streamers
Withdrawal from MontanaBlack – the (temporary) end of a career full of scandals
Whether on Twitch, Youtube or Instagram: Montanablack is one of the best-known internet personalities in the country. Now he has retired for the time being.
© Philipp Schulze / Picture Alliance
Montanablack is among the most well-known and controversial streamers and influencers in the country. His success has always been accompanied by scandals. Now he is withdrawing from the public for the time being.
For a long time you had to look for new superlatives for MontanaBlack: he is the most successful streamer in Germany. Almost three million people follow him on the Twitch platform, as well as on Instagram and YouTube. He is a double best-selling author and one of the country’s most well-known internet personalities. In the past few weeks, however, Marcel Eris, as his real name is, has been relatively quiet. He dropped his streams – now he is withdrawing completely from the public for the time being, as he announced on Twitter.
He has arrived at “probably the lowest point” in his life and will need some time to get back to his old self, Eris said. He did not go into more precise reasons. But one thing is certain: behind “Monte”, as his fans call him, there are turbulent weeks.
MontanaBlack is retiring for the time being after weeks of scandal
The career of Eris was actually accompanied by scandals without a break. As one of the first streamers for video games, the 33-year-old managed to shape a whole new genre of live videos more than ten years ago. Within a few years he became the biggest player in the young business. His followers celebrated Eris, who comes from Buxtehude, for his emotional outbursts and his flippant way of commenting.
But soon criticism increased – also from the own community. His Twitch account was temporarily blocked again and again. For example in December 2018 after he had made derogatory and racist remarks about Asians. In addition, Eris is repeatedly accused of sexism, for example because he compared women to dogs in a stream.
MontanaBlack: Stream from online casinos called the public prosecutor’s office into action
In addition to personal gaffes, which led to more or less long bans on the streaming platforms, his content also became relevant under criminal law. Because Eris didn’t just stop at streaming popular video games like Fifa or Call of Duty. In 2018, he began filming himself gambling in online casinos, sometimes with absurdly high stakes. This called the public prosecutor’s office onto the scene. Because in addition to the streams, “Monte” used its social media channels to post advertisements for casino sites. In October 2018, he shared a picture of bank statements and commented that he had won €80,000 in just six weeks.
Aside from the fact that gambling advertising was illegal at the time, he also promised his followers that the casinos he was promoting were state-verified. An untruth, because the pages were certified in Malta, but not in Germany. The highlight of Eri’s “casino affair” was a house search by the public prosecutor’s office on “suspicion of illegal gambling, money laundering and a possible violation of the weapons law”, as several media reported with reference to the NOZ. One of his accounts was therefore seized.
The illegal gambling case was later dropped for a payment, and Eris was fined €40,000 for tax evasion. After this incident, the streamer gave up gambling and repeatedly emphasized the dangers of gambling addiction in his streams.
But even without the casino streams, Eris made headlines. During a holiday in Malta in September 2020, he secretly took pictures of women at the hotel pool from his balcony during a stream and commented on the scenes in a sexist way. Twitch also blocked him for this – for 33 days. Eris later apologized for his “stupid and questionable behavior”. In the mirror he explained: “It was just an unnecessary action on my part. I simply shouldn’t have taken it.”
Shady NFT Sweepstakes
His last scandal for the time being took place in the past few weeks. Earlier this year, Eris promoted a competition for so-called NFTs in cooperation with the company “Kongdo Club” on Twitter. Here, users should have the opportunity to be the first to buy the apparently so precious tokens. Trade in digital objects is currently booming. What Eris apparently missed in his advertising, however, was that the NFTs he was promoting were images of monkeys, one of which wore a swastika armband and was modeled after Adolf Hitler in appearance. After massive criticism, “Monte” deleted the competition.
But that’s not all. A few weeks later, Eris again launched an advertising campaign for NFTs. This time, his fans should buy a digital collection of sneakers. The problem this time: Eris fell for fraud twice, so-called scams.
Users on social networks and experts accused the streamer of advertising products that he was not familiar with and emphasized his responsibility with such a large reach and especially with his presumably very young audience.
Eris then clarified again and announced that he would no longer promote NFTs in the future because it was not clear to him what is scam and what is not.
Whether the series of scandals, particularly the criticism of his NFT posse, has anything to do with MontanaBlack’s hiatus is unclear. The only thing that seems certain is that if he comes back, he will continue to polarize people.
Swell: “overmedia“, “t3n“, Editorial network Germany“The mirror“, esports.com“Watson“, giga“Merkur.de“, MontanaBlack Twitter,