A now-deleted video showing League of Legends eSports team Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) announcing the firing of some of its players has enraged fans online. On July 12, CLG posted a Bud Light sponsored video of its League team receiving the news that some players on the roster will be getting cut. Lasting about a minute long, the video shows general manager Tafo explaining upcoming roster changes.
Tafo says that he is looking at roster swaps for team members citing slow performance improvement over two months. He says that because the team went 1-2 instead of 3-0 in a match with TSM, he believes that the team isn’t clicking – hence the roster swap. CLG is currently tied for last place in the LCS North American standings alongside the Golden Guardians, according to League of Legends‘ official esports site lolesports.com. Interpreting the reasoning from the general manager, it seems that not going 3-0 in a series where the organization believes it should results in benchings for the players.
Since they took hours upon hours to delete, here is the video, but please grab a bud light first pic.twitter.com/zmxcqnDGxW
— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) July 12, 2021
The organization deleted the video after the backlash, but Twitter user JakeSucky reposted it along with a screenshot of the original tweet. CLG has since posted an apology statement for the video claiming that it was showing transparency about the potential changes coming to the roster later this week, but the community isn’t relenting. Multiple teams and high-profile League of Legends players have criticized CLG’s post.
Imagine schalke saying to us after going 0-2 for like 5 weeks in a row that we should've randomly gone 2-0 else we take the bench we would've never made the comeback we did. Sucks when not even your org has faith in you KEKW
— Andrei Pascu (@Odoamne) July 13, 2021
POV: you’re a CLG tweet pic.twitter.com/owq02GDuUq
— Cloud9 (@Cloud9) July 12, 2021
Roster swapping and changes are standard in the realm of eSports. However, closed-door conversations have always remained closed for one reason or another. The players couldn’t have been happy to find out that not only are they possibly losing their jobs but that CLG would record the moment for promotional value.
Regardless of the reason, whoever thought that publicly embarrassing its players in this manner is in the wrong. This video shows that the organization doesn’t care about protecting its players, nor does it have faith in its roster to bounce back.
Source: Twitter/JakeSucky, Lolesports.com
