Can't believe I have to defend myself - recent "article" about the NYC OW event

I've been being linked an article on "goboiano" written by Adam Wolfe this morning. The article was about the NYC Alienware Overwatch Open event that happened at the beginning of June. While I must admit the event was very poorly run, the rest of the article is some sort of fanfic fixated on me portrayed in a negative light.



The paragraph which introduces my team: "Everything became clear however, once disgraced Ex CGSO (Counter Strike: Global Offensive) professional player Joshua “Steel” Nissan and his team arrived. His team, consisting of two other professional gamers, “Clockwork” and “PYYOUR”, were considered to be the favorites from the get-go. That being said, what I witnessed was borderline match rigging." Great, I can already see which direction this article is going, thought I'm not too sure what "CGSO" is. What he witnessed was borderline match rigging. Really? Okay, I'll bite. Let's hear it.



"Steel’s team arrived four hours past “team registration” and was the only team that was allowed to choose their setups."



Here's what really happened:

Half of my team got up and went to the event at 9am. They checked into the event and asked what time our first match would be. My teammates were told 3pm was our first scheduled match. My teammates arrived back at the hotel after grabbing some breakfast and coffee and told us what time we had to be ready for.

We arrived at the event 15-30 minutes before our scheduled match time. We spoke to the event organisers who informed us that the team we were supposed to play against hasn't showed up yet. 3pm hits. 3.15pm hits. No opponents. We are informed we would have a first round BYE. We go downstairs and check out other things around the microsoft store including the racing chairs and found ourselves in conversation with the GGSupps booth. Our opponents show up and make a fuss that they've been forfeitted. The admins inform us that they will allow our opponents a second chance and start getting us set up on the computers to play our first match against the first team we were supposed to play. The time of day is already around 4.30pm.



As we sit down at the computers we were told to sit at, we run into many issues. One of my teammates, flame, has an average of 80fps. Flame spends most of his time troubleshooting his fps issue by checking driver software, changing in-game settings to low, etc. I sat down and focused on my computer and its issues so I wasn't paying attention to the rest of my team's issues. My computer was running the game smoothly after I got scaling working properly for black bars to work. My ultra wide screen monitor was running a maximum of 60hz



"They were placed in the back of the room, given wired Ethernet connections (while their opponents were forced to play on wifi) their rigs had newer graphics cards, and 144Hz monitors."



My laptop was running on wifi on a desk by myself with various other equipment littered all over it, including a joystick. http://i.imgur.com/xJvtakO.png or perhaps you were talking about my teammate, dhak, who was playing off of a laptop screen (again on wifi) http://i.imgur.com/S6HCYzs.jpg



"Watching the stream, which was literally focused on the three pros at all times, I quickly put the pieces together. Steel was hosting the stream, giving his viewers over to the tournament."



I am often found hosting tournaments that I am participating in, or tweeting the link to the tournaments. Beyond this, usually you want to capture good play for the stream. Would you rather the camera have been on your team's support player?



" As if that wasn’t bad enough, every time he got a kill in a match he began to scream like a wounded animal. “WOOOOO!!!” “FUCKKK YEAAAA” “GETTT REK’T” he shouted again and again without penalty."



We were recording most of our first and final matches for VLOG footage. While I was yelling "WOO" and "Let's fucking go!" I was not screaming "FUCK YEA" or "GET REKT". My "WOO" and "Let's fucking go!" are things I've been doing a long time at events, and on stream. This is also very common in competitive environments.



"This kind of toxic behavior would never be tolerated at any other event, but he gave them viewers so who cares right? Just when you thought someone couldn’t get any worse, he flags over one of the Microsoft employees and asks “Can you make sure no one comes near me while I’m playing?” I would like to point out that Steel was given his own rig, set up on its own table, away from everyone else no one was crowding him. I guess he wanted to play celebrity as best he could."



Guess this is the non-crowd he's talking about: http://i.imgur.com/j4vbSg1.jpg



"It was clear Mr. Heldridge was not concerned with anything other than getting the event over with, and handing Steel his unearned prize. If you need a little context, the reason Steel was banned from CSGO was of course, match fixing. I guess old habits die hard."

Cause this is relevant right now?



"All in all, the entire event was a disaster. The players were promised food and drinks, and the majority did not receive them. Then again, they were promised a fair tournament as well and look how that went."



I'm not about to sit here and defend the event, but there were loads of pizzas downstairs on the second floor right by the GGSupps table. Guess you missed that? Don't have a good photo of it, but maybe this will jog your memory http://i.imgur.com/KPbqPy1.png



"Everything from the hardware, the software, the connections, the equipment, the staff, the seating, the setting, the streaming, and the organization was hideous. At the center of it all, Mr. James Heldridge and Joshua “Steel” Nissan."



I literally didn't even know his name until this article. I have never spoken to the guy before the event, and had limited contact during the actual event and he was running around frantically. How do I even prove an absence of communication with someone?



All in all, while the event wasn't run well by any sense of the word, while the venue was a poor location with inadequate infrastructure, space, computers, etc., and while the event had constant issues and delays, I do not see how the author of this article is able to use this article to swing a negative opinion of me completely unverified, and have so many people just soak it in as if it was a fact. Please question everything you read and not just believe everything at face value. There are no credible people that have corroborated the author's claims, nor are there any video or picture evidence to support his claims, just a bunch of MFW pics in the article.



I do not know what I personally did to the author to make him feel this way about me and my "lackeys" but the article definitely should not have had the exposure it has had on /r/gaming and /r/overwatch.



I'm out.

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