Why is Heelmike considered to be a controversial personality? Exploring the Kick streamer's career

Michael Peters, better known by his online alias Heelmike, recently made headlines after fellow streamer JonZherka got into a physical altercation with one of Mike's subscribers during one of his livestreams earlier this year in May.

The self-described "confident" streamer had been a staple within the North American and English-speaking Fornite community before his Heelmike persona and eccentric Just Chatting streams started alienating his Fortnite fans.

Mike has since become quite the controversial figure within the online live entertainment industry, earning over six bans from Twitch, eventually prompting his move from the purple platform to Kick.

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Who is HeelMike? His controversial rise to fame explored

Michael ventured into the digital world by starting out as a dedicated Fortnite streamer on Twitch starting April 2, 2018. He continued this until he was exiled in December 2022 when he "jokingly" shared how he was able to finance one of his latest pieces of jewelry by "scamming children with casino deals."

Between April 2018 and December 2022, while he was a partnered streamer on Twitch, Mike had amassed an impressive count of over seven million followers.

He actively decided to allocate over 54% of his total streaming hours to actively playing Fortnite on stream with his Just Chatting streams accounting for 30.3% of his total stream time of over 7000 hours.

During the peak of his fame as a Fortnite content creator and as a Just Chatting streamer in November 2020, Heelmike was chosen as a partnered streamer for the popular Germany-based gaming organization, G2 Esports.

However, shortly after joining G2, Mike's aforementioned scamming children remark led to him getting banned for the sixth time in December 2022 despite not having streamed for four days prior to earning the indefinite ban.

After a successful appeal, Heelmike was allowed to return three days after getting banned.

Despite the pleasant turn of events, Mike's run-ins with Twitch's tumultuous ToS and Community Guidelines ultimately prompted him to jump ships to Stake.com's new live-streaming platform, Kick.

By February 2023, Mike had claimed he had made more money by doing four streams on Kick compared to a month's revenue from his days as a Twitch streamer.

Heelmike continued to rave about how much more creator-friendly his new live streaming platform was in the days to come on X, formerly Twitter, before being banned for the first time by Kick for broadcasting s*xual acts on stream on 28 February 2023.

Rather than being perturbed by the one-day-long suspension, Mike took to X once again to state that Kick was the "goat" platform for creators as they "reach out and tell creators what they did wrong" compared to Twitch's ambiguous and vague reasons for banning creators on the platform.

Since making his debut on Kick, Heelmike has earned over 60.5K followers on the platform thanks to eccentric and over-the-top Just Chatting live streams that often feature him collaborating with JonZherka which led to the infamous bust-up between the latter and two of Mike's subscribers at a house party.