Last night, there was a large police operation in Hamburg. Officers stormed the apartment of Twitch streamer Maximilian “Trymacs” Stemmler while he was live on air.
This was the situation: Trymacs was streaming Elden Ring on March 10, 2025, when he got up in the middle of a boss fight against Radahn and said he had to step away for a moment. While the stream continued, “police” shouts could be heard in the background.
Apparently, the streamer fell victim to a so-called swatting.
In such cases, perpetrators trigger police or fire department responses with fake emergency calls. Swatting is classified as a crime in Germany and can be punished with a fine or a prison sentence of up to one year (via Anwalt.org).
Streamer stays calm: “They wanted to distract me from Elden Ring”
What happened next? Trymacs returned to the stream shortly after and casually explained that someone had likely called the police to stop him from playing Elden Ring. He was just too close to defeating Radahn. However, everything has now been resolved.
The streamer also added that the people behind such actions always somehow find out the address – moving wouldn’t help. Following that, he jumped back into the boss fight, which he ultimately succeeded in about an hour and a dozen deaths later.
The recording of the original stream has since been taken offline, but clips showing the incident spread across TikTok and X.
What seems rather unspectacular in the stream was actually a large police operation, including heavily armed officers from the special operations command who stormed Trymacs’ apartment. As reported by the Hamburger Abendblatt (paid article), an anonymous caller made the emergency call.
Such swatting attempts are usually easy to recognize, but in this case, the fraud was more sophisticated, it is further stated. The LKA is now investigating who was behind the call.
Viewers probably didn’t notice much of the incident – and that was likely intentional. A strong reaction in the stream would have been exactly what those responsible wanted to see and could potentially encourage imitators.
For this reason, there is little discussion about swatting, and many viewers may hardly suspect the extent of this kind of harassment. The streamer Tanzverbot reported over 50 police interventions at his home.
MontanaBlack experienced so many incidents that he didn’t want to stream from home anymore and eventually set up an external streaming studio. American streamer QTCinderella even reported being traumatized from multiple swatting incidents.
When people think of swatting, they still often consider prank calls, but there is much more behind it. A report by SPIEGEL and the ARD magazine Kontraste showed that a group is behind many of these incidents, specifically targeting influencers: Group has had 132 Twitch streamers chased by police
