Nicolás “NikoM” Miozzi, a veteran Argentinian professional CS:GO rifler, has come under scrutiny on June 18 due to xenophobia against Brazilians.
Brazilian player Lucas “pulsezor” Duarte recorded a clip of NikoM offending him during a Twitch live stream. The Argentian called him a “dirty Brazilian,” a “shit Brazilian,” a “Brazilian with cancer,” and a “poor Brazilian” towards the end of a Mirage match on Gamers Club, a third-party matchmaking service in Brazil similar to FACEIT and ESEA. NikoM lost that game by 16-14 to pulsezor’s team and believed he was being ghosted.
The clip of NikoM insulting pulsezor has been watched over 300k times and caused a true uproar in the Brazilian community. Many think Gamers Club should ban NikoM immediately and that tournament organizers should no longer allow him to compete in the region.
NikoM played for Brazilian squads Team oNe and DETONA Gaming between 2018 and 2021 and was last seen competing in the local South American scene for River Plate in 2022. Most of the South American tournaments are held in Brazil due to the country’s large pool of pro players and investment capability in comparison to Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, for example.
“Zero tolerance with this type of attitude, let’s swing the ban hammer fast,” FalleN’s brother Marcelo Toledo wrote on pulsezor’s tweet. “Every time I play against them [NikoM and his friends], they do this, they disseminate hatred, racism, and xenophobia,” 00 Nation’s content creator wastzera wrote.
Gamers Club said in a reply to pulsezor that it doesn’t tolerate any type of hatred and has forwarded his complaints to one of its departments.
NikoM hasn’t been banned from the third-party matchmaking platform at the time of writing and hasn’t released a statement about the matter.
Update June 19 2:49pm CT: Gamers Club banned NikoM for five years after reviewing his case. “We want to make very clear that we don’t tolerate this type of attitude,” Gamers Club said in a statement. FACEIT also removed NikoM from the FPL South America hub due to the repercussions.
