Official statement
August 7, 2018
The European Team Fortress 2 League and its sponsors STN-Trading and scrap.tf distance themselves from the behavior of two premiership players, 
Pred and 
gedu, on the social media platform Twitter. The aforementioned individuals are in no way representatives of our league, its staff or its community. We strictly condemn any kind of racism, sexism or intolerance towards people of different cultures, religions, countries, genders or sexual orientation. Our entire staff is shocked by the abuse that one of our most respected and loved members of this community had to suffer and feels nothing but compassion for 
uberchain.
Like everyone else we believe it is our duty to take action in the matter. However, it is important to consider that neither Pred or gedu, as insulting and disgusting as their behavior was, have broken any match or forum rules. The offence in question happened on a third party service without an affiliation to ETF2L or the TF2 community. Unlike professional esport leagues we do not have any kind of contract with our teams and players that would have been broken. The expectation of some to remove these players from the league altogether cannot be met.
That said: premiership players, while not being representatives of the league, often function as role models for beginners and younger players. We cannot and will not let this matter simply slide. We want to raise everyone’s awareness of toxic behavior inside our small community and call out the people responsible for creating an unpleasant environment.
Behaving in such a way will not be rewarded.
Thus, as a result of their actions, gedu will not be eligible to nominate or be nominated for the Season 30 sponsored by STN-Trading & scrap.tf award polls.
We will also be issuing the following bans:
gedu will be banned from all ETF2L competitions for 2 months.
Pred will be banned from all ETF2L competitions until the end of the year.
Furthermore, 
the bin– who Pred is a leader for and hence is a representative of the team – will only be awarded 50% of their prize money for season 30. The other half of €175 in total will be donated to a charity of uberchain‘s choice which supports victims of sexual harassment and abuse. Our sponsors as well as uberchain have welcomed the idea of sending a message this way. We are aware that this is only a small gesture, but a signal like this can go a long way.
Reconsidering our approach
The events of this week will have us relook at our rules and policies. In the past some violations of our rules regarding verbal abuse and harassment have not been followed up on thoroughly. We will question ourselves, our rules and the punishment for violations of those for the future. At the time of this post being published there are already plans to huddle up with other community websites and services in order to work out a community-wide report system.
Toxicity and discrimination have no place in our league and our community!
ETF2L on social media:
Follow us on twitter!
Like us on Facebook!
Join our Steamgroup and invite your friends!
Use our Discord!
Posted by ETF2L Staff in 6v6, League, Sponsors
content rss
lmao
Thank you.
cya nerds
Is pred a leader of the bin if he played 1 official?
??????
:)
pregu
??????
wow
Thank you.
Thank you
Thank you etf2l admins for taking a clear stance on this!
rellok
good stuff
thank you
this is stupid srsly
Thank you
Thank you. These people have caused so much damage to the league and the scene, and them being banned is absolutely a fair punishment.
Thank you
Uberchain is really nice! Why would you even target her in the first place
deserved
22:32 – Dr. Degunator: zaaaaaas :D :D :D
Thank you.
Hopefully this is a step for a better community overall. Thank you.
22:33 – degucz: why this jackie chan banned me ? :DDDDDDDD
thank you for taking action. Uberchain is a friend of a friend, I hate to hear this.
Thank you
Well done, ETF2L.
wow, didnt think this would actually happen
what talking shit online has to do with playing on etf2l
^
Being racist, harassing =/= talking shit online
@eLs as it was sexual and you could say mental abuse with toxic parts… and that reflects the league too as people know to get cancerous and that will manipulate/insult other players and that way will bring them down while those same submissive’d person might have a greater future and more potential when it comes to skill/game wise and that will put a bad reputation upon ETF2L as then it would show as if they show that as accepted way of behaviour
Good job @etf2l
But looks like people like els still havent understood anything.
like honestly all degu did was post a meme picture and like pred’s comment and he gets banned for 2 months.
it’s kinda sad to see etf2l admins feel like they have to take action because of 1 thread full of demanding and sensitive NA players.
Where do you draw the line though?
I could link you dozens of (respectable) (high level) players with very controversial weapon names and/or quotes, are those subject to a ban as well?
I support making TF2 a more welcome and less toxic environment and I don’t want to downplay what both of them have done, but just exiling these two individuals really won’t solve the bigger underlying issues.
LUL
thank you for not sitting this one out, very much deserved
thank you
I don’t appreciate that ETF2L goes out of their way to police the behavior of players, especially when it happens on other platforms. This is not a concern of ETF2L. It is not even a concern of the TF2 community. This is something that happened between these people and if any of it was illegal (which I honestly didn’t get the impression it was) a legal court should handle it.
ban who you want but cutting the prize money from ppl who did nothing is stupid, if you want to do a class act and give money to a charity don’t take it from people who were promised to get a prize. if anything you take 1/6th of the money that would have gone to pred
“The events of this week will have us relook at our rules and policies. In the past some violations of our rules regarding verbal abuse and harassment have not been followed up on thoroughly. We will question ourselves, our rules and the punishment for violations of those for the future. ”
It’s like you all didn’t even read the post.
@Amadeus, etf2l is a non-profit organization that cares about its image, and if they feel like somebody is messing with said image it’s completely within their right & reason to ban that person(s) from playing in the league.
Well they didn’t improve their image towards me. I think this demonstrates that they support unfair mob justice which I find very objectionable.
Just like Adje said,if you want to cut harassment/aids circlejerks/washed up prem shitheads from being complete human garbage to people i would say we shall enforce the bans more strictly on “Every” trash talk instances whose purpose is to dehumanize/make a player feel not welcome in the league.Both in game and other public places
Personally i know that degu is a memer(like using the syringes instead of crosbow during the entire pug with me & similar things) and he crossed the line unwillingly probably because he didn’t think hard enough about what he is doing.Could have let him go with 1 month ban instead but obviously i’m not a part of the staff for these decisions
^ good luck with that
because using unconventional weapons in a videogame is the same as telling a victim of abuse to not speak out on their experiences lmao the lengths some ppl go
‘Unlike professional E-Sport leagues we do not have any kind of contract with our teams and players that would have been broken’
‘But preds/degus teams will only be awarded 50% of their prizemoney for last season’
So we’re going to punish the innocent other portion of the player’s teams because fuck it lol
This is actually a really bad decision.
ETF2L cannot and should not attempt to police the social media posts of it’s playerbase.
While Pred’s message was deeply unpleasant, you are simply bowing to mob justice, due to a high-profile female victim. Degu seems to have been banned simply for ‘liking’ an offensive post, which goes to show how arbitrary this ruling is.
Players have and always will insult each other, including in discriminatory ways, which is regrettable but also overreaching outside of the remit of ETF2L is frankly concerning and will not be uniformally enforceable.
I’m not against disciplinary consequences for toxic behaviour in principle. In fact I think ETF2L developing and code of conduct which is a bit more consistently enforced is an excellent move, but it should probably try to be more realistic in scope.
Are you going to punish any form racism, sexism etc. onwards? How are you going to police it. Does it cover all future incidents and are you going ban players for previous statements? This doesn’t seem right, i bet nobody wants to deal with it.
I guess the punishment isn’t really that harsh and this thing will soon enough forgotten so nobody really cares.
The bans are totally deserved, keep up the good work etf2l!
ETF2L going a dangerous route in my opinion. Both degu and Pred didn’t use any ETF2L related forms in this incident, so you have no right to police them. As stated above: where do you draw the line? Where do you start and where do you stop monitoring people?
“so you have no right to police them.” how do they not have the right to do so?
I agree its a dangerous route and i hope that in the future similar incidents even on not famous victims will get punished equally, and that staff will deal with reports regarding this, even if that means banning / punishing more prem players.
But yea, drawing the line is gonna be pretty difficult and if youre not going to have a super strict policy then there might be punishments going out on the staffs subjective feeling of “how offensive” a certain statement is.
and babs gets a free pass or what
I’m not saying edgy weapon names in a video game and making jokes about sexual abuse are comparable at all and I’m definitely not saying I approve of degu and pred’s actions (quite the contrary), both of them can stay banned for all I care. If you do stupid stuff during a party and your boss sees your nudes on Facebook the day after, you’re also going to get fired without warning the next day. From that point of view I can see why things transpired as they did.
I’m saying that if you’re going to hand out league bans for things that happened on a third party service/exhibit other behavior that is considered racist, sexist, islamophobic, transphobic, homophobic etc. you need to show consistency. That’s why the rules are there in the first place, so admins can be consistent in their actions regarding who gets banned and who doesn’t.
This means that all people should be treated equally if situations like these arise and there should be strict guidelines/at least some form of discussion regarding what’s tolerable and what’s not. Are people going to get banned for typing rude things in matches, be it scrims, pugs, matches now without second thought and regardless of context? Are we going to treat people who drop n-bombs the same as people who call others autistic? Will people get bans for calling NA players ‘burgers’ because that’s dehumanizing and stereotypical? How are you going to rank situations like this, are you actually going to look at each case specifically? Is everyone who uses a word with negative connotations going to get witch hunted? Will saying anything bad about a person as a player be considered a personal attack? Whose job is it to play ‘ETF2L Police’ and judge similar actions? Is anything that is not approved by the TFTV/ETF2L mob going to be punished from now on? If one of my friends says a word with bad connotations in a context where none of the people involved feel insulted, degraded or assaulted, does that mean things are fine or will you treat these scenarios like any other?
People need to see things more long term than just this incident if they want to move on from here. All I’m saying is that you’re treading dangerous ground.
tl;dr sexual abuse is not to be laughed about but there should be transparency regarding what’s acceptable and what’s not, especially for these smaller cases which happen more frequently
Really well said, and I appreciate your continued effort to provide us with a safe and supportive community.
and by the way if the etf2l staff actually reads this if you guys ban them now you need to be way harsher in the future if not this is gonna turn into other bullshit and ppl will forget this
More important than the bans is taking 50% of the prizepool away from the entire team just because pred was on the team is a very poor decision. The other players had nothing to do with what was said and it’s unfair, collective punishment.
On top of being unfaire to the other players of their teams, I don’t think that the ETF2L staff should take action on things that happened outside of their service.
cheers
The guilt by association style of this ban both on degu and the teams prize earnings seems really hefty. Looks simply like you guys are overcompensating to show good boy points.
Chat shit get banged rule applies to ETF2L now? sad
Thank you for taking action as well as an official stance. I hope this results in a consistent treatment of similar behavior.
Stripping people of the teams prize earnings because of 1 person is really stupid. Also in general banning people on your site because of something someone wrote on social media? You want us to go on a witch hunt and start banning half the community for something they have written once?
the funny part is that when giel said hes not gonna pay the money a few hours later they just cut half of the money which would be giel’s part hmmm
i mean that was explained pretty clearly that it would be donated to charity. if its not im sure uberchain and then others will be on that immediately
firstly theres already previous precedent set where people got banned for doing stuff outside of the etf2l domain, (like hacking in mge against an etf2l admin #drotolation #clarkoftheseason #engimain)
secondly its up to etf2l if they want to police the entire playerbase or just premiership players, theres already precedent here as well since several special rules apply to premiership division.
if you cant deal with this then dont play in prem (which most people complaining about this ruling arent anyway)
thirdly, fucjking weeeb admins
Massive respect to you guys for taking this stand especially since this kind of behavior has become pretty common in our scene (sadly). I do agree that the prize money punishment is excessive but I understand why you did this, you are making a stance and making sure new players in our scene know we won’t put up with this crap so you need to set an example.
I far prefer this than simply sweeping this issue aside, please make this a regular punishment and make sure the rules clearly state what is and isn’t acceptable for consistency and clarity.
Great stuff ETF2L!
In my opinion we always preserve the right the punish people for actions outside of this platform if the actions of said players have a direct impact on the league. Prem players should realise they are the face of this league and should act accordingly.After all their actions will be not only be looked at by the admin team but also by a broader public.
Its always irritating me how people can cheer for this ban in the same message where they ridicule others for watching anime :(
i bet if uberchain was a male then nothing would’ve happend lmao everyone whiteknighting so hard
imagine going to jail irl for 2/4 months for insulting someone on twitter
imagine comparing ban from competing in videogames to incarceration
the lengths some ppl go [2]
Thanks :з
@dabidibam in russia every year around 20 or more ppl go in jail for like 1-3 years for talking shit in social media
cutting prize money is bad decision imo. It’s really unfair, collective punishment
lol
degu getting banned is actually ridiculous. #unbandegu
this is very funny
why i am not still banned?
lets ban everyone who is a meanie in the interwebs and take their money while we are at it :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
being a meanie =/= being racist
*observes*
cringe
i would like for an admin to answer this questions:
the whole team is is taking 50% off their prize money because Pred has leader has his title on the roster? how does this make any sense? and why not take his personal cut?
degu getting banned is a joke.
@31 they don’t pay individuals, they only pay a representative from the team.
From knowing The Bin guys considering Pred stopped playing weeks ago he was never likely to receive any prize money anyway.
I honestly think part of it has to do with a certain admins biased against certain players on the Bin – Furthermore doing this actually doesn’t single out what he has done rather only actually punishes people for being on a team with him. Mon for example, guy who never says a bad word to anyone despite being a teammate with some people loses out because admins want to make Bin an example. Make Pred an example, not the whole team who didn’t do anything.
I stated before I think these sorts of decisions off site are a dangerous precedent to set – tacking racism, sexism and “harassment” is something that should be taken seriously but does it stop at Twitter? I seen countless examples of similar situations done in a discreet manner whether it’s through IM’s, on Twitter also, through Twitch chat, through Forum DM’s or on Discord groups on other websites and some perpetrators are posting on TFTV as if they are so clean.
If this is truly a new age for TF2 now this has been implemented, I hope they are at least consistent, I don’t mean retrospective bans but I do mean ETF2L now has a new role to Police the TF2 community in a wider role, since it’s taken this step solely on the back of pressure.
lolrip
This seems like a good action. No reason to act this way if you’re in prem (or other, but then you don’t get the spotlight).
The argument that you’re submitting to mob rule doesn’t grip well here it seems.
Most people seem to dislike the behaviour of Pred etc, even those who disagree with the punitive action. How about accepting a move towards making such things disqualifying? If you’re gonna pull the “omg my freedoms outside etf2l” thing I think you’re just gonna get psychonalaysed by others thinking you’re some petty fool wanting to claim some right to not get policed just to feel better for themselves when they do nothing to fix the matter. lol
eyy guys btw did you know people from western ex communist countries like those guys’ nationalities on mean average have the same acceptance for homosexuality etc and female leadership as western european people from the 1930’s
we should unban them for this
and so it begins
Вернуть СССР
You should now be very carefull if you want to make “bad joke” about random people on random forum or social network, ETF2L will ban you if you get reported by some fucking retards.
How to split and so kill the community faster than ever
I love this idea that finally policing discrimination is going to be what kills TF2.
Tagg’s youtube channel has 77000 subscribers, and his twitch channel has 45000. Those channels no-longer broadcast comp TF2. Was allowing a culture of casual racism to fester to the point that Tagg decided to leave:
A) really good for comp TF2
B) maybe not great for TF2
C) I’m not racist, I just think everyone should be able to say it
Help me I’m not great at maths.
What are you now ETF2L?
ETF2LGBT+
??
I have no idea what these two internet criminals said but @uberchain there is such a thing as turning off the monitor, or blocking the people in question. complaining about “cyber bullying” and getting admins to ban the players in question for something that happened on twitter is ridiculous. and the 50% off the prize pool is even more ridiculous.
“a charity of uberchain‘s choice which supports victims of sexual harassment and abuse.” how the fuck can you be sexually harassed in the fucking internet? this is mad. and “abuse”? uberchain (idk the gender and seeing this shit i might just get banned for assuming it wrong) could literally block the users in Twitter and the whole thing would be over, but i guess someone really likes to play the victim card.
This official statement also starts with “The European Team Fortress 2 League and its sponsors STN-Trading and scrap.tf distance themselves from the behavior of two premiership players, Pred and degu, on the social media platform Twitter.” Well then fucking do it. This is pathetic.
I’m honestly in shock that such a poor little human being like uberchain with, apparently, no defence mechanisms is super ok with having 50% off the Money taken off everyone else in “the bin”, i though that perhaps this poor little victim of normal people would maybe have some compassion but no, there seems to be no remorse considering the fact that this little tantrum took money off 5 people who are actually innocent here, as a matter a fact, the ONLY innocent people here are the other 5 members of the bin, because uberchain could’ve easily blocked both of the people who were trying to mess with him/her, but instead he/she let it go on so he/she could play the victim card and be the center of attention and have other people pity him/her
I haven’t done any reading about this conversation that’s been going on for the best part of a week, but I bet no-one has suggested just ignoring people. This should sort everything out.
I’ve been harassed more than anyone in this community! Literally after 1 night of casting:
Xersha_: i hate sheepy soooo much
Xersha_: admirable talk over sheepy
Xersha_: i hate sheepy dont let him talk
Xersha_: push 1 if u hate sheepy
Xersha_: 1
Xersha_: idiots love sheepy
Xersha_: i fucking hate sheepy god fucking damn
Xersha_: even cuties can be huge fucking fags
Xersha_: time out scrabb for loving sheepy
Xersha_: fuck sheepy stupid fucking anime loving idiot
Thalash: i enjoy listening to some downy kid with a crazy lisp
Thalash: a u t i s m b o y s
Saemzi: is this a comedy stream now?
droso: Hey sheepy! How’s your speech impediment today? Can you say hi to me over voice chat please? I need my daily comedy
NiCO: You are retarded as fuck and you can die in hell
What did I ever do to deserve all this hate???
loooooooooooooooooooooool how is bullying real just stay in your house XD!
Hey guys, whats going on in th-
:o
Thank you for your professional response and wise decision.
You make the entire EU comp scene look stupid with this disgraceful decision.
I’ve met a lot of racists in this community, and I don’t fuck with racists. It’s actually quite surprising and saddening the number of talks I’ve had to have with people regarding using racial slurs in mumble.
What Pred said was pretty disgusting, and I would not choose to play with such a player. I, however, feel like we should leave this to individual teams and players to decide whom they want to play with, and what happens outside of ETF2L matches with regards to speech should not be something ETF2L is policing.
We should work towards an atmosphere with no racism or other forms of discrimination but I think the impetus should be with the community individually, and as a whole to let people know it’s unacceptable, rather than by retribution from the league itself.
What Degu did (posting a log off picture) was insensitive, especially given the context but banning for this is absolutely ridiculous.
there is no need for you guys to give opinion on what etf2l, should or shouldn’t do, they clearly are acting on pressure either for public image or because of sponsors, or even maybe like Hildreth said “I honestly think part of it has to do with a certain admins biased against certain players on the Bin”.
it’s good to ban people who harass other people in the community. this is a good act.
i think it’s a consistent decision to ban people for being bad. it’s probably more consistent to ban people who are idiots in different places than to not ban them for bad behaviour because you think different social platforms on the internet are somehow ethically disconnected. it’s all connected.
Hi how hard is it to see that harassing community members on any platform (read: telling them to stop using the net or that they are an *insert racist word here* after coming out about sexual abuse), all while being representatives of the highest division in Europe, is worthy of a ban from the highest div’s admins in order to preserve the reputation and integrity of that competition.
Not taking action against these 2, yes 2, would show ridiculous levels of weakness in a small community and empower those who believe it’s still okay to use slurs in a targeted manner above all else.
There is a thing called real life that would have seen both lose their jobs, if their position in their teams were considered to be a job. If you cannot see this particular point, you clearly have never had an actual job before.
Disclaimer: shittalk does not equal slurs. Utilisling slurs in your ‘shittalk’ shows a) utter filth and b) lack of imagination. At least use a single braincell to come up with something unusual.
??
gamma you’re approaching this as if your opinion is objective fact, you aren’t going to get anywhere with a discussion if all you’re looking to do is prove yourself right.
I think that it’s weak to bow to pressure from a TFTV thread of all things if we’re talking about weakness.
From that thread, it would seem that the majority of people want them banned. It’s a far easier move for ETF2L to ban them than it is to not take action at this point, but it’s a decision that I think is wrong.
I don’t think not banning them would empower people that want to use slurs at all.
In fact, I think banning them and isolating them is more likely to do more harm than good.
If you want to change the community for the better you have to do it from within rather than from above, and seeing the people in that thread come out against what they said is something that should happen more often, and is what will inspire change in the community, not bans.
I can see why ETF2L are doing this, and I can see why people lose their jobs for similar things. I do not think people should necessarily lose their jobs for similar things, and pointing out
that this is the way things are in another part of life does not support your argument for it here.
lmao
Hello, Can we focus on France winning Nations Cup ? TY
id say pred had it coming
Please explain me the mechanism why would you ban anyone for some irelevant trolling in game like tf and how is it bringign any good to the community.
D: Rude
But on a serious note, most of the time high div games and pugs were always like that, toxic.
Those bois act like shit, it backfires. It’s normal and healthy for this kind of decisions to happen.
Better get rid of the tumors before they contaminate the entire community.
rip my man degu :,( he made my early pugs very fun and enjoyable by being very nice and enthusiastic but I guess you can’t say one bad thing say one bad thing to someone on a third party media without getting stabbed in the back by the community you’re helping and getting your earned prize money taken away from you.
;_;7 rip in pieces my friend.
also sheepy no matter what you think we still love you :)
I havent read any of these comments but the one above me and yes, sheepy pls lets get married.
Whole thing feels sorta redundant, punishing pred and degu is fair for being pricks, punishing them without prior warning while similar behaviour has clearly gone unpunished previously and been considered jokes or such is also unfair to them, though.
Not that it needed to be enforced by strict guidelines previously, but once you take measures against players like this, it now needs to keep going, always.
Because no matter how crappy their behaviour, they still have to be judged fairly for the shit they did, same with anyone else on the website, no matter how likable or nice they otherwise may be.
Meaning any rude comments, insults or anything alike during matches, in comments or however else potentially publicly now need to be monitored like this, unless ETF2L wants to show that they were simply biased due to the hype this specific situation with Uberchain got.
Also, taking money from a team that’s done nothing themselves is a terrible move.
A little late but I’d really like to voice my opinion too:
While I honestly appreciate the admins for taking action towards such disrespectful acts, this punishment seems a little bit weird to me. I don’t use Twitter, but could we have reported the user on Twitter instead? A ban on tweeting makes more sense to me.
In ETF2L, there were never any rules regarding behavior on third party platforms (I think?), taking away prize money and banning someone for breaking a rule that does not exist seems quite unprofessional. Unless there’s some rule that’s vaguely similar, so correct me if I’m wrong! In my opinion, a warning could have sufficed, or even simply a ban on the forums, along with a public post, while the organization takes time to review and revise the rules. I think banning is fine if you actually had a rule for that. Your organization definitely has a right to ban people.
Also, how far does this monitoring go? Social media aside, people flame others on official etf2l / tftv forums, tf2 YouTube videos, and even rec posts all the time. People leak nudes as well, which to me seem way worse lol. Outside of tf2, Facebook and YouTube comments are often a way worse shitfest. How do you tell the difference between a joke and insult? What is considered as going too far? People interpret things very differently, and have different threshold / tolerance levels.
Does that mean if someone messages me or posts on my profile something sexist / a personal attack, I can screenshot it and send it to the admins to get a person banned? If they reply to my YouTube / Facebook comment disrespectfully, or chat shit in my stream, I could get them banned as well?
I can understand that this was done to demonstrate to the masses that disrespect will not be tolerated, and I am all for a respectful community, but I would suggest for the admins to be very careful about how they want to possibly punish players in game for disrespect outside of the game. Admins should keep in mind that these players are still able to post as many insensitive comments as they want on other platforms.
Banning could be part of the solution (although I personally don’t support it, but you do you) but it definitely cannot be the entire solution. Perhaps something like a sincere, public apology on the forums could be demanded instead of the ban or in addition to the ban. Just a suggestion. You’re not completely stopping them from playing but the community can choose if they’d like to play with this player or not – and it’s up to the player to prove themselves. Unless the community wants to play with insensitive, toxic players of course. Then the problem is more than just that one player and banning him will not solve anything.
Anyway, it’s nice to see that we are taking some action. Personally not a fan of top-down but hey this caused enough buzz and has helped to spread awareness. Hopefully the future decisions that ETF2L makes will steer us in the right direction!
Cider has a lot of good points
I just came back after a break to the check the scene out as I watch the lan, but I seriously did not expect this
How can ETF2 believe they have some moral high ground top be a thought/speech police?
This is an extremely slippery slope you don’t want to go down, who determines what I can say on social media now? Is everyone suppose to expect to be sniffed out once they reach a high level and then get banned?
I don’t at all support etf2l as anything more than a league for a video game
My adblocker is on again, keep doing what you’re good at – organizing tournaments, not policing speech, until then you will not have people like me on your side