Update: As per April 6th, Fnatic TQ have their account back. They said: “Official statement: The password is no longer “password”. We have added a number so that this never happens again.”
Original article:
Global esports organisation Fnatic, whose headquarters are in London, have had their academy team’s Twitter account hacked this evening.
The Fnatic TQ logo was removed and a tweet featuring an NFT monkey was pinned at the top. The account has been spouting various information about NFTs, as well as spamming different Twitter handles.
The account currently has a blank profile picture and header.
The main Team Queso Twitter account has also been hacked in a similar fashion.
An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a unique digital asset (usually an image or a piece of digital art), with the buyer receiving a digital receipt saying they own it. NFTs can be bought and owned and re-sold, usually for cryptocurrency.
One popular form of NFT are collectibles, like the range of NFT monkeys.
Fnatic and Team Queso’s other accounts swiftly responded with an update to let their fans know what’s happened.
Fnatic TQ is the organisation’s League of Legends academy team brand. It was formed in partnership with Team Queso last year when Fnatic Rising left the NLC UK and Nordics European Regional League (ERL) in favour of the Spanish Superliga.
Fnatic TQ had a fantastic first season in Spain’s LVP, winning the Spring 2022 regular season before going on to win the playoffs, giving them first seed in the EU Masters.
This means Fnatic TQ will play in the EU Masters Spring 2022 group stage. The play-ins are taking place right now.
The news also comes a few days after Fnatic announced a membership offering powered by the blockchain in partnership with Crypto.com, resulting in a mixed to negative response from the community.
Earlier this year, British games critic James Stephanie Sterling had their likeness used in an NFT without their permission. James Stephanie Sterling previously described NFTs as ‘Nasty Fucking Things’.
Elsewhere, Team Queso recently finished runners-up at RLCS Winter Major.
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.
