Hi Somppu, thanks for the statement/apology,
On behalf of the tournament admins, I will explain your perspective, our perspective, my role in our decision, and how we will move forward.
Let's start with your perspective. You indeed scheduled on Saturday originally. Unfortunately, Forjustice wasn't able to play through no fault of his own. These things happen and although it is a shame your preparation on Saturday partly went to waste, there is nothing any party could have done differently here. Rescheduling to a weekday was a possibility, but due to preparation both of you insisted on Sunday.
Moving on to the games, the lag was indeed bad. Forjustice had some questionable resign timings. We can all agree on this. Here's where you, in our opinion, went wrong.
Rule 4.2 states that "Players and caster(s) may request that measures be taken to reduce lag".
Rule 1.4 states that "Every player must respect their opponent (...) will result in a warning and can lead to disqualification. Forjustice's resignation timings were arguably disrespectful. If we assume that they were, then rule 1.4 states that a warning will be issued
by tournament admins. This part of the rule is inexplicit, but it means that the player does not take matters into his own hands. This is exactly what you did, and this is why we took the actions that we did. It is clear that you were in a winning position in game 2, but resigning there was not the right decision to take. I'm sorry to say it and I hope I do not convey this too offensively, but your behavior in that game was ridiculous and we do not want to encourage and normalize ridiculous behavior like that. "Turking" occasionally occurs, but it does mean that the turking player is always doing this to antagonize his opponent. There are times where a player may not realize how behind he is. What happens if precedent is set and people start resigning in a winning position more often? Where do you draw the line? It is safer to leave the authority to enforce rules with the tournament admins, and not with the players.
In your fury, you forfeited from EPL. Forfeiting the EPL is a serious offense that is not lightly tolerated. To quote Comet: "The rules clearly state that if a player is not capable of maintaining a competitive attitude even when their team may no longer be in the playoffs picture that they should not sign up to play in the EPL. This forfeiture is a slap in the face to everyone involved in the league, from organizers to players to viewers alike." Forfeiting in a team tournament with these round-robin rules undermines the team, the points previously scored, the points that will be scored in the future - essentially the entire league.
Both you and Hazza are guilty of this offense. This is where the comparison ends. Looking at the facts only, we can see that you insulted your opponent repeatedly in the lobby, disrespected your opponent repeatedly in-game and post-game, insulted your teammates, insulted staff, created inflammatory posts on the forums, and undermined the integrity of the league. You cannot blame all of this on your bad decision making at 4 AM. We have to live with the choices we make, even if some of them turn out to be poor ones, even if some of them were made under extreme circumstances. In our opinion, a case of force majeure is out of the question.
We also made mistakes. The
disqualification rules contain a disciplinary procedure. We did not follow this procedure, and frankly, we have not done so for a long time. The goal of the disciplinary procedure for misbehavior during casted games is to stop offending behavior in its tracks and to maintain a relatively good relationship with the player in question. Our course of action to award the admin win to Forjustice with no communication towards you was wrong. I will work to improve our procedure and to use it in all cases from now on.
Therefore I believe it is fair to say that your fury is partly our fault. I apologize for that on behalf of myself and the other tournament admins.
As for me personally, it is impossible to be unbiased. All humans are biased in some sort of way, usually for the worse. The only thing we can do is actively try to diminish this bias and work together with the rest of the team to filter out each others' biases. We can blind ourselves with the illusion that all tournament staff, police officers, and judges are completely unbiased, but in reality, this is not the case. Nevertheless, I do not agree with the following statement.
SomppuKunkku wrote:Bram's comment wasn't to this OP but in general I feel he has always disrespected me and treated me unfairly compared to others. Also in the past. I don't why he is always been against me.
I met you at the Amsterdam LAN in 2018. We hung out and we had a great time with the others. I adored the sepoy/urumi playstyle
(even winning tournament games with the strategy) and I loved to see what kind of crazy strategies you could come up with.
That's the old Somppu. In the past two weeks, your name has become synonymous with vitriol. Your EP criticism
may be partly justified, but do you not think you are taking this a little bit too far? Do you not think that there are better ways to resolve this dispute than the way you have chosen to go for? When I think of the name SomppuKunkku, I want to think of inventive strategies and funky playstyles, not of toxicity and anger.
That's the reason Comet and I called you a crybaby at some point. The constant aura of negativity gets tiring eventually, especially when I'm trying not to descend into the same spiral of negativity in these quarantined times. We need the community undivided now more than ever. It was not respectful of me to showcase internal comments you made in GUAs twitch chat and I apologize for that. I slipped up having seen you complain for the past few hours while completely derailing the stream.
I don't think I have been 'disrespecting you for years'. It seems highly unlikely that I wouldn't have noticed that in all those years. Not even two weeks ago we were having friendly discussion about EP. Not even three weeks ago we were discussing how to proceed with SKG after the Hazza-incident. I can assure you that I am not actively biased against you, even if my obtuse choice of words may sometimes give that impression. And next to that I can assure you that, even if I was, I work together with the other tournament admins who would keep me in line. I have never seen a more diplomatic and unbiased person than Brook. Cometk explained in an earlier post why we decided on 6 months originally. I hope you can understand my supposed bias is non-existent and had nothing to do with the decision.
Moving forward, we will amend the tournament ban into a shorter and partly suspended sentence in the following days. We will also improve our disciplinary procedures for our tournaments. I hope this answers any questions or concerns you may still have, but feel free to ask any remaining questions.