants to come up with an apology and tell the truth about their side of the story, and let people know the full side of it and that I’m not a fuckin scammer then we can talk,” KingRichard said.

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The situation will be resolved privately 

Following KingRichard’s lengthy discussion on the matter on his stream, he took an extended break before coming back to practice for the upcoming Apex Legends Twitch Rivals tournament. 

It appears as though he spoke to G4K during that break and the two sides agreed to work on the matter privately and won’t be speaking publicly on the situation anymore.

G4K also took down both the original video and any other tweets related to the allegations, as the two sides seek to resolve things privately. 

About The Author

Alan is a former staff writer for Dexerto based in Southern California who covered esports, internet culture, and the broader games/streaming industry. He is a CSUF Alum with a B.A. in Journalism. He's reported on sports medicine, emerging technology, and local community issues. Got a tip or want to talk?