xQc says he turned down "absolutely insane" 1.2M NFT sponsorship

Feb 18, 2022

Felix "xQc" Lengyel said on stream on Friday that he received an "astronomical" offer from an NFT project sponsorship, which he turned down. NFTs are a type of controversial crypto token, which acts as a certificate of authentication for a product purchase on the blockchain. They have garnered a negative reputation in the gaming community after companies like Ubisoft attempted to adopt them, and after multiple creators carried out scams using cryptocurrency.

"Today, I received an insane, an absolutely insane, NFT sponsor offer, and the amounts are astronomical," xQc said on his stream. "It was even more fun to tell them no. I don't think we should talk about it [...] Overlay, shoutout, and visit for 5-minutes, and retweets, for 1.2 million dollars. That is a f*cking racket if I have ever seen one."

The streamer went on to roast the NFT technology, saying jokingly that in the fine print of the offer it said it would be "payable in JPEGs" making fun of the fact that many NFTs that are ultimately pretty fungible, considering you can screenshot or save as for some NFT images.

xQc joins other streamers like Ludwig in his defiance of the trend where large influencers attach their names to NFT and other crypto projects in order to pump up their popularity and therefore their profitability. Earlier this week Ludwig threatened to sue an NFT project called Metadeckz after they created an NFT card of Ludwig's face without his consent.

On the flip side of things, there have also been creators who have been getting into NFTs, leading in some cases to backlash. Former Overwatch streamer Francine "Fran" Vo saw significant backlash after she defended NFTs and started a Discord server dedicated to her upcoming NFT drop. Other streamers like FaZe Kay and Ice Poseiden have gotten themselves in trouble for pumping and then dumping their own crypto tokens, which has further fueled the negative attitudes toward crypto projects and sponsorships for streamers.

While NFTs have become increasingly common and accepted in some circles, the technology and its purveyors still face serious uphill battles when it comes to selling this to the esports and gaming community. While some orgs like 100 Thieves have seen some success in dropping NFTs over the past year, the technology is far from widely adopted in the gaming market.