University esports tournament provider the NUEL has clarified to Esports News UK what happened regarding the Gross Gore Army team.
Last Sunday (February 17th), the Gross Gore Army League of Legends team from the University of Warwick played live on the NUEL Twitch stream – and it was also hosted on the channel of streamer Ali “Gross Gore” Larsen himself.
Ali was also watching the match live and typing in chat, showing his support for the team.
They beat King’s College London and Gross Gore tweeted the following:
The Gross Gore university team won ?
Just got off the phone with them.
So proud.
They invited me to the IRL finals in a couple months.
Gonna hang up my coat to be a coach at this rate ?
— Gross Gore (@GrossieGore) February 17, 2019
However, a few days later, Gross Gore published another series of tweets about the team, claiming the NUEL ‘decided to refuse’ to stream future games from the Gross Gore Army because of the ‘Gross Gore brand’.
He also added: “So I’ve spoken to a member of the team & at this moment I will be commentating their own 3 games (unless circumstances change) this Sunday at 6.45pm (tonight, February 24th) straight after my 6 hour stream. Let’s show our support lads.”
The NUEL founder Josh Williams clarified to Esports News UK that each team in the tournament is scheduled to appear once on stream before playoffs, so it seems that Ali may have got the wrong end of the stick on this occasion.
Josh did add that there was ‘an increase in inappropriate messages’ in the Twitch chat once Gross Gore hosted the stream, however.
“We haven’t forced the team to change their name and they haven’t been banned from our stream like it’s been suggested. The only issue we had on Sunday was the increase in inappropriate messages in chat once Gross Gore hosted our stream.”
Josh Williams, the NUEL
Josh said: “The team that’s been referred to is Gross Gore Army from Warwick University. We haven’t forced the team to change their name and they haven’t been banned from our stream like it’s been suggested.
“We aim to schedule each team in our Varsity Division at least once, given it’s a round-robin with 32 teams, each team is only scheduled to appear once before play-offs, so it’s unlikely they’re going to be streamed again. If they make it to play-offs then they’ll have the same chance of appearing on stream as any other teams.
“The only issue we had on Sunday was the increase in inappropriate messages in chat once Gross Gore hosted our stream to support Gross Gore Army.
“We’ll be abbreviating their name on stream in future as the association with Gross Gore encourages behaviour in chat that isn’t something our community wants or meets our values.”
Esports News UK watched the stream and Twitch chat back, and there was some spamming of ‘lads’ and ‘bois’ and a few bits of banter. However, on top of that, there were some poor attempts at humour made around sexual harassment and it appears these are the ones the NUEL may have taken issue with.
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.
