Hungrybox Street Fighter 6 event under fire as pronouns are accidentally replaced with racial slurs
Twitter: LiquidHboxHungrybox’s Street Fighter event The Coinbox has become the source of major drama after racial slurs were shown in place of player pronouns on stream.
Well-known fighting game personality Hungrybox was running their bi-weekly tournament The Box on June 14 when unfortunate drama ensued. The Coinbox: 65 was the latest event in focus and featured the recently released Street Fighter 6. The event saw over 1,000 entrants into the tournament with a $3,000 USD prize up for grabs for the overall winner.
Whilst all was seemingly going well, an unforeseen coincidence occurred, which sparked outrage from fans and players alike.
Player pronouns shown as racial slurs on stream
During a match between players ‘Punk’ and ‘xSpoonx’ viewers noticed that the pronouns section for both contained slurs instead of pronouns. This obviously sparked confusion among viewers, but most outraged by this kerfuffle was the player Punk.
Punk, outraged by the appearance of these slurs, took to Twitter, calling out Hungrybox for the inappropriate stream graphic.
The post gained major traction, gathering hundreds of retweets and being viewed by over 1.4 million users by the time of writing. Punk eventually released another post, stating that they won’t be supporting Coinbox in the future.
“Won’t be supporting the Coinbox [I don’t care] who’s right or wrong, no way that sh** ever makes it to a stream and stays a whole game. Whole team [you’re] working with [needs] to be looked at closely.”
Hungrybox soon replied to the original tweet, sharing their side of the story.
“Check my quote tweet, had to have been a hacker. F***ing sh***y behavior from some troll. Gonna use other scoreboard,” they responded at first.
Confusion around the pronoun graphic
Many fans were confused about the drama, with Hungrybox claiming that it must have been a hacker of some sort. Some fans were quick to criticize Hungrybox, stating that no one would hack the player’s pronouns, with some even questioning if said hacker exists.
Others were more supportive of Hungrybox, sharing well wishes and sympathy for the organizer in light of the backlash.
“That anyone could have done such a thing is frankly appalling behavior to undermine the tournament and these people,” a user stated.
What actually caused racial slurs to appear during the Coinbox stream?
Right after the incident occurred, many in the FGC began to investigate what had happened during The Coinbox.
After some digging around, fans believe they have found the reason that the situation occurred, pointing out glitches and a bunch of unfortunate coincidences as the likely culprit.
According to Twitter users ladyisatis and Ambler, the problem lay within TSH’s tournament loading, as it apparently had pulled player information from a tournament held 10 months ago.
The game before Punk’s was between Riddles and Blackatlas, which TSH confused for BlackTwins. After the set had ended, TSH saw that Riddles did not have a set ongoing, and began searching his profile to find a tournament set that was.
This tournament ended up being RE: Heaven’s Gate #10, as a tournament operator never input the scores for Riddle’s match at the time.
Hungrybox went to load the next set for Punk vs xSpooNx, but due to neither player’s having pronouns filled in, it seemingly collided with a different bug.
The program reportedly attempted to pull Riddle’s set while pulling Punk’s set at the same time, which resulted in information from Riddle’s set being pulled into Punk’s player info.
Isatis continued by claiming that this set of unfortunate circumstances was the result of a bug, and was not at all Hungrybox’s fault.
Alongside this, BlackTwins confirmed in a tweet that these were indeed the pronouns they had on their profile. However, they were unsure as to how they ended up attaching to players that didn’t have any pronouns listed at all.
Hungrybox addresses racial slur drama from Coinbox event
Hungrybox eventually released a statement on what they believe happened. Like above, they believe that the information was pulled from a tournament held quite some time ago. Hungrybox expressed their feelings on the matter, before stating that they don’t wish Punk any ill will whatsoever and that they’re ready to talk things over if possible.
Hungrybox responded to another statement, further sharing insight into their side of the situation. The organizer assumed that it was what the player’s had put down for their pronouns, not realizing that an error had occurred. Once they saw Punk’s tweet, they had no idea that the pronouns were not inputted by Punk, and believed a security issue was abound.
Hungrybox then once again apologized for the kerfuffle and stated that they’d be sure it would not happen again.
After the event had ended, Hungrybox released a thread reflecting on the issues that had occurred. Hungrybox expressed that they felt they had failed as a tournament organizer, saying they attempted to do everything at once. They also tagged Punk to let them know it was entirely their fault, and not the team running the event.
Hungrybox left the door open on whether or not they will continue to run future events for various titles but stated that they’d be taking a step back for a bit to spend time with friends and family.
