"I had police point a gun at my little brothers because of you. They could have been shot, they could have died. Because you chose to swat my stream. I don’t give a shit about what you have against me, or what I did to you. For that I am at a loss for words. Your gripe is with me. But do not involve my family in this. They don’t deserve it."

Those were the tear-streamed words of 27-year-old Joshua Peters, aka Koopatroopa787, moments after he was swatted Thursday at his St. Cloud residence in Minnesota.

Peters earns a living streaming his sessions of Clash of Clans and RuneScape. At about the 5:40 mark of his live Twitch.TV stream, he excuses himself, saying: "Cops are here, one second." The session continues for about 15 minutes and he returns upset.

What happened was that about 10 gun-toting SWAT team members were at the door, which was answered by his 10-year-old brother.

Incidents of so-called swatting pranks appear to be on the rise, as reports of what happened to Peters are becoming all too familiar in the gaming scene. And it was at least the second time since August that a swatting occurred during a Twitch broadcast.

Another incident was in November, when an executive for video game maker Bungie fell victim to a swatting when a hoax caller claimed an assailant had an assault rifle and was holding his family hostage in Washington. And last month, a GamerGate critic got swatted in Portland, Oregon.

St. Cloud police said they were investigating the prank that began with an emergency call to police that a gunman had killed somebody in the house and was still inside. Gunshots were heard on the call.

The gamer told the Guardian that, "before he knew it," he was face down.

"My channel’s not crazy big, like some of these other mainstream streamers. I just didn’t expect that. I was going upstairs, and before I knew it, my face was on a tile on the ground, hands wide open and a bunch of police officers with assault rifles," he said.

He said the officers were familiar with the swatting prank.

"When we were all laying down, I spoke out. I said 'I stream on Twitch.TV, I’m being swatted, and someone probably prank-called this.' And then the tone shifted as soon as I said 'I’m streaming on Twitch.TV.'"

The video of the swatting had more than 29,500 hits as of Friday.

Peters, who did not immediately respond to Ars for comment, was almost the victim of another swatting, hours later, he said. Police got another call allegedly from one of his family members who said Peters was suicidal about the raid. The authorities vetted out the prank call before responding with force.

He said he didn't understand why he was the target.

"There’s no possible persons who I can think would do something like this to me... I’ve seen this happen to other streamers, I just never thought I would be the one to get randomly targeted. Never."

This post has been updated to reflect the correct number of hits that the video received.

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