In this day and age, racism is universally agreed upon to be a bad thing and yet, some people think and say it out loud all the time, from behind closed doors to up upon the Internet for the world to see, it’s not hard to find racist comments even if you weren’t looking for it.
One such case has fallen upon two professional Dota 2 players, KuKu and Skem for making racist comments against professional chinese players. The statement that started it all can be seen down below.
But although it was regarded as a bad move by everyone, what actually split the community in two was when people from China started to review bomb Dota 2 and threatening Kuku And Skemberlu, with rumors of a Chinese team refusing to scrim TNC. Skemberlu was then given a fine and Kuku apologized on Facebook.
While we all thought things would end there, it didn’t.
In fact, during mid-November, valve had to step in and issue a statement regarding conduct and racism, as seen down below.
In late November however, rumours then started floating around that KuKu and Skemberlu would not be allowed by the Tournament Organizers/local government to attend the at the time upcoming ChongQing Major should they qualify, with it being confirmed by people within the scene.
The team organizations were quick to punish their players for their conduct but things really started to get turnt up to 11 when Skem was kicked from CoL before the major qualifiers, with Cyborgmatt saying that this was due to the pressure from the ChongQing local Chinese government with CoL Beef saying that it was not related at all. This prompted discussing between prominent figures within the community as they wanted a clarification from Valve themselves about this situation along with the idea that Valve cannot allow the governments or Tournament Organizers to ban players as it would set a damaging precedent as players can just be banned for arbitrary causes.
As soon as news about the bans broke, several figures began publicly announcing that they will not be working with the ChongQing Major should KuKu be banned from attending, with names such as RedEye, Bulldog, Grant, Godz stating it in tweets.
TNC then receives information after mass protests on Twitter and Reddit about the situation that while KuKu isn’t technically banned, there is a chance he will not be allowed entry into China, or if he makes in into China, the tournament might be cancelled by the local government and the most absurd of it all was the TO also said that they cannot guarantee KuKu’s safety. Which many people took as a threat.
But all stories must come to a close, and the story of ChongQing Major ends with Valve releasing a statement essentially banning KuKu from playing in the Major and TNC was found to be dishonest in handling and manipulating the situation, TNC would also be deducted 20% of any Dota Pro Circuit points that they earned from the Major.
What do you think? Was the situation handled properly? What could have been done to fix the situation?
Header image source from here.
