xQc

Félix Lengyel ([feliks lɑ̃ʒɛl]; born November 12, 1995), better known by his online alias xQc or xQcOW, is a Canadian Twitch streamer, internet personality, and former professional Overwatch player. Lengyel played for the Dallas Fuel in the Overwatch League for part of the inaugural season before being released due to repeated controversy and suspensions. Lengyel has also played in the Overwatch World Cup for Team Canada in 2017, 2018 and 2019. He now streams full-time on Twitch as a variety streamer for the Canadian esports organization Luminosity Gaming.

Lengyel was born and raised in Laval, Quebec. His parents divorced when he was 1, and he grew up with his brother, Nicolas, in shared custody. At a young age, Lengyel developed a passion for skateboarding, snowboarding, trampolining, and video games; he uploaded some of his tricks to YouTube.

After completing his secondary school, Lengyel went on to study humanities at CEGEP before switching to administration. He ended up dropping out after 3.5 years, just before graduating, and started streaming games on Twitch. Lengyel first started off playing League of Legends on Twitch under the name xQcLoL but later discovered the game Overwatch and started playing it competitively.

Overwatch

DatZit Gaming

Lengyel began his career as an Overwatch player as the main tank at DatZit Gaming, a semi-professional esport organization based in Montreal, Canada. On August 13, 2016, Lengyel and his team won the Dreamhack Montreal 2016 Overwatch tournament.

Denial eSports

Lengyel continued his career as a main tank player on the Overwatch team "Q?" which was later picked up by Denial eSports on October 12, 2016.

Lengyel also claimed that Denial owed $2,900 to its players after reportedly not paying them.

Arc 6

After Denial eSports disbanded, Lengyel and the other members of the team played together under the name "YIKES!" which was later changed to "Arc 6" after being asked by Blizzard since the logo could not be used and the name was deemed unmarketable. After qualifying, they played in Season Zero of Overwatch Contenders but were ultimately eliminated in the group stage. On July 9, 2017, Arc 6 participated in their last tournament, the Beat Invitational: Season 2 tournament, beating FNRGFE but losing to Rogue to take third place. Eventually, Arc 6 went their separate ways to focus on tryouts for Season 1 of the Overwatch League. No official statements were released by Arc 6 or Lengyel regarding his departure from the team until it was announced that he would be part of the Dallas Fuel in October.

Dallas Fuel

On October 28, 2017, Overwatch League franchise Dallas Fuel announced Lengyel would be joining their roster as their 9th player. Lengyel played with the team for several matches before coming under fire due to homophobic remarks made on his Twitch stream directed against rival player Austin "Muma" Wilmot of the Houston Outlaws. Lengyel was suspended by the League for four matches and fined $2,000 for violating the Overwatch League Code of Conduct. The Dallas Fuel later extended the suspension to include the entirety of Stage 1. Lengyel made his return at the beginning of Stage 2, leading his team to victory against the Los Angeles Gladiators, and was chosen as Omen by HP's Player Of The Match. Shortly after his return to the Dallas Fuel lineup, Lengyel received a second suspension and fine for multiple social media violations and use of disparaging language towards the Overwatch League casters.

GOATS

Lengyel then said he was going to take a break from professional play, retiring to become a full-time streamer. He continued full-time streaming for several months, before making the decision to return to pro play, playing with the Contenders Trials NA team GOATS.

Gladiators Legion

On February 2, 2019, it was announced that Lengyel joined Gladiators Legion, the academy team of the Los Angeles Gladiators competing in Overwatch Contenders, as a substitute main tank. In late 2019, the team announced that they would discontinue competing in Contenders.

International career

Lengyel also played for Team Canada in their 2017 Overwatch World Cup campaign. They qualified for the World Cup after beating the Netherlands by a score of 3-0. The team made it all the way to the finals of the tournament before being defeated by defending champions, South Korea. Lengyel was named the event's most valuable player.

In the 2018 Overwatch World Cup, Lengyel played as a main tank on the starting roster for Team Canada. Several months prior to the world cup, the head coach of team Canada, Justin "Jayne" Conroy announced on his Twitch stream that Lengyel, along with players Lucas "NotE" Meissner, Brady "Agilities" Girardi, Lane "Surefour" Roberts and Liam "Mangachu" Campbell, would be welcome to join the Canadian national team without going through the regular trialing process. He played in the Los Angeles Group Stage, finishing second place to move on to the quarterfinals at BlizzCon.

In July 2019, Team Canada announced that Lengyel would return as the starting main tank for the team at the 2019 Overwatch World Cup. The team did not manage to pass the Group Stage after losing all four of its matches.

Streaming

Twitch

In the wake of the suspension of the Legion's 2020 Contenders season, Lengyel chose to continue streaming full-time on Twitch. He streams for an average of 9 hours every day and has a viewer count that regularly exceeds 60,000.In October 2019, Lengyel was the most watched Twitch streamer and ranked as the 29th most followed. In addition, he is one of the most subscribed to Twitch channels, having over 35,000 monthly subscribers on average. While he still plays Overwatch, his streams are currently more focused on variety. He often browses new releases on Steam and plays games based on suggestions from his viewers. Lengyel also does IRL (In Real Life) streams for events like TwitchCon, BlizzCon, and he has also done PO Box Openings, Media Share Streams, Viewer PC Set-Up Reviews and has even opened Pokémon booster boxes on stream.

On February 2, 2019,Los Angeles-based esports organization Sentinels signed Lengyel to their Twitch content creator roster as a variety streamer. The signing announcement also shared that Lengyel would be joining Overwatch esports team Los Angeles Gladiators as a substitute player. On August 27, 2020, Lengyel was released from his Sentinels contract and later signed to Luminosity Gaming.

In March 2020, Lengyel was invited by Riot Games to take part in the Valorant closed beta where viewers could obtain a beta access key by watching his stream. Between April 7 and 15, he streamed more than 112 hours of Valorant, which included 3 streams that lasted for more than 20 hours. He also reached his current all time peak in viewers (222,720) and total unique viewers in one stream (1,971,819) on April 9, 2020.

Towards the end of March 2020, Lengyel started playing chess on stream. On April 2, fellow streamer and Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura came on his stream to teach him how to play chess. In the following months, Lengyel would include chess games in most of his streams where he attempted to improve his Chess.com rating. Clips from him playing chess began to gain traction on Reddit, especially on the subreddit r/LivestreamFail, and got other streamers to gain interest in the game. On May 25, Chess.com announced the first of the PogChamps events, where 16 streamers would compete in a chess tournament for a prize fund of $50,000. Lengyel ended up in the consolation bracket after losing every game in the Group Stage, but won against fellow streamer Fuslie in the quarterfinals. He was defeated in the semifinals by Ludwig Ahgren. Lengyel's collaboration with Nakamura and the subsequent PogChamps events are widely believed to have inspired the surge in popularity of chess on Twitch and other media platforms, such as YouTube.

On October 1, 2020, Lengyel announced on his stream that he had signed to Luminosity Gaming as a content creator.

Name

Lengyel's online alias comes from the last letter of his first name, Félix, and the abbreviation of his home province, Quebec (QC).

YouTube

Lengyel also has a YouTube channel that he created back on March 8, 2015, where he uploads on a daily basis his stream highlights, reactions and full playthroughs of games he plays on stream.

Player account suspensions

Prior to major incidents in the Overwatch League, there were known cases of controversial acts. His account was suspended twice for violating Blizzard's Terms of Use. The first incident occurred on November 17, 2017, where Lengyel was booted mid-match from a competitive Overwatch game with a suspension message. He was suspended for 72 hours for "misuse of the reporting system". Lengyel had used the in-game reporting system for reporting players for supposedly invalid reasons. He had reported a player for refusing to switch off of a hero, even after repeatedly dying.

While streaming in December 2017, Lengyel threw a competitive game. Blizzard responded with a seven-day suspension, and Lengyel posted a video to publicly apologize for his behavior.

On August 11, 2018, Lengyel's account was suspended once again for violating the Abusive Chat policy. He had apparently been reported by teammates several times for this offense. Overwatch World Cup issued an official warning for the suspension, but he was allowed to play.

Just a few weeks after his Overwatch account was suspended he received a permanent ban from League of Legends for being "extremely inflammatory and offensive" in in-game chat. He was among the 0.006 percent of League of Legends players negative enough to receive a permanent ban.

Overwatch League suspensions

Over the course of his time with the Dallas Fuel, Lengyel was suspended twice. His first suspension came after Dallas Fuel's loss to the Houston Outlaws in Stage 1. Lengyel made homophobic remarks towards gay Houston Outlaws player Austin "Muma" Wilmot. The Overwatch League then fined Lengyel $2,000 and suspended him for 4 matches. Dallas Fuel later extended that suspension to the remainder of Stage 1. Lengyel later apologized for the comment, writing "I didn't say what I said on stream with malicious intent, I legit did not compute the whole thing before ... Hope I can turn this into something good, sorry."

Lengyel was fined and suspended for using the Twitch emoticon "TriHard" in a "racially disparaging manner", and using disparaging language against Overwatch League casters and fellow players on social media and his personal stream. This time, Lengyel received a $4,000 fine and was suspended for four matches. On March 11, 2018, Dallas Fuel announced that the team and Lengyel had mutually parted ways. In an interview, Lengyel said that although he likes to play at a professional level, he also enjoys creating content on Twitch. If he receives an offer to play in a professional team again, he said he would have to think about it for a while before making a decision.

Twitch bans

On July 31, 2019, xQc was banned for 72 hours for streaming a satirically explicit video where pornographic scenes were edited as to appear "Safe for Work".

On February 29, 2020, xQc was banned for 3 days for showing nudity in an adult-themed game based on Connect Four. The NPC took her clothes off after xQc won a game of Connect Four versus her.

On June 12, 2020, xQc was banned for 24 hours for watching "explicit content" of a video of two gorillas performing intercourse.

On November 18, 2020, xQc was banned for 7 days after stream sniping in a Fall Guys Twitch Rivals event. He also received a 6-month ban from Twitch Rivals and was forced to forfeit the prize winnings from the Event.