And E-Sports Rears Its Ugly Head Again...

The Overwatch League, probably THE biggest thing in e-sports this winter, needs to be called on the carpet, on multiple different levels, regarding the Dallas Fuel and how the Overwatch League has mishandled allowing them to continue in this first season of the Overwatch League.

Kotaku's e-sports subsite Compete has the details, but it's clear that this league has fumbled, and seriously fumbled!

That league needed to throw out the Dallas Fuel this week.  And, when I outline the last several months and the punishments the Overwatch League has handed a present member of the Fuel, a now-fired former member of the Fuel, and it's coach!

• Seeming to indicate that "notorious troublemakers" were part of the Dallas Fuel's modus operandi, it seems mysterious today to report the firing of suspended tank player Felix "xQc" Lengyel, who was suspended four matches and fined $4,000 for a veritable litany of unsportsmanlike conducts.

These included:

1. Reference to a league broadcaster as a "cancer", offensive to anyone who, on any level, has had to deal with cancer as a disease.  This, on top of saying this about a person who probably was an employee of the league, bringing the league itself into disrepute.
2. Using an insulting "Trihard" emote on some Twitch chats
3. and general trashtalking of other players, including a noted incident with Houston Outlaws player Jake Lyon.
4. And he never should've been allowed to even play in the damn league in the first damn place!  Lengyel was three-day banned from Overwatch entirely after joining the Fuel in November.  He was banned for abuse of the reporting system, by the process of what is called "one-trick reporting", meaning he continually attempted to get banned players who were able to spam one player at the expense of the play experience, at least supposedly.

That's $4,000 and four matches for a minimum $50,000 contract...

And when you see this next one, this one should've been worse!

• Timo "Taimou" Kettunen was fined $1,000 for, on his personal stream, calling another player a faggot.

So that's a grand, no suspension -- and the other guy gets four for basically being a douchenozzle.

Real good example there, whoever is running this league (assuming Blizzard).  You're graciously upholding American gaming as the hallmark of shithead bigotry for the rest of the world to follow!

I've said for years (and infamously, on my Final Fantasy XI blog, on the day hundreds of American top-level FFXI players were banned for cheating) that American gamers SUCK.   They are badly inferior to any foreign players with a modicum of talent in most e-sports, so much so that big-time US leagues like League of Legends' NALCS are pockmarked with foreign players either on the up and coming or too far gone to stay in the better leagues like Korea's LCK or China's LPL...

And then the attitudes.  Oh my God.  It's one of the reasons I will not stream.  It's one of the reasons I will not participate in most chats, except for one or two very specific streams!  As I said, it's clear the Overwatch League is sending the message that homophobic bigotry is completely acceptable in this stream and in this game, because, if it weren't, he'd have been fired just like the other guy.

(And don't fool yourself:  Given e-sports precedent (which I will mention again in a second), the Dallas Fuel should've been thrown out of this league.  And, PERHAPS, Lengyel's "mutual departure" was a condition of the retention of the Fuel in the League.)

Why do I mention this precedent:

• A THIRD offense against the Fuel was a warning against the team's head coach for posting an assumedly-derogatory meme about he Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.  A quick apology and a $1,000 donation to relevant charities followed by the coach, Tae-yeong "Taiyung" Kim.

The Dallas Fuel should've been disqualified and thrown out of the league, then and there.

Precedent:  League of Legends, OPL 2015.  I reported on it on the blog.

Six days before the first-split season was to start, one player (Paws) was banned from all play for Elo boosting permanently.

About a month after Paws' expulsion, a second Rich Gang player (Dayshifted) was banned seven weeks for extreme abuse and exhortation to commit suicide.

Three weeks after Dayshifted, Rich Homie Dre was banned permanently (minimum one full calendar year plus the completion of the second) for targeted harassment and taunting.

The next day, the OPL threw Rich Gang out of the competition and permabanned it's owner from any future association with League of Legends.

And that's what needs to happen here.

Not only has the Overwatch League basically sanctioned bigotry with a completely mislaid set of punishments, it appears as if they have made the league's new bad boys into a selling point of their own, much to the fledgling league's detriment.

But, as I've said for years:

This is American gaming.

There's a reason I am gravitating more and more, on Twitch, to the likes of the BUZZR game-show stream and Impact Wrestling's 24/7 stream...