About

Tyler1, whose username is loltyler1 and real name is Tyler Steinkamp, is an American Twitch streamer who was initially known for engaging in "toxic" behavior in League of Legends streams, leading to his ban from the game in 2016 by Riot Games. After a near two-year ban, he was unbanned by Riot Games.

History

Tyler1 is a popular League of Legends player and streamer. Starting out playing solely the character Draven, Tyler1 endured various patches to the game hindering Draven and remained one of the top players in the world. According to an older version of his Twitch page, he was ranked 13th in the world during the 2014 season.^[1] Due to toxic behavior, he was banned from League of Legends by the game's developer, Riot Games, in 2016. During his ban, he became a variety streamer. He returned mostly to League after he was unbanned in 2018. In 2020 and 2021, Tyler1 achieved the Challenger rank cutoff in League twice, once playing only Jungle and once playing only Top.^[2]

Fandom

Tyler1's Twitch channel has over 4.4 million followers^[3] and his subreddit^[4] has over 98,000 subscribers. He also sells merchandise on his personal website.^[5]

League of Legends Ban

Tyler1 gained notoriety in April of 2016 when his Twitch channel grew famous for Tyler1's bad behavior. Tyler1 would swear at players and be abusive in chat. He would also leave his keyboard for several hours at a time on stream. For many League players, Tyler1's most egregious misconduct involved the practice of "inting," short for "intentional feeding." Often using the phrase "running it down mid," Tyler1 would intentionally allow the opposing players to kill him, giving them money and experience points until they were able to overwhelm his team. He would often do this in response to other League players not giving him certain buffs he wanted. When he began growing a reputation as "The Most Toxic Player in North America," Tyler1's channel drew more viewers, and he began intentionally trolling games.

Because Tyler1 would often play with professionals and members of Riot Games' staff, he was quickly noticed. After announcing that he had "reformed" in April 2016, he grew from 5,700 followers to 92,000 by the end of the month.^[6] His newfound popularity saw him increasingly criticized in the League community. On April 30th, 2016, he was banned indefinitely from playing League of Legends.^[7] This was a controversial and almost unprecedented move in the community, as some players supported Tyler1 while others were glad Riot was looking into the toxic aspects of their communities. Others still said that he was not as bad as some other prominent League players.^[8] The controversy was covered by Select All,^[8] Kotaku,^[9] and Polygon subsite Rift Herald.^[6]

During his League of Legends ban, Tyler1 became a variety streamer, playing games as well as doing IRL content such as cooking streams. He soon began playing on stream with British stream sniper-turned-Twitch streamer GreekGodX. An animated version of a clip^[10] of them playing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds from April 2017 was uploaded^[11] to YouTube on October 11th, 2018 (shown below, left). In three years, the animated version accumulated more than 2 million views. On October 20th, 2017, a video of them meeting for the first time in real life at TwitchCon 2017 was uploaded^[12] to YouTube, gaining more than 420,000 views in over three years.

On November 18th, 2017, Tyler1 hosted an amateur League of Legends tournament called the Tyler1 Championship Series, serving as a host/commentator while providing a cash prize of $10,000.^[13] The stream reached upwards of 200,000 viewers.^[14] He held the tournament again in 2018 and 2019 with cash prizes of $50,000 each.^[13]

Reinstatement

On January 4th, 2018, Tyler1 tweeted that he had been "reinstated" by Riot Games, gaining over 25,000 retweets and 82,000 likes.^[15] Riot confirmed to Kotaku subsite Compete^[16] that this was accurate. In October of 2017, he had read an email he received from Riot saying that he would be given a month to prove that he could play "cleanly," and that if he succeeded, he could be unbanned. Following the news that he was unbanned, a thread about Tyler1 appeared on r/OutOfTheLoop^[17] that gained over 2,700 upvotes. A thread in r/LeagueOfLegends^[18] about the news gained over 50,000 upvotes.

On January 8th, 2018, Tyler went live on his first Twitch stream after the reinstatement, getting a record breaking amount of 300,000 viewers in less than 20 minutes and 400,000 at its peak, to the point of causing technical problems on the website.^[19] On r/LeagueOfLegends, a clip of his first kill in the stream gained over 3000 points in less than 12 hours (shown below, right).^[20]

Continued History

On January 14th, 2018, Twitch streamer Mizkif uploaded^[21] a satirical YouTube summary of Tyler1's life and career, garnering over 3.2 million views in three years (shown below, left). On October 6th, 2018, gaming news outlet theScore esports uploaded^[22] a more comprehensive summary titled "The Story of Tyler1." The video gained over 4.2 million views in two and a half years. Tyler's reaction to the video, posted^[23] on October 10th, received over 3.2 million views in a similar period (shown below, right).

On April Fool's Day 2018, Tyler hosted^[24] a livestream called "A Day In The Life Of Tyler1" where he acted out a greenscreen parody of his life in real time (shown below). The stream received media attention^[25] and gained over 2.8 million views on YouTube in three years.

In 2020, Tyler1 began climbing from unranked to the Challenger rank in League playing the Jungle role only. He reached the cutoff for Challenger in May 2020.^[26] Similarly, he reached the Challenger cutoff playing Top only in June 2021.^[27]

Reputation

Tyler1 was initially known in League for his toxic behavior towards teammates and other players. He is popularly known for his over-the-top, physical reactions and behaviors that involve sometimes incoherent yelling. Clips of his reactions have been popularly referenced in memes and videos. A YouTube video uploaded^[28] on January 22nd, 2018 compiling his antics titled "Every Major Tyler1 Outbreak" garnered over 24.5 million views on YouTube in three and a half years (shown below).

Personal Life

Tyler1 (Tyler Steinkamp) was born in Missouri on March 7th, 1995. He studied Computer Science at Central Methodist University for two years and played as a running back for the school's football team. Tyler withdrew in 2015 to focus on streaming.^[29] His brother, Erobb221 (Eric Lamont Robbins Jr.), was a moderator for Tyler's Twitch streams before becoming a streamer himself. Tyler is 5'6" (168 cm) tall.

Related Memes

Short Tyler1

So You're Going By Loltyler1 Now Nerd?

Tyler1 Gets Beanie

Search Interest

External References