Dafran removes Pepe emotes from social media and Twitch after joining Overwatch League

One of the most interesting episodes that happened during the first season of Overwatch League was the League’s crackdown on all things related to images of the cartoon frog Pepe and it doesn’t look like the anti-amphibian sentiment is going away anytime soon, as Daniel ‘dafran’ Francesca found out after joining the Atlanta Reign.

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Shortly after announcing that he’d joined the team, dafran changed his Twitter profile picture, which previously was an emote from his Twitch channel of Pepe wearing a red hat.

He also removed all the Pepe emotes from his Twitch channel, replacing them with random anime faces or clowns.

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During a recent stream, dafran told viewers that, with a heavy heart, he had to say goodbye to Pepe.

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“Yeah, the Pepe emotes are gone, rest in peace dude,” he lamented to viewers. “I’m asking Blizzard if I can just paint the Pepe emotes fucking, another color dude, maybe instead of green it could be something else, I don’t know dude.”

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Dafran isn’t the only player to run into problems with the league because of the cartoon frog, during Season 1, the League made Jay ‘Sinatraa’ Won delete a birthday tweet he made featuring Pepe wearing a birthday hat.

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Pepe first appeared in a web comic by Matt Furie in 2005 and over the years became a popular internet meme. Recently though, he’s been used as a symbol by various hate groups, which has created controversy over whether or not Pepe is a hate symbol or not.

By now, the Overwatch League has made it pretty clear they don’t wan’t Pepe anywhere near the league.