Professional Overwatch Player Under Fire After Making Racist Gesture Towards Koreans During Stream

This professional video game player offended a whole lot of people when he made a racist gesture towards Koreans during a livestream game.

A professional Overwatch player is getting heat for making a racist gesture toward Korean competitors during a live stream tournament.

The Overwatch League is a professional eSports league for the video game Overwatch, developed and fully controlled by Blizzard Entertainment.

 

Josh “Eqo” Corona of the Philadelphia Fusion team made a slant-eye gesture after someone compared his skill to a Korean player’s. He said, “I am Korean” while pulling the outer edges of his eyes back.

 

After the video went viral, Philadelphia Fusion president and Comcast CEO’s son Tucker Roberts responded on Twitter to apologize for Corona’s behavior.

Philadelphia Fusion is owned by Comcast Spectacor, a sports and entertainment company that manages hundreds of stadiums in North America and Singapore. The Fusion has multiple Korean players on its roster.

 

Corona, who was born in Colombia and raised in Israel, also apologized on a Twitter thread, saying he didn’t mean to offend anyone and it was a gesture of admiration.

 

Whether he was truly acting out of admiration or not, people were still very offended.

 

The Overwatch League‘s code of conduct is vague on details regarding punishment for this type of behavior, but there has been speculation that it could be game suspension.

The Overwatch League code of conduct states: “In no event may any streaming include any video game content, actions, comments, language or other material that could be expected to bring any Player, the League, any of its Teams, any direct or indirect owner of any Team, any executive or other employee of the League, Activision Blizzard or any of its games, products and services or any broadcaster, distributor, sponsor, licensee or other business partner of the League of any of its Teams into Disrepute.”

Source: Kotaku (1) and (2)