Esports fans continue to rail against Team Imagine chairman and CEO of Turin Pharmaceuticals Martin “cerebral” Shkreli, whose insane markup on life-saving drug Daraprim attracted widespread ire this week. The revelation of Shkreli’s business maneuvers has sparked a debate within the League community, causing many to question whether the quality of unethical business practices in esports is falling behind those in other industries.

“The community has constantly pushed to make esports ‘bigger’ through mainstream popularity, but what we don’t realize is that when our field competes with established, mainstream industries, we fall woefully behind in the quality and scope of our unethical behavior,” commented esports analyst Duncan ‘Thorin’ Shields. “If our corrupt practices are obsoleted by the viciousness of free market competition, what would we be without professional teams withholding payment from players, or esports leagues covertly installing bitcoin mining software?”

“It’s simply impossible for tiny esports companies to compete with those in established industries, both in monetary and moral terms,” complained TSM owner Andy ‘Reginald’ Dinh. “People like Shkreli can make tens of millions from selling a medicine they didn’t even develop. I only make a few million from talent I didn’t develop.”

Contrary to public opinion, irritable ogre Shkreli claims that the rise of major malfeasance and the fall of small-time graft in esports is merely the natural evolution of the industry, and is ultimately a change for the better.

“Esports is rank with inefficiency and ineptitude, and it’s holding everything back,” said Lesser Old One Shkreli. “Sure, MYM threatened to sell Kori’s mother’s house, but they probably would have sold it at market price, instead of bribing surveyors to inflate its value and dumping it on unwary investors. Sure, Link wrote a 17-page manifesto criticizing every aspect of CLG, but he forgot to profit from the media frenzy by short-selling stock in his former team.”

Meanwhile, Shkreli has been criticized for insufficiently abusing monopolistic control over a product with inelastic demand.

“If Shkreli is going to charge an unjustifiably-exorbitant amount of money for a product that costs pennies to make, he could’ve at least marked up the pill by another 50%, and offered it in three awesome color designs,” said League fan /u/Tilthonus.

While some in the League community views Shkreli as an admirable competitor in the market for corrupt practices, hate from the general public continues to grow for the businessman who has done nothing different from the rest of the pharmaceutical industry, except be more transparent. For the time being, it doesn’t look like the CEO is repentant for his actions. When asked how he sleeps at night, Shkreli replied, “You know, Ambien,” referring to the cheap, easily-accessible sleep remedy.





