Dominic Sacco shares his views on a weird recent development in the UK CSGO eSports scene.
UPDATE (5pm): VATIC founder Matt Litherland has sent the following statement to eSports News UK following the publication of this article:
“Regarding the topics in this article, I would like to apologise for the heated conversations that took place and have since decided that we shall not pursue the matter of retrieving the goods from this player.
“Furthermore I would like to highlight that the intentions both I and others have had over the last seven months running VATIC, were to build from scratch an organisation that would ultimately be able to provide something positive to the CSGO community in the UK.
“I’d like to personally apologise for the matters above and have also apologised to the person involved directly.”
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
When I checked my phone this morning, this post in the UKCSGO Facebook group caught my attention:
Just some new petty drama, I thought, nothing unusual.
I was right.
It seems UK eSports organisation VATIC had loaned a Xtrfy keyboard and mouse mat to a player, who was under the impression he didn’t need to return it.
It’s something that could have been dealt with in minutes in a few private messages, but instead it turned into a public slagging match, with VATIC and other people in the scene arguing on Facebook and calling each other names.
There’s a post on the UKCSGO Facebook group and some messages uploaded on Imgur about the situation, if you can be bothered to read them.
I’m not going to do any extra journalism in this instance, it would be a waste of time and that’s not why I wrote this article. I reached out to Matt Litherland at VATIC and he didn’t want to be quoted on the record so there’s nothing much more for me to add.
However, the VATIC website is now displaying a holding page, with the Twitter account posting this:
Thanks to all for your support https://t.co/H87a8jzVeT
— VATIC Gaming (@VATICEU) November 14, 2016
Before some of you jump down my throat for posting something insignificant (“this is not news!” etc), I highlighted it because it’s so petty, and I’m sure it’s one of many strange little incidents that happen in UK eSports. But it illustrates how immature and underdeveloped the scene still is, and how it needs to grow up.
Maybe by highlighting this, it will improve some organisations’ policies and ethos, maybe it might make players think about who owns the equipment when they join an org, maybe it will encourage some people in the scene think about how they might be perceived by others.
Maybe it will influence some players and orgs to work more closely together. Maybe it won’t.
But as Richard Lewis once told me: “Nobody talks about the bad things in eSports. They think if you talk about the problems and the issues, people will lose confidence and the money will go away. Well that might be true, but a far worse scenario is you don’t talk about the problems, those people invest the money and then it happens.
“The same old shit happens again and again. They’re never coming back. And they tell all of their mates and other companies they have partnerships with. All it takes is one or two people, and the spread that has is bad. That’s why it’s important to do things correctly.
“All my career I’ve highlighted what we do wrong not because I hate eSports or I don’t want it to grow. It’s for the exact opposite reason – I care about it so much, I want to hold its flaws up so we can fix them and people know what they’re getting into.
“That’s vitally important – to scrutinize what you care about. It’s very important we polish it and get it right.”
So, consider me scrutinizing. Yes, over a bloody mouse mat and a keyboard.
Let’s sort shit like this out, because frankly, it’s embarrassing.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
