Banned World of Warcraft esportsman Andreas Raiku Mini shared the details of Blizzard’s lifetime ban. He apologized to the community and admitted that he was sorry about what happened. The post was published on TwitLonger.
“First of all, I want to apologize again for what I said. There is no excuse for this. The videos, which included snippets of tapes with me and my teammate Swapxy (most of them from about two years ago), show me who I am not. Yes, I said a racist word. I will explain to people who have not seen the video: [видео было удалено, прим. ред.] I said n-word once and a modified version of it once, but that doesn’t make me racist. When I said them, I didn’t mean to intentionally offend someone with my words, but obviously I did, and I am truly sorry.
It sounds completely idiotic and is not the norm, but when I used these words, I did not think about what I was saying, I did not give them any “strength” or meaning, for me at that moment it was just a word. <...> I deserve a ban, and it’s a shame that we humans very often realize our mistakes only when it’s too late. “
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Raiku claims that all the recordings were made at least two years ago. The fact that they were only released now, he connects with the race for first place in PvP battles in 3v3 arena in the final season of Battle for Azeroth. The Raiku team, which also includes Renee Swapxy Pinker and Oscar Whaazz Wolff, managed to score the most rating points in WoW history after complaining about unscrupulous players spilling ratings. The cheaters did not like this, and they published the ill-gotten files.
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–“Over the past two years, my team has been under pressure, knowing that a certain group of people have such“ compromising evidence ”on us, and if they don’t like something about our behavior, they will definitely post it. And then you ask why everything happened now, and not in the days when everything happened? Over the past two years, we’ve watched the injustice happening in ranked matches in WoW. It was almost impossible to get the first rank without a wintrade, some group of people simply overflowed the rating. People did not have a chance to achieve this result in an honest way, and for us it was also a problem. In the end, we complained about them, I even posted a post about it on Twitter. As a result, they “paid us back” by leaking this video. “
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The quotes from the deleted video were taken from players’ private broadcasts. Raiku claims that they were not intended for the audience, only team members should have reviewed them to improve communication and other aspects of the game.
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–“The reason these videos exist is because we revisited them internally to improve the gameplay. Even though the streams were on the public platform, they always had to remain confidential, not because of what we said, but because we did not want to share training recordings with enemy teams. We never gave anyone permission to record these videos or upload them anywhere. Even though the video was not meant to be viewed outside the team, we should never have used words like that – either to each other or in public. “
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Finally Raiku noted that he did not describe the situation in order to appeal the ban or get words of sympathy. He admitted that many viewers had already supported him after the blocking, and he himself realized the severity of his guilt.
Previously, Blizzard issued an official statement about Raiku and Swapxy’s lifetime ban. The third member of the team, Whaazz, escaped the ban, but said that he most likely will no longer play WoW of his own free will. The players were also expelled from the XSET organization they represented.
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