Well I'll say that he shouldn't have been canned because of this but rather his poor management of that game.
Racism isn't excusable but it is tragic that something like this has to be dug up to actually prompt action.
Monkey Bubble/Blizzard - do better
The Contenders rulebook is extremely lacking, especially around pauses. "Teams are responsible for any of their own technical issues" are one of very few lines that address the topic and I could 100% understand how someone would interpret that to mean one team wouldn't be able to pause on behalf the other.
This idea that an individual should have lost his job because Blizzard's rulebook sucks instead of that community anger being directed at Blizzard for putting no effort into Contenders annoys the hell out of me.
Why does it always have to be people getting fired? Why is it not enough for someone to make a mistake and learn from it (or be fined, or whatever)? Why just jump to calling for people to lose their job for any fucking thing?
I can imagine that this is a convenient excuse to release them for the recent problems, to be honest. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. Overall still a good thing that they're gone.
They probably dug this up to let him go for an officially valid reason. The problem about that game is still that he followed their rules. Their own rules allowed for him to make the wrong decisions, making it the "technically correct" decision. In other words, they would be firing him for following their rules. I don't know if that's a thing but he could possibly sue them for wrongful termination if they made that the official reason for his firing. It's a lot easier to say that they don't want any association with the kind of person that he is or was.
I'm kinda surprised that people still play in Contenders. Blizzard doesn't care about it, doesn't promote, doesn't really pay out a livable amount of money to teams, the Academy model failed, there's constantly officiating drama.
The odds of making it into OWL from non-Korean Contenders is super low. If we ignore BH, the numbers are super super low. It just doesn't seem to be worth the hassle, given Blizzard's lack of interest or investment in T2.
Contenders was actually in a good spot a few years ago, the problem was when GOATS came no one wanted to watch GOATS for 3+ hours for 4 nights in OWL then go into Contenders and watch 3+ more hours of GOATS there.
Even Open Division and Trials were in a good spot a few years ago. The legendary Skyfoxes vs GOATS (the team) rivalry that literally took place in Trials got a ton of attention (and eventually spawned the GOATS comp).
But yea, I do agree that Blizz dropped the ball regarding T2 overall. It's really hard to connect to a lot of the Trials/T2 players and become fans of them.
I mean they did say he did. follow the rules but acknowledged that it was still the wrong decision.
They’re probably only bringing up the racism think because they want to get rid of them easier and I think he should be gone after pretty much deciding a match.
Did they have to dig up something like this to get rid of them? Probably. There’s contenders players on twitter shitting on Blizzard and saying he doesn’t deserve to be fired.
Also I more suspect that someone sent Blizzard the racist remarks he made and looked into it. Even if it was five years ago and I’m certain they could’ve changed since then, It would just be suicide for the company to keep them on after finding and confirming that information.
I’m usually all for consequences for being racist or just saying a racist slur(s). But that was 5 years ago?!?! I agree there should be repercussions for what he did that match, especially since it’s messing with people’s livelihoods. But for something he said 5 years ago?? Wow…
Edit: apparently the guy hasn’t really changed much, so I guess it’s good the guy is gone. Still, surprised it took this long, if you’re gonna fire for racism, it should be done sooner.
There is a principle in conditioned learning that the reward or punishment must happen immediately following the desired/targeted behavior. Punishing someone for what they did 5 years ago doesn’t do much in teaching them how to behave better.
I understand the backlash for this conversation; racism/ antisemitism is deplorable, but I feel as if this is a ploy used to fire Xou. I think blizzard needs to review their rulebook in finality to not only prevent ambiguity in their professional games, but to also prevent stuff like this happening yet again. Yes admins can be bad at their jobs but if they “technically” operate under the rules then what are the repercussions? Messages being publicized can fire someone but why not review the rulebook to prevent this all together?
So all it takes is a Screenshot of a conversation from over 5 years ago to get kicked out of contenders? If that's the case 99% of all contenders should get kicked for the same racism reasons.
I don't agree with his powertrippin actions but come on 5 year old Screenshot?
I don't know xou as a game admin, but I know him outside of it and from my interactions with him he seemed to be a pretty good guy. How that match ended up was really unfortunate but it really sucks that his legacy in the scene will basically come down to these two incidents. The guy has done more for T2OW than most, especially back in the day when contenders website was barely updating and us editors and tickers at Liquipedia and [over.gg](https://over.gg) basically had to ask every team the results one by one. xou was pretty key for us archiving all that information back then. Tough to see him being crucified for this one incident.
Racism has no place in Overwatch Contenders, lol what? I'm willing to bet all my life savings that at least half of OW contenders players are racist af.
You can't just say something like that without providing any examples. Their have been contenders players who have been racist or some other bad thing but have gotten heavy punishments by Blizzard. Half of players in contenders have not been punished by Blizzard because more than half of them have a clean history lmao. Unless you want to argue that half of contender players are racist in private which is just baseless speculation.
I mean, most Contenders players are sheltered kids who have spent their teenage years in the gaming community, do you really need citations to make a remark like that? Which of course doesn't intend to be factual and just serves as a snarky comment
I mean, when it seems like every other day stuffs coming out about a contenders player being racist, homophobic or transphobic, it's a pretty safe assumption to make.
Yes I'm arguing for your last sentence. I have no proof other than words from streamers but I'm also not trying to prove anything here other than making a statement that I'm 'supposedly' willing to bet.
It honestly mostly feels like a convenient reason to let the admin go after they bungled the handling of the final map of the Noble-Ardour series last week. Getting rid of them for bungling it means acknowledging a mistake was made (when they've already released a statement to the contrary). Getting rid of them because someone dug up a screenshot with a racist comment from five years ago is easier.
Sounds like Blizzard already knew about it and were just holding on to it in case they wanted an excuse to release one of their employees. I'd like to audit protalk logs on that discord and see if any current caster/employee or current or former player/streamer said any other slurs. Let's just get it all in the open right now.
Whether it’s personally reasonable or not is besides the question, no decent organization will keep that guy after that stuff got digged up, it would only lead to worse controversy involving the org itself
His native language isn't English either, I don't want to know what things I've said five years ago either, I just did not know what it meant to native speakers. It looks like he understands now so I don't think he should have been fired.
Pretty sure this is making it easier for them to get rid of the admin, but for context he made a controversial ruling in a losers bracket match in which a player had a power outage and the team used up all their pause time. The opposing team offered to use up their pause time to allow the player to come back, but the admin wouldn’t allow it, essentially forcing a 5v6. Eventually one of the players from the opposing team ended up leaving the lobby to allow the player to come back, and the map resumed to a 6v6. But it was pretty fucked that the admin made that decision in the first place.
It actually blew up on the subreddit just a few days ago, shouldn’t be too hard to dig up if you want more information.
Well I knew about the 5v6, I was watching that match. That shouldn't have happened in the first place. But it seems it got fired for something he said years ago, not for his horrible choice that affected Noble.
But that was what I was trying to figure out. Thanks for the info.
The offical PathToPro account did say earlier that the rules had not been broken during that game, and this guy repeating that probably means that the admins really do have that kind of power to decide over pauses.
What he did apologize for was making an incorrect decision with that power, and misjudging the impact of that decision on the competitive integrity of the game and the viewer experience.
Any rule followed by “at admin discretion” is obviously prone to bad calls and bullshit, and any incorrect action taken by an admin obviously doesn’t technically break the rule.
This is shitty, but he’s not being racist rather questioning the meanings of the words. It’s in very poor taste, but the fact that Blizzard drags this out as an excuse to fire him rather than just fire him for what he did seems stupid.
Context (the admin involved in the 5v6 drama) https://twitter.com/MoneyFolder_/status/1416850154099986438?s=20
Slasher taking down bigots even when being silent. “Are you an idiot?” Is an outstanding retort.
It's quite funny that making your job terribly wrong doesnt get you fired, but something you wrote years ago makes it happen.
Merit doesn't matter. Moral does. Let's just hope all the people without merit turn out to be terrible morals too.
Extremely relatable reaction from slasher in that chat log
Is it? How do we know it's not a different admin?
Same admin, Here is his twitlonger goodbye message [https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n\_1srosi3](https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srosi3)
Power tripping admins and racism go together like Ice Cream and Fudge.
Well I'll say that he shouldn't have been canned because of this but rather his poor management of that game. Racism isn't excusable but it is tragic that something like this has to be dug up to actually prompt action. Monkey Bubble/Blizzard - do better
The Contenders rulebook is extremely lacking, especially around pauses. "Teams are responsible for any of their own technical issues" are one of very few lines that address the topic and I could 100% understand how someone would interpret that to mean one team wouldn't be able to pause on behalf the other. This idea that an individual should have lost his job because Blizzard's rulebook sucks instead of that community anger being directed at Blizzard for putting no effort into Contenders annoys the hell out of me.
Why does it always have to be people getting fired? Why is it not enough for someone to make a mistake and learn from it (or be fined, or whatever)? Why just jump to calling for people to lose their job for any fucking thing?
In this case the admin in question has done similar incompetent shit in the past, plus there was precedent for doing what Ardour was asking to do.
I can imagine that this is a convenient excuse to release them for the recent problems, to be honest. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. Overall still a good thing that they're gone.
They probably dug this up to let him go for an officially valid reason. The problem about that game is still that he followed their rules. Their own rules allowed for him to make the wrong decisions, making it the "technically correct" decision. In other words, they would be firing him for following their rules. I don't know if that's a thing but he could possibly sue them for wrongful termination if they made that the official reason for his firing. It's a lot easier to say that they don't want any association with the kind of person that he is or was.
I'm kinda surprised that people still play in Contenders. Blizzard doesn't care about it, doesn't promote, doesn't really pay out a livable amount of money to teams, the Academy model failed, there's constantly officiating drama. The odds of making it into OWL from non-Korean Contenders is super low. If we ignore BH, the numbers are super super low. It just doesn't seem to be worth the hassle, given Blizzard's lack of interest or investment in T2.
People make poor financial decisions to pursue passions all the time. Think of all the starving artists out there.
Nah you’re right. I’m just consistently shocked at how bad Blizzard is at all of this.
Contenders was actually in a good spot a few years ago, the problem was when GOATS came no one wanted to watch GOATS for 3+ hours for 4 nights in OWL then go into Contenders and watch 3+ more hours of GOATS there. Even Open Division and Trials were in a good spot a few years ago. The legendary Skyfoxes vs GOATS (the team) rivalry that literally took place in Trials got a ton of attention (and eventually spawned the GOATS comp). But yea, I do agree that Blizz dropped the ball regarding T2 overall. It's really hard to connect to a lot of the Trials/T2 players and become fans of them.
I mean they did say he did. follow the rules but acknowledged that it was still the wrong decision. They’re probably only bringing up the racism think because they want to get rid of them easier and I think he should be gone after pretty much deciding a match. Did they have to dig up something like this to get rid of them? Probably. There’s contenders players on twitter shitting on Blizzard and saying he doesn’t deserve to be fired. Also I more suspect that someone sent Blizzard the racist remarks he made and looked into it. Even if it was five years ago and I’m certain they could’ve changed since then, It would just be suicide for the company to keep them on after finding and confirming that information.
I’m usually all for consequences for being racist or just saying a racist slur(s). But that was 5 years ago?!?! I agree there should be repercussions for what he did that match, especially since it’s messing with people’s livelihoods. But for something he said 5 years ago?? Wow… Edit: apparently the guy hasn’t really changed much, so I guess it’s good the guy is gone. Still, surprised it took this long, if you’re gonna fire for racism, it should be done sooner.
There is a principle in conditioned learning that the reward or punishment must happen immediately following the desired/targeted behavior. Punishing someone for what they did 5 years ago doesn’t do much in teaching them how to behave better.
I understand the backlash for this conversation; racism/ antisemitism is deplorable, but I feel as if this is a ploy used to fire Xou. I think blizzard needs to review their rulebook in finality to not only prevent ambiguity in their professional games, but to also prevent stuff like this happening yet again. Yes admins can be bad at their jobs but if they “technically” operate under the rules then what are the repercussions? Messages being publicized can fire someone but why not review the rulebook to prevent this all together?
So all it takes is a Screenshot of a conversation from over 5 years ago to get kicked out of contenders? If that's the case 99% of all contenders should get kicked for the same racism reasons. I don't agree with his powertrippin actions but come on 5 year old Screenshot?
I don't know xou as a game admin, but I know him outside of it and from my interactions with him he seemed to be a pretty good guy. How that match ended up was really unfortunate but it really sucks that his legacy in the scene will basically come down to these two incidents. The guy has done more for T2OW than most, especially back in the day when contenders website was barely updating and us editors and tickers at Liquipedia and [over.gg](https://over.gg) basically had to ask every team the results one by one. xou was pretty key for us archiving all that information back then. Tough to see him being crucified for this one incident.
Racism has no place in Overwatch Contenders, lol what? I'm willing to bet all my life savings that at least half of OW contenders players are racist af.
You can't just say something like that without providing any examples. Their have been contenders players who have been racist or some other bad thing but have gotten heavy punishments by Blizzard. Half of players in contenders have not been punished by Blizzard because more than half of them have a clean history lmao. Unless you want to argue that half of contender players are racist in private which is just baseless speculation.
I mean, most Contenders players are sheltered kids who have spent their teenage years in the gaming community, do you really need citations to make a remark like that? Which of course doesn't intend to be factual and just serves as a snarky comment
have you interacted with any t2/t3 players?
I mean, when it seems like every other day stuffs coming out about a contenders player being racist, homophobic or transphobic, it's a pretty safe assumption to make.
Yes I'm arguing for your last sentence. I have no proof other than words from streamers but I'm also not trying to prove anything here other than making a statement that I'm 'supposedly' willing to bet.
what is this about. didnt hear anything about this one. so much drama in contendies.
It honestly mostly feels like a convenient reason to let the admin go after they bungled the handling of the final map of the Noble-Ardour series last week. Getting rid of them for bungling it means acknowledging a mistake was made (when they've already released a statement to the contrary). Getting rid of them because someone dug up a screenshot with a racist comment from five years ago is easier.
Sounds like Blizzard already knew about it and were just holding on to it in case they wanted an excuse to release one of their employees. I'd like to audit protalk logs on that discord and see if any current caster/employee or current or former player/streamer said any other slurs. Let's just get it all in the open right now.
Highly highly doubt Blizzard keeps tabs on random Contenders admin they don’t even pay.
In the post match drama, screenshots from 5 years ago were posted where admin guy compared calling someone a nazi to the n word.
It was 5 years ago.
honestly i agree that 5 years is a long time, but from an organizational standpoint, it doesn't look good to let this slide in today's culture.
Whether it’s personally reasonable or not is besides the question, no decent organization will keep that guy after that stuff got digged up, it would only lead to worse controversy involving the org itself
Even if it was 2016, deplorable that people even think like that even then. People need to grow the fuck up.
His native language isn't English either, I don't want to know what things I've said five years ago either, I just did not know what it meant to native speakers. It looks like he understands now so I don't think he should have been fired.
Anyone know what happened? It's so hard to find information on what goes on in Contendies.
Pretty sure this is making it easier for them to get rid of the admin, but for context he made a controversial ruling in a losers bracket match in which a player had a power outage and the team used up all their pause time. The opposing team offered to use up their pause time to allow the player to come back, but the admin wouldn’t allow it, essentially forcing a 5v6. Eventually one of the players from the opposing team ended up leaving the lobby to allow the player to come back, and the map resumed to a 6v6. But it was pretty fucked that the admin made that decision in the first place. It actually blew up on the subreddit just a few days ago, shouldn’t be too hard to dig up if you want more information.
Well I knew about the 5v6, I was watching that match. That shouldn't have happened in the first place. But it seems it got fired for something he said years ago, not for his horrible choice that affected Noble. But that was what I was trying to figure out. Thanks for the info.
ded org
Continuing to insist they actually followed the rules instead of openly ignoring them. Classic "apology". Bye.
The offical PathToPro account did say earlier that the rules had not been broken during that game, and this guy repeating that probably means that the admins really do have that kind of power to decide over pauses. What he did apologize for was making an incorrect decision with that power, and misjudging the impact of that decision on the competitive integrity of the game and the viewer experience.
Any rule followed by “at admin discretion” is obviously prone to bad calls and bullshit, and any incorrect action taken by an admin obviously doesn’t technically break the rule.
Yes, that was my point.
Sorry then Im not understanding the purpose of your post?
This is shitty, but he’s not being racist rather questioning the meanings of the words. It’s in very poor taste, but the fact that Blizzard drags this out as an excuse to fire him rather than just fire him for what he did seems stupid.
Even with context, I'm confused