A streamer and prominent player within the NBA 2K16 community has publicly apologised this afternoon for beating his partner during a livestream.

The scandal occurred over the past 24 hours with audio being uploaded to YouTube featuring a woman screaming and begging for her partner to stop beating her. That person was later identified as streamer joedaddy505, a well known YouTuber, Twitch streamer and NBA 2K16 player, who did not know the stream was live at the time.

Anna Merlan from Jezebel, who originally reported the story, describes the contents of the audio below — audio which has resulted in Joedaddy’s Twitch account being removed for “terms of service violations”

The audio lasts about six minutes. The man being streamed from JoeDaddy’s account sounds extremely intoxicated and can be heard calling the woman a “bitch, a “whore” and a “slut,” making derogatory remarks about her vagina, and accusing her of cheating. She can be heard crying, screaming, and saying, “Get off me” and “I’m going to call the cops.” At times, she’s screaming so wildly it’s impossible to make out what she’s saying. It’s unclear whether the woman was also being sexually assaulted; many commenters on YouTube and Reddit have speculated that’s the case. After listening to the audio, we can’t rule it out.

oedaddy was intoxicated during the incident and on a video downloaded from his YouTube channel by DramaAlert that has since been removed, he later tried to claim that “words got exchanged” and that “when females get involved, in the middle … like I said, two people man, dumb stuff happens bro”. “I never once laid my hand on anyone,” he added.

Joedaddy later confirmed that he did assault his partner, but tried to qualify his actions by referencing the recent death of his father, alcohol and that his partner struck him first.

We don’t comment on terms of service violations, but in regards to making reports to law enforcement, read on …
 
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A user with the same name has been a high-ranking member of the NBA 2K16 community as one of the players with the highest reputation for the game’s “Old Town” faction. JoeDaddy_505 can be seen on a billboard in a NBA 2K TV episode. The same user account was also an answer in an interactive segment in episode 26 where users were asked to identify the first Legend 5 player, although that episode has been pulled from 2K’s YouTube channel.

The reaction from the internet has been swift as well. While Joedaddy removed the majority of his social media accounts, responses continued to appear on his Instagram account. That account was later hacked and the gamer was doxxed, although information (which Jezebel found was false) about his ex-girlfriend, sister and mother were posted online. That’s been taken down and replaced with a note about how Joedaddy has been taken to a mental hospital. It’s not possible to verify whether that is the case, although photos supposedly from the same Instagram account are also floating around the internet showing self-harm.

Cross-checking from Jezebel found that the doxxed details were incorrect, although it serves as a lightning rod for vigilante justice. Perhaps more gruesome is the fact that the incident can be replayed in perpetuity until the videos are taken down from YouTube, the implications of which are disturbing enough as-is.