Former professional Overwatch player turned professional Twitch streamer Félix “xQc” Lengyel is never one to shy away from controversy, as evidenced recently when he stated that he “don’t give a f***” about DMCAs. In his latest on-screen rant, xQc shared the information that one of his viewers’ parents had emailed him asking that he refund several donations that their child had paid to him without their knowledge.
Lengyel strongly opposed the suggestion, saying that the $27 in question (seemingly donated across nine $3 donations) isn’t an amount of money he “cares” about, but “no, you’re not getting the money back.” His stance was seemingly based on principle then, as he continued to say that “you should not let your children donate to the stream.”
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Though parents can’t monitor what their children are doing at absolutely all times, xQc further asserts that the parent in question should “educate [their] f***ing child” in order to prevent it from happening again. “It is not my job to educate your child” he frustratedly adds, though not offering a refund may have proven to be an education in itself. People often learn best from making mistakes, so not retrieving the $27 is perhaps a much better way for the young donator to learn that actions have consequences that receiving a refund would have been.
With mainstream media like the BBC recently covering stories where children had used their unknowing parents’ funds to purchase microtransactions in free-to-play games, this is far from an isolated incident. The simplest fix would seemingly be to disallow children access to any form of payment information because, as xQc illustrates here, streamers and developers are not legally required to issue refunds.
xQc seemingly didn’t raise this point, but there’s also an argument to be made that any youngster that doesn’t have their own payment details and/or seemingly know the value of money most likely should not be watching his vulgar livestreams that often feature mature games. Hopefully the unnamed donor and their parents have learned a valuable lesson from the exchange.