Newcastle-based esports organisation Clique Esports have effectively dropped their Apex Legends team after the actions of one of their players.
Clique terminated the contract of Danish player Svend-Erik ‘Taxi2g’ Høegh after he had some drama with CLG’s American player Christian ‘Nokokopuffs’ Feliciano and apparently made some separate sexist tweets, which have now been deleted.
Clique’s Apex players played against a team who were using controllers in the North American Esports Arena tournament:
“Why grief them? Because they’re dogshit, they rely on aimbot to play the game,” Taxi2g said.
He then posted this tweet and after coming under flak by parts of the community, made a series of now-deleted tweets, including a few comments reuploaded to Reddit by ottrboii. They apparently included this tweet and this.
Clique Esports then published the following statement:
As well as letting Taxi2g go, the org also said they reached a mutual agreement with their other Apex Legends players, Baker and Yuki, to allow them to explore other options.
Clique added that they believe their former team did not grief another team and ‘have not acted wrong in this case’.
However, on the note of the sexist tweets, Clique commented: “In regards to the accusation of Taxi2g to have made a sexist tweet, we would like to state very clearly that we do not believe sexism has any place within esports and our organisation.”
Taxi2g responded to this decision with the following:
I have nothing but love for you and always will. No offense taken at all. Love you bro, it happens man. Frustrations of the game. 💙
— CLG Nokokopuffs (@Nokokopuffs_) May 29, 2020
And his teammates responded with the following tweets:
Clique’s CEO made some additional comments for context:
The decision was also not entirely based on the accusation, there were other issues that were brought to us since the accusation and speaking with the individual members of the team, we felt this would be the best decision going forwards so the players can continue with ALGS OT6
— cq_blubs (@CLQ_blubs) May 29, 2020
And British former pro PUBG and Apex player, Jack ‘Wacko’ Middleton (who is now focusing on Valorant), weighed in on the news:
Holy… Some people are real snowflakes huh? Wtf
— WACKO (@WACKOFPS) May 29, 2020
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.
