RattieRebecca 🐭 · @RattieRebecca
8th Feb 2022 from TwitLonger
VIOLET leaving @MotifEsports due to harassment, lack of human decency, racism.
Whenever I want to join any kind of organisation one of the the things that stay in top of my lists and have to be included is human decency and mutual understanding.
At first when I was joining Motif, you could’ve never seen the fact that certain people will be problematic and will cause that huge issues for our team and complicate our lives so much.
As I have said in the original tweet, the players during these few weeks have met with sexual harassment, racism, yet it’s not “just” those things, but it’s few among many many others and I could just talk and talk about it. To be honest, I have felt like a bird trapped in it’s cage, never being able to spread my wing and freely fly and enjoy my stay in the organisation.
Here are some examples of issues that made me feel trapped and being taken control of:
Although I know the founder can do anything he wants, but I really do feel like he should give his player free hand and trust them in certain things. It has started with really minor and small things, such as the organisation members invading our team privacy and not letting us have any private chat. We were not allowed to have a chat just with us girls and the coach. When the coach told them that we will create a private server, where we will have our strats etc, they declined and said that we won’t. Basically forced us into something we were not comfortable with and that was way too complicated for us - using Google Disc to save EVERYTHING. Why would the way we learn the game be a problem to the owner, as long as we are getting good results?
They have all the time interfered with our trainings and process of learning. Threatening our coach and putting him into VERY uncomfortable position where they kept saying they will give us some kind of another analyst or second coach none of us wanted. We were not interested in anyone else being there with us, it would make things even more chaotic.
Although they’ve been invested in our training so much, on the other hand they did not even know when we had official tournaments. We have been in the middle of the VCT match and they randomly tagged us, telling us to go play rankeds with them.
Before VCT instead of words of encouragement, we have received words such as that we are boosted. That honestly does not put us in a hype before a tournament, don’t you think? It let certain players down. We have been over and over called boosted all over the place and especially behind our backs. But not just boosted, but MANY other things that leave taste of disgust in my
mouth as I could never imagine that could be an organisation that is trying to promote itself, get better and try to treat their players fair. The organisation was anything BUT treating the players fair and nice.
I have never felt appreciated in the organisation, no matter how I have played, I have never been rewarded with nice words.
All they kept telling me personally to keep it professional, but I have never acted not professional. I have been straightforward to them, not sugarcoating anything. The ones who have complained about professionalism, have been the ones breaking it the most, the founder itself. Disrespecting his own players, discouraging them, back talking them etc.
I do not even want to talk about the sexual harassment ongoing in the organisation. All I can say is that I have personally not been harmed in this case in any way and all I can say is that I feel very sorry for what the girls had to go through. I have heard only some remarks on me, but nothing as crucial as others. I am really too stunned to speak…
The organisation is from the United Kingdom, therefore most of the staff has also been UK. There is a lot of racism going towards non-UK players. In particular our Turkish player, Mercy. She had to deal with targeted racism towards her, which has been shown publicly on a twitch stream of the organisation’s member. The person has not done anything with the racism she was being put through by a person the member knows. Although it was in chat, therefore he was at the same time breaking the basics of Twitch TOS. The people then tried to justify racism and did not even want to accept their own mistake. Although after she’s been apologised to, the racist remarks have been continued and she has never felt comfortable in the organisation itself again, especially because we were not allowed to have any kind of personal team space, she was basically forced to stay on one place with the same people who she knew hated her.
Us, Czech members of the team have been laughed at for our English, due to the fact that we do not have a perfect accent and because English is not our first language. Especially our coach Jarda, because he also has Czech accent when speaking English. There is nothing wrong with that though and again, it just made us feel less worthy and VERY uncomfortable.
We have not been given anything in the organisation, only problems and issues that long lasted and have never been resolved. We have always been promised “we will fix it”. But the damage has been already done. Our players are damaged by the issues and things that have happened and left us with a very unpleasant experience with the organisation and the founder himself who has never understood our needs and feelings. The number one thing has been broken and that is understanding we are also human and empathy.
Please treat your players the way you want to be treated. Make sure you create the safe space we have not been given. If not, things may end bad for you as a beginning small organisation, which is trying to gain respect and place in esports. Karma in life will most definitely get to you.