HisWattson claims he is “blacklisted” from Apex tournaments by EA

Jacob “HisWattson” McMilin, a top Apex Legends pro and member of esports team FURIA, claims that he is being blacklisted from Apex Legends tournaments by EA, following his complaints made on social media. The player has been at the receiving end of considerable community criticism following his recent interactions. There has been no official statement from EA yet.

The pro player has recently faced criticism after direct messages between him and a known Apex Legends hacker were leaked online. In these messages, HisWattson reveals that he “hates” Respawn's head of security, Conor “Hideouts” Ford, and wanted to “clown him on Twitter”. 

Needless to say, these conversations did not go down well with the Apex community.

Backlash from these leaks have come from other pros and content creators in the Apex Legends community. Albralelie, a member of TSM, tweeted “Who could’ve seen this coming after planning to publicly harass their head of security, truly shocked”.

Sweet tweeted “I believe this is a play stupid games win stupid prizes situation” while Dezingful posted a meme of HisWattson shooting his own career.

A former Apex Legends developer also weighed in on the controversy (with a clown emoji). Ryan K. Rigney called it harasssment by HisWattson on the Apex dev.

According to his tweets, the effects of this recent drama have already begun. HisWattson claims he has been blacklisted from the TwitchCon San Diego 2022 Apex Legends tournament, which includes a prize pool of $200,000. He believes that he has not yet been blacklisted from the upcoming ALGS tournament. 

HisWattson has had a very succesful year. He signed with FURIA earlier this year, hit the #1 rank Predator in the second split of Season 13. So far he has gained 360,000 followers with an average of 10,600 viewers since he began streaming in May 2020. He performed remarkably well in the 2022 ALGS Championship, helping FURIA win second place and winning the title of Monster Energy MVP. 

With this recent success has also come a butting of heads with Respawn developers over cheating and game exploits.  HisWattson has been vocal about issues with cheaters in higher ranked lobbies, but these criticisms sometimes turned into confrontations. This past July, an argument between HisWattson and Hideouts occurred on Twitter. HisWattson criticized Respawn’s “horribly ran” anti-cheat system, complaining that Apex Legends was “unplayable”. 

Though, at the time, HisWattson asked his fans and community to "not send hate towards Hideouts”. He added, “it’s not his fault that Respawn decided to put his name on a steaming pile of shit”.

So far, there is no official response from EA/Respawn regarding HisWattsons' claims that he was blacklisted. The situation remains unclear. For further updates on this story and other Apex Legends news, esports.gg has you covered.