Tyler McVicker

     

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Tyler Mcvicker
YouTuber Information
Profile	Tyler McVicker
Style	News, Game Journalism
Date joined	July 26, 2011
Twitter / X	@Tyler_McV
Other media	Twitch TikTok Discord Merch Patreon
Videos	195+
Schedule	Unscheduled
Status	Active
Username
Personal information
Full name	Tyler Mcvicker
Nationality	American
Location	Vienna, Ohio, United States
Channel trailer
Half-Life Leak Goldmine - Portal Desk Job Datamine
Most viewed video
The Unused Content of Portal 2
First video
All You Need to Know About Source 2 - 2014

“	I'm Tyler Mcvicker the passionate gamer, Adios	”
―Tyler's outro

Tyler Mcvicker, previously known as Valve News Network, also known as the "Passionate Gamer" by Valve. (born: February 7, 1997 (1997-02-07)) is a Independent Games Journalist situated on the state of Ohio operating on YouTube. He is best known for informative reports on Valve, Bethesda, CD Projekt Red, among others.

Career

Interview for television

On December 18, 2017, Tyler was interviewed by the WKBN News Channel. The interview highlighted his passion for his work and his YouTube channel, then known as Valve News Network (now simply known as Tyler Mcvicker). During the interview, Tyler discussed how his work allowed him to pay for his college education.

During the interview, Tyler emphasized that playing games is not part of his work and that he hardly ever does it. Instead, he explained that he reviews code by Valve in hopes of finding leftover code and reporting on upcoming features that might be coming to games. This attention to detail and dedication to his work has earned him a significant following on YouTube, and has allowed him to pursue his education without accumulating significant debt.

The WKBN News interview provided a glimpse into Tyler's life and work, and showcased his passion for video game journalism and his commitment to providing informative content to his followers.

Rebranding

In a six-minute video titled "I'm Done With VNN," Tyler explained why he changed his channel name and identity from "Valve News Network" to "Tyler Mcvicker." He started by recalling how, in the early beginnings following the lead-up of Portal 2, he enjoyed looking for information about Valve and its upcoming titles. However, he went on to describe the next decade as "filled with many negative emotions, constant naysayers, and an ungodly amount of personal growth."

Tyler stated that the release of Half-Life Alyx was the "end of an era," and he felt that he had fulfilled and completed his goal of finding all the available information he could find about Valve's next games and projects. However, he also acknowledged that the time it took to do so was not worth it, saying that he spent "twelve years of his life thinking and working on nothing else but Valve."

He presented the rebrand as a way to move on and report on games outside of game developers like Valve, stating that the name "Valve News Network" has become synonymous with only reporting on Valve-related content and he wants to be let go of such expectations.

Return to Ravenholm

“	No, the justification was they just lost interest. They just lost interest. They just lost interest. It had nothing to do with... the quality of your team, the amount of money you were making, it was literally just: Eh...We're bored of Half-Life...Fuck off.	”
―Tyler on why Valve canceled Half-Life: Ravenholm.

On May 26, 2020. Noclip released a documentary video/film discussing the untold history of Arkane Studios and their games. One of their topics was about the cancellation of Half-Life: Ravenholm. The Ravenholm section goes into the beginning with Warren Spector's canceled version of episode 4 with it slowly evolving into Arkane Studios' development history then its eventual cancellation. The Ravenholm section revealed that the player was none other than Adrian Shepard with the games' plot taking place five years before the events of Half-Life 2. Adrian wakes up in the abandoned town of Ravenholm in Father Grigori's care and throughout the game is seen fighting off hordes of headcrabless zombies, monkey zombies and zombie mutants, with the Acid Zombie being shown as being the first possible iteration of the Spitter seen in Left 4 Dead 2.

On May 26, 2020; Tyler streamed a live viewing party reaction of the documentary. In short, Tyler was very upset over the games' cancellation and wanted to see the build either legally release for modders to "play around with" or have the build leak. He also explained that the sole reason that the game was canceled was because Valve lost interest with the Half-Life IP after release the Orange Box and Episode Two, in which when they decided they weren't going to work on Episode 3 that there was no point in having Arkane continue working on Ravenholm. This prompted him in making a 20+ minute video detailing most of the already covered topics as well as new information as he interviewed Danny O'Drywer.

Tyler however didn't want to accept that the build would be locked away in storage forever and on August 10, 2020 released a video about the canceled game, however learned that through employees at Quakecon many at Arkane/Bethesda want to put the build in a demo state and release it to the Half-Life community however would only do so if the demand for the build was very high. This prompted Tyler to tell his fans to make noise and sign any petitions made for releasing the build. The video was quietly unlisted in late 2023 for unknown reasons.

Series

TF2's Lost Content

TF2's Lost Content was a series consisting of Tyler making a series of videos on the many scrapped, unused or Beta assets/weaponry in Team Fortress 2, making detailed and literate videos about their purposes, what their initial functions were etc. The series lasted up to five episodes and was silently canceled by Tyler in the discord server.

Characters

"Mister CEO Man"

CEO Man is known for his comically exaggerated mannerisms, including his silly voice, his over-the-top hand gestures, and his use of corporate jargon. He is often seen wearing a suit and tie, and he speaks in a way that parodies the language and speech patterns of real-life CEOs. CEO Man's humor comes from his ability to point out the absurdities and excesses of the video game industry. He often makes fun of the industry's tendency to release unfinished games, its over-reliance on microtransactions, and its sometimes questionable business practices. CEO Man's character serves as a humorous commentary on the games industry and the decisions that are made by its leaders.

British Tyler

The "character" is simply Tyler with a stereotypical British accent and an over the top sassy attitude. He often uses British slang terms such as "innit," "mate," and "bloody" in his speech. Tyler's portrayal of British Tyler is often comical, and he uses the character to make jokes about British culture and stereotypes.

Clone Tyler

Clone Tyler is a character created for an April Fool's video that parodies Tyler's style and formulaic content. This version of Tyler is actually an AI-generated version of himself, with a script written by OpenAI's GPT language model and a voice synthesized using Eleven Lab's cloning voice tool. The AI-generated script of Clone Tyler is full of absurdities, and the character parodies Tyler's usual style and mannerisms.

Clone Tyler mentions that he was created so that Tyler could spend more time with his wife, Electra Barnett, which is a nod to a previous live stream where Tyler had mentioned that he wished he had a clone so he could spend more time with his spouse while the clone works for him.

Controversies

Mailing Valve Employees

In a now private video, Tyler encouraged his fans to email Valve employees to express their concerns about the state of Team Fortress 2, which had not been receiving active support at the time. He went as far as listing their email addresses in the video description.

Half-Life: Alyx

“	Half-Life: Alyx was a failed experiment...there I said it.	”
―Tyler.

In the years leading up to the official announcement of Half-Life: Alyx, Tyler faced heavy criticism and disbelief from users who didn't believe his reports that a new Half-Life game was in development. Despite this, Tyler continued to report on the game's development, citing insider sources and leaked code as evidence .

When Half-Life: Alyx was finally announced in November 2019, Tyler's reports were confirmed to be accurate. The game was a virtual reality prequel to Half-Life 2, and was set to release in March 2020. Tyler's persistence and reporting on the subject proved to be correct, and he was vindicated by the announcement of the game. On Dec 14, 2021 Tyler uploaded a Valve game tier list video and near the end thoroughly explained how HL:A was a "failed experiment".

Creators.tf Drama

“	Tyler has allegedly threatened to remove people from the creators team several times, even getting caught doing it in the cause of one mod, Touge.	”
―eyedine2.

On June 25, 2020 an employee for creators.tf expressed the reasoning to why creators.tf was temporarily shut down and explained Tylers role in the service. It was told he was initially the "PR Guy" however that was further from the truth as Tyler McVicker played a much larger role in the creators.tf downfall. As the team were trying to implement a "chat filter" system for creators, the weapon balance moderator "TougeFoodService" mentioned to disable the sprays and to enable the "code of conduct" warning because a "Twitter Tranny" on Twitter got angry about it. Tyler immediately shuts down Touge for his transphobic attitude but Touge explains it was a "realistic way of putting it". This resulted in Tyler voting for Touge to be removed from the team due to transphobia and his attitude. Touge tried to explain he was bisexual and his girlfriend was transgender but Tyler still wanted him removed for his vocabulary, attitude and behavior. Although Tyler voted for him to be removed from the team other members didn't want him to get removed due to how socially awkward the entire situation was. Tyler tried to force one of the co-founders known as "Jonathan" to agree but he stated he wanted no involvement in the drama. When the vote failed, Tyler sternly stated he didn't like Touge and told him to "shape up".

Team Fortress 2 Bot accusations

During a period when Team Fortress 2 was plagued with issues related to bots and hacks, some members of the community accused Tyler of being the one behind the attacks, citing his supposed hatred for the game and its community as evidence. The accusation stemmed from the false belief that Tyler had a personal vendetta against TF2 and its community and wanted to see the game die. Despite no evidence supporting these claims, Tyler faced significant backlash and hate from users and bad actors within the community. Tyler denied any involvement in the bot attacks, and no concrete proof was ever presented to support the claims against him, recently, it appears to have turned into nothing more than an ironic joke.

Boiled eggs

Controversy surrounding a change.org petition emerged in 2019, when a user named Captain Vance created a petition titled "Make Tylermcvicker eat boiled eggs until he cries on stream."

During the height of the controversy, a user by the name of Aliza Mcvicker, claiming to be Tyler's mother, showed support for the cause by stating, "I am his mother."

Speculative Work

Speculation emotes and stickers from his discord server

In the early days of his channel, Tyler received criticism for including heavy speculation in his videos.

Gallery

Icon

Tyler and his wife Electra Barnett

"YSU student from Vienna paying for college through YouTube" Interview

Trivia

• Tyler's favorite finger is the middle finger on his left hand, which is slightly crooked because according to him his cat trip him down the stairs, and thanks to his lack of life insurance he's unable to get it fixed.
• He does not like anal sex, he stated on a now unlisted stream that he has attempted it, but isn't into it.
• During his Raising the Bar playthrough stream, Tyler mentioned that he was a vegetarian. However, as of the current date, it remains unknown whether he still follows a vegetarian diet.
• He had done a Youtube livestream with the popular Twitch streamer, Jerma985 and talked about various topics including the fact that while Nathan Vetterlein wrote and scripted Expiration Date, Nathan named the scout name "Jeremy" because of Jerma.
• Tyler attended Youngstown State University from 2014 to 2020, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Communication and Journalism.
• Tyler has Gabe Newell's son, Gray Newell, on his Steam friends list. According to Tyler, a friend of Gray's added him on Steam and offered to connect him with Gray. Initially skeptical, Tyler soon found himself on a Discord call with Gray, who showed him pictures of himself and his father as proof. Tyler has described Gray as a "cool dude" and a "great guy."
• His favorite Pokémon is Lotad.
• His favorite TF2 update was the Uber Update.
• His favorite GTA character of all time is Lamar Davis.
• He and his wife's favorite adult cartoon is Bobs Burgers.
• As a teenager, he owned a Nintendo Wii and Nintendo 64 with a collection of games.
• During a sponsored stream, Tyler opened up about his personal experience with acne. Where he revealed that he had to resort to using the prescription drug Accutane as a treatment for his skin condition.
• During a stream, Tyler made a remark about his testicles not working properly and expressed his wish to have kids. While it's unclear if the comment was intended as a joke, some viewers have speculated that Tyler may struggle with infertility.
• During a stream, Tyler revealed that one of his contacts at Valve had informed him that during a conversation, Valve founder Gabe Newell requested that certain information be kept confidential and not shared with Mcvicker. The contact quoted Newell as saying, "And please don't tell this to Mcvicker."
• According to Tyler, one of his contacts at Valve revealed that posters of his face were hung on the walls of the Valve office as a reminder to programmers to clean up leftover code from their projects. This was done to prevent Tyler and the community from discovering any unused or abandoned content that could potentially spoil upcoming releases or create false expectations.
• Tyler owns a September 2019 alpha build of Half-Life: Alyx and has stated he will never release the build, due to legal reasons. He streamed the build on April 3rd, 2020 and revealed many differences compared to the final game. Such as the ending, scrapped weapon upgrades and Olga sporting a different model.
• Tyler states that his favorite Valve game of all time is Portal 1.
• Tyler strongly considers that in early Beta maps for Half-Life 2, that Dr. Kliener was killed during the original teleportation sequences. Despite many stating it was never proven or stated to have happened.
• He left a Youtube comment on the Half-Life 2 shitpost "The HL2 Beta Was Better Than Release" stating that "This is my Religion".
• While playing both the Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar Redux demo and Dark Interval part 2 demo, he was shocked and happy to see the Cremator with working AI in the mod however strongly wished it had sound effects, considering that the creators could've just given the Cremator the Combine Charger's steps.
  • He strongly doesn't like the Houndeye NPC models or sound designs used for Dark Interval.
  • He compared the Cremator's Immolator in the public demo 2 of Dark Interval to the Dragon's Fury from TF2.
  • How considers the Raising the Bar Redux mod to be an amalgamation of Deus Ex and the Half-Life 2 2001-2002 leak.
• When told that The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx are very similar to the way Hitman: Full Disclosure was treated, he reluctantly had mixed feelings.