In Valorant a professional eSports scene is currently establishing itself. It has already seen its first major dramas. Recently, there was significant trouble surrounding former Overwatch pro Dafran.
Who is Dafran? Daniel “Dafran” Francesca (26 years old) is a former Danish Overwatch pro. He is now active as a streamer and plays Valorant. He is an excellent player and has over 500,000 followers on Twitch. Due to his skills, he is also referred to as the “Aim God”.
However, he has often been noted for his explosive outbursts. He has already been disqualified from competitions for abandoning games and griefing. Therefore, the following scene is not entirely surprising.
Dafran messes up tournament start and flips out
What happened in the tournament? Dafran and his team Prodigy participated in a tournament organized by the French organization Solary. There, a round in the semifinals was scheduled against the team HypHypHyp, led by Damien “HyP” Souville. Unfortunately, the appointment was moved up, and Prodigy seemingly did not notice it.
Therefore, only HyP’s team was present, and Prodigy arrived much later. This would normally have been a reason for disqualification for Prodigy, as anyone who does not show up within 15 minutes forfeits the match. (via tournament rules on toornament.com)
Nevertheless, HyP’s team wanted to give Prodigy a chance. However, since they had plans for the evening and could not play for too long, the first of three rounds was to be credited as a win to HyP’s team if Prodigy could still compete as a complete team.
The players from Prodigy were all finally present and wanted to play – except for Dafran. He was still happily streaming Overwatch at that time. However, he was eventually made aware on Twitter by a teammate of HyP that the tournament would now start. It was irresponsible and selfish of him not to show up.
So the drama continued: When Dafran learned that the tournament had been rescheduled without his knowledge and that his team was now down 1:0, he became angry and allegedly lashed out on Twitter in now non-existent tweets about HyP, his team, and the tournament organizers of Solary, cursing them harshly.
These were the consequences: As a result of this outburst, it is said that the remaining Prodigy team members agreed on a new substitute date. Without a points advantage, but Prodigy was to compete without Dafran and name a replacement player.
On the other hand, Dafran was banned for life from all Solary tournaments by the tournament organizers due to his ongoing insults. Interestingly, Prodigy even won 2:1 with their substitute player.
Here’s how Dafran reacted: The banned streamer did not become more peaceful as a result of this action. Among other things, he called his opponents on Twitter stupid “bitches” and “washed-up Overwatch players” who were too cowardly to compete against him. He also referred to the tournament as a bunch of “dog shit” and demanded that the tournament organizers “suck his balls”.
His fans, presumably at Dafran’s urging, subsequently attacked HyP and the Solary organization via social media and game chat. HyP then wrote a lengthy text on TwitLonger, stating that such harassment and coercion have no place in eSports and that he strongly disapproves of Dafran’s behavior.
This is the current situation: By now, Dafran has realized that he probably went too far by inciting his followers to such behavior. In one match, a random teammate of Dafran was attacked by his fans after it became known that he played for Solary. That was too much for Dafran and he asked his fans to leave him alone. He then remarked, “Solary is shit, you are not”.
Currently, there are quite a few bans going on with Riot’s team shooter Valorant. For instance, the popular streamer Forsen was banned from the game for two weeks, but no one knows exactly why.
