Recently there is a controversy regarding a professional Overwatch player quitting. The player who goes by the name of Ellie recently quit her position on Team Second Wing. The announcement was followed by a series of tweets by the owner. Justin Hughes,l the owner of Second Wind publicly spoke on Twitter accusing the community of hypocrisy. He blamed the community for constantly pushing the player to reveal her true identity.
In fact, he believes that the constant pushing by the community is what led the first female Overwatch Contenders player to quit.
(2/2) their Messiah. Between needing a player to live up to huge expectations and having to question their own safety, it seems that the OW community isn’t ready to just view a player as just a player. We wanted a player, but it seemed like the public wanted something else.
— Justin Hughes (@SwerteSiJustin) January 2, 2019
Despite constant urging on part of the community, Ellie never streamed herself live. She did speak on stream in an attempt to verify her own identity. However, the lack of any face-cam definitely was one of the biggest reasons for the suspicions. Several pros like Dafran also had their doubts about the player’s identity.
Ellie wasn’t the person playing on her account.
Regarding Ellie:
– Ellie has said in private messages to teammates in the last hour confirming she has not been the one playing, she is a 17-year old girl but is ‘not good’ at OW, no Second Wind players/mgmt knew
– Blizzard is currently holding a meeting with SW players/mgmt— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) January 4, 2019
I have received screenshots of Punisher in a private message conversation with a woman Overwatch player ‘Catsui’, who was not aware of this incident until recently. Punisher, seen in a Battlenet conversation under Ellie, uses his ‘egirl smurf’ to grief OWL and other top players. pic.twitter.com/K1Tb2PFVLL
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) January 5, 2019
Catsui tells me over the phone that Punisher also proposed to her a similar ‘social experiment’ as his playing through/with Ellie, and she says that he apparently had asked several women in the Overwatch community the same.
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) January 5, 2019
According to Rod ‘Slasher’ Breslau, Ellie was not the person playing from her account. A twitch clip by Aspen says that the Ellie account was a social experiment. You can find the clip here. She claims that Ellie is actually PunisherOW [ another Pro player ]. He started this as a social experiment and did not expect things to go so out of hand.
This so-called social experiment is a huge blow to female participation in overwatch. In an industry already seeing minimal female involvement, creating a fake identity, joining a team and playing at the top tier is unacceptable. We wonder what Blizzard has to say on this matter. Hopefully, they will take some action against the professional player for his conduct and attitude regarding the whole episode.
