Esports teams and organisations are continuing to raise the bar for professionalism and moral conduct among players, as following a racist rant by one pro-gamer he has been dropped by his Overwatch team: Toronto Esports.
28-year-old Matt "Dellor" Vaughn had a particularly tough game of Overwatch over the weekend, finding his head shot clean off on many an occasion by a highly skilled opponent playing Widowmaker. He was frustrated as many people might have been, but proceeded to take that frustration out in-game, throwing out racial slurs for a steady 25 seconds straight.
Funnily enough, Vaughn's fanbase were watching him on Twitch - as is common among many professional gamers - and one of them was recording it. They sent that recording on to his team and low and behold, they fired him.
"I f***** up and deserve to be dropped from Toronto Esports, I won't try to argue or make an excuse, I don't have any," Vaughn said in a statement (via PVPLive). "I just want people to know what happened. I was having a really bad day. Didn't get much sleep, twitch wouldn't work for 2 hours after I woke up, and once it finally did, my internet was lagging. So I was pretty upset from the moment I woke up."
That didn't wash with Toronto Esports, which dropped him pretty damn quickly after this incident came to light.
"Toronto Esports is an organization built on inclusivity, and we have always had a zero-tolerance policy for any forms of discrimination," said Toronto Esports President Ryan Pallett. "Immediately upon learning of the incident, the player was interviewed, admitted to the offence, and was notified that his contract with the organization was being terminated."
While Vaughn sees this incident as a wake up call, it may be a career-ending one. The internet rarely forgets and his name is now severely tarnished. At the very least, this incident has killed a couple of years of his gaming prime. He may never recover.
It goes to show that whatever your personal beliefs, feelings or frustrations, when you're a professional, you need to act as such when representing yourself and your team in public.
