Classic blackface while hurling racial epithets in an attempt at juvenile humor; for some racism is a lifestyle and they manage to not see how it shows more of the racists’ intelligence than anyone else’s.
Within Overwatch’s Open Division, the grassroots scene that marks the beginning of the path to pro, there is an openly racist team that has been playing; be forewarned that this piece does have slurs within it as we attempt to report fairly and honestly.
The team’s name within the current tournament is Nice One, Good Round which they classlessly shortened to N1GR; the vast majority of their posts searching for teammates has been rampantly racist and white supremacist as they show cartoons with blackface and request teammates that are ‘radically racist’ around 4.4 to 4.5K ELO.
for security and safety, keep these images alive and floating across the internet so that these specks of human garbage, lower than the shit i excrete from my body daily, never get to play and are publicly humiliated via Omegle/Chaturbate pic.twitter.com/Wi7nUPo5sa
— hiisuya (@therealhiisuya) August 15, 2020
This isn’t even a level where you could imply an accidental slip; the entirety of the team (and the subhumans that willingly joined) exists apparently to only announce that their brains don’t function fully, and black people are somehow inhuman.
Talking to OD admins resulted in this –
"Unfortunately, we cannot control what a player might post on twitter. However, if they post anything of the likes on their team page, or use racial slurs in-game, they will be removed."— Joseph (@Oraclezzzz) August 15, 2020
Many called upon Blizzard to step forwards and immediately slap the team down, with many wondering how they managed to get this far into Open Division with their casual and implicit racism emanating from every post and image.
Reports were made and taken to Blizzard. Team name was now edited by admins and the team will be removed from the tournament as well. pic.twitter.com/0QTQ17M5FT
— MB Reflash (@ReflashProd) August 15, 2020
They were scheduled against a first-round opponent, yet many OD teams publically stated that they refuse to play against the team whatsoever.
This is coming from the biggest shit posters in this scene, we are not playing this trashcan of a team @Nice1GoodRound. @owpathtopro You need to address this team now. Shame on anyone that doesn't snub every subhuman on this list. pic.twitter.com/IyXRmLUFjm
— 6ixGuns (@6ixGunsOfficial) August 15, 2020
Ultimately, this is a story of the community banding together once the time was found to be playing in OD of Overwatch, and the punishment was quickly pieced out to the team; there is currently no news on whether the individual members themselves are going to be permanently banned from competitive play, but many are hoping that they will.
There’s simply no excuse to allow this drivel a platform. Regardless of Blizzard’s speed to rectify this when it came to light an hour before publication, this incident is absolutely haunting for two specific reasons.
First, six individuals were able to look at this branding and align themselves with the overall message of white-supremacy, regardless of whether or not they thought they would actually have a chance to play.
The second is that there is clearly very little regular oversight into Open Division, concerning considering that it is the first step players should be taking to reach the pro tier of Overwatch. While Contenders has been left out in the cold for ages, it never registered for many that Open Division has apparently even less oversight than Contenders.