Major League Gaming is a well established American pro-gaming organisation, they run tournaments across the U.S. for a wide variety of eSports titles. Call of Duty has been part of MLG for many years now but this hasn’t stopped the organisation dealing appropriately with recent issues caused by players of the popular FPS franchise.
These issues have led to the suspension of Patrick ‘Aches’ Price, a member of team Evil Genuis, who is known for his combative personality. Team Evil Genius are one of the largest American eSports organisations, boasting a multi-game line-up and some big name sponsors including Monster Energy drinks. MLG detailed the suspension in this post on their website, whilst it is not exactly specified why Price is banned it is presumed it involves his abuse of the rule that MLG content must be streamed on MLG.tv instead of any other platform. On top of this he is convicted of ‘harassment’ or MLG employees. Price’s dislike of MLG’s streaming policy is well known and is an issue he has spoken out against before in this Twitter tirade.
This does not paint the Call of Duty community in a good light. This is a group of gamers already notorious for toxic behaviour in online games as well as offline LAN events. Call of Duty players have been know to propagate ‘swatting’, a term for hoax calling the emergency services to someone’s house.
These guys could be appearing if you cross the CoD communityUsually the hoax caller describes a situation that remedies a SWAT team reaction, such as a hostage situation or a bomb threat. It is rumoured that this may even have happened at the recent MLG Anaheim where there was a bomb scare and the fire alarm was incorrectly pulled on two occasions, both of these incidents severely hampered the progress of the event.
In an age where eSports is slowly becoming more legitimate, communities and eSports in general are severely harmed by these sorts of incidents which go only reinforce negative stereotypes of gamers. League of Legends players are recognised as ‘athletes’ by the U.S. Government and Dota2 players are competing for 10 million dollars whilst Call of Duty players are still getting banned for poor behaviour and pulling fire alarms to disrupt events. This marked difference between the communities can only hold Call of Duty back and this is an issue the community will need to resolve if the game hopes to move forward as an eSport.
