Australian Apex Legends and Overwatch creator Zylbrad, who has 2.51 million subscribers on YouTube, apologized on Wednesday after being called out on Twitter by Twitter user sissyjuice for a video he made 5 years ago in which he can be heard making a variety of explicitly racist jokes about hunting, killing, and imprisoning Aboriginal people.

In the video above, Zylbrad can be seen playing Overwatch and joking "Sshh we're killing Aboriginals. I'm an Australian, we're killing Aboriginals." Later in the clip, he continues his offensive tirade, saying "I feel like Steve Irwin hunting Ab*s." The term Ab*s is considered a highly offensive and extraordinarily racist in Australia and is not appropriate to use in any circumstance. 

Zylbrad was also joined by other unnamed parties in the clip in making offensive jokes. 

In response to the video, Zylbrad posted an apology, saying, "I'm sorry to everyone hurt by this. This was from a vid made 5 years ago that was very quickly deleted when the person who made the vid watched it over. It was obviously not okay, and extremely poor mentality from my younger self. I know words don't fix that, but I am sorry."

Zylbrad's racist attacks on Aboriginal people explicitly and proudly drew upon Australia's violent colonial history which is filled with massacres, cultural genocide, and displacement of Aboriginal men, women, and children. 

Australian colonizers treated Aboriginal people as less than human throughout the time that they settled the continent and beyond.  According to a special report from the Guardian titled "The Killing Times" published in 2019, there were at least 270 frontier massacres of Aboriginal people over the course of 140 years as part of "a state-sanctioned and organized attempt to eradicate Aboriginal people."

The report also pointed out that, in addition to carrying out numerous mass killings, forcing Aboriginal people off their land, incarcerating them, taking their children from them, and restricting their movement, that the Australian authorities also attempted to cover up their genocide in what anthropologist William Stanner called a "national cult of forgetfulness" and a 1927 royal commission that looked into the matter called a "conspiracy of silence."

As of writing this article, Twitch Australia has not responded to the situation, though multiple users tagged their Twitter account in response to the post. We will continue to follow this story and will update it should Twitch, or any other online platform, take action against Zylbrad.