Weird things are happening in Overwatch. A professional player named “Ellie” was supposed to participate in the 2nd league of Overwatch, but doubts about her identity and “high pressure” made her give up.
That was the announcement: Shortly before Christmas, on December 22, the team Second Wind announced that they had signed a new player, “Ellie”, for the next season of the Overwatch Contenders. This is a kind of 2nd league below the major Overwatch League.
That’s why it was something special: What immediately sparked discussion: Nothing was known about “Ellie”, not even her name. All other players in the Contenders had provided their first and last names.
Moreover, her account level of 146 was relatively low.
Immediately, there was an uproar on social media about the question: “Who is Ellie? (via reddit)” The Overwatch community is known for being a bit dramatic. That’s why it flared up and didn’t cool off.
As no answer was found, speculation arose:
Because her account level was low, many thought it had to be just a “smurf” account from a professional
Then the question arose whether it was really a woman or a male player pretending to be a woman
Others said she must be someone’s girlfriend on the team
or it could be a troll who is laughing at everyone for falling for it
A number of well-known male players were quickly identified by fans, who believed they belonged in the Overwatch League, who were now disguising themselves as “Ellie”.
Many consider Ellie a “fake”
This is how Ellie wanted to prove her identity: As the site Kotaku reports, Ellie then live-streamed Overwatch to show everyone that she really is.
But she was not believed. Players said she was just sitting there and next to her “the real player” was playing.
Ellie then posted a Discord chat showing that the Overwatch player “Haunt” wanted to hack her to find out her identity (via Twitter).
Long, unsavory chat logs are circulating between Ellie and this “Haunt”, who is trying to get information from her, bribing her while simultaneously accusing her of being a fake (via imgur).
It implies that she couldn’t possibly be a “hot chick” who is also that good at Overwatch.
This is how it ended: Ellie retired from Second Wind yesterday. She simply said “sorry”.
Second Wind’s Twitter account said her departure was due to “unpredictable reactions.”
The head of the team, Justin Hughes, speaks of Ellie being under pressure from all sides:
“When we brought her onto the team, people reacted as if we had brought a symbol of emancipation. I understand that people meant well, but on one side we had people doubting her authenticity and threatening her, while on the other side there were people behaving as if she were their Messiah.”
This pressure, combined with the harassment, was too much for Ellie. Apparently, the Overwatch community wanted to see something other than “just a player” in Ellie.
At the moment, the story is going through the press as an example of how male-dominated eSports is and what an outlier it is for a woman to participate. Meanwhile, there are long threads on reddit trying to prove that Ellie was just a gigantic troll attempt by a player named Punisher (via reddit).
Update 5.1.: There are new developments in the “Ellie” case:
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