One of the biggest Twitch streamers in the world and known caster for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has accused a young player of cheating, triggering a wave of hatred. He is now apologizing for his misconduct.
Who is this about? The streamer and Brazilian CS:GO broadcaster Alexandre “Gaules” Borba has accused American up-and-coming player Nathan “leaf” Orf of cheating in a tournament.
- Gaules showcases the tournaments of the shooter in Portuguese as an official partner and is one of the biggest streamers in the world. Last year, he reached eighth place among streamers with the highest peak viewers, with 387,315 simultaneous viewers, and is ranked 55th among streamers with the most followers (via sullygnome).
- leaf is an up-and-coming player in CS:GO who plays for the “Chaos Esports Club”, a rising eSports organization in North America that has recently achieved first place in several smaller tournaments with leaf on the team.
The cover image is from a clip of Gaules’ stream.
Cheating allegations lead to threats on Twitter
This is what Gaules said: While analyzing old games, Gaules live-streamed clips from past matches. He apparently accused leaf of cheating. As esports journalist Richard Lewis (via dexerto) writes in a column, there was nothing particularly remarkable in the scenes.
leaf previously played and won against the Brazilian team MiBR with the Chaos Esports Club, which is likely to have triggered the analyses.
This is the consequence: The accusations against leaf have according to Dexerto led to numerous Brazilian fans venting their anger against the player. Reports suggest that they have insulted and even threatened him.
According to essentiallysports.com, it even escalated to death threats. leaf subsequently deactivated his Twitter account.
Gaules apologizes, wants to make things better
This is Gaules’ reaction: In a tweet, Gaules has now apologized for his behavior and made it clear that he acted inappropriately. The text states, for example:
“If my behavior has caused a negative reaction that offended someone, I want to apologize here and emphasize: We should never, under any circumstances, display behavior towards someone that we do not want to experience ourselves.”
Once it comes to physical threats and violence, one must take a stand and show that the community can no longer tolerate such behavior, as he further writes.
This is the criticism of it: Despite the apology, Gaules continues to face criticism for his behavior. Lewis responded to his post with his tweet, in which he criticizes Gaules for not genuinely apologizing for accusing the young player of cheating.
He criticizes people who make threats but not what he himself contributed (via Twitter).
This is what lies behind it: The incident clearly shows the real influence that “influencers” have. When they get “angry” at a regular player in a stream, that player often has a serious problem, because the influencer’s fans turn on him. This is what happened recently to a German player in FIFA 20.
This is now the second incident in a short time that goes through the Counter-Strike community. Just a few days ago, a CS:GO professional triggered a backlash by displaying a hate message on his knife skin in an official tournament.
However, incidents that generate negative headlines have also become increasingly frequent in the gaming industry. Following several allegations of sexual abuse against well-known streamers, a report recently surfaced that a 24-year-old allegedly exploited a 14-year-old Super Smash Bros. player.
