All five members and the coach of Motif Esports’ VALORANT Game Changers team have left the organization, citing alleged accounts of sexual harassment, racial and verbal abuse from members of the org and the owner. In response to the allegations made on Tuesday, the org has deleted its Twitter account.
VIOLET leaving @MotifEsports due to harassment, lack of human decency, racism.
Read: https://t.co/gaPSFRgbFl
— 𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚒𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚌𝚊 🍓✧ ˚ (@RattieRebecca) February 8, 2022
Barbora “Rebecca” Řezáčová’s TwitLonger outlined the situation that has led to the entire team parting with Motif. She cited a number of instances of alleged abuse, including racial abuse, leveled at the team’s Turkish player Mercy.
“[Mercy] had to deal with targeted racism towards her, which has been shown publicly on a twitch stream of the organization’s member,” the TwitLonger reads. “Although, after she’s been apologized to, the racist remarks have been continued and she has never felt comfortable in the organization itself again, especially because we were not allowed to have any kind of personal team space, she was basically forced to stay on one place with the same people who she knew hated her.”
The remarks extended to the Czech players on the team, including Řezáčová. Members of the org reportedly mocked the team and their coach for their accents as non-native English speakers. Additionally, Řezáčová, though not personally affected, mentioned alleged sexual harassment from members of the org. Her teammate Joanne, in her own TwitLonger, explained that she was on the receiving end of this kind of abuse from the org’s owner.
“In my time at Motif, I was sexually harassed by the org founder,” Joanne said. “It was ‘jokes’ for him, but it wasn’t for me and wouldn’t be for anyone else either (I saw it happen to many girls with my own eyes).”
Řezáčová and her teammates were allegedly verbally harassed, with the org members going so far as to call the team “boosted” before their matches in Europe, Middle East and Africa Game Changers. Additionally, the members of Motif Game Changers were not allowed privacy, the org members insisting on all their team files being saved to Google, according to the TwitLonger.
“We have not been given anything in the organization, only problems and issues that long lasted and have never been resolved,” Řezáčová said. “We have always been promised ‘we will fix it’. But the damage has been already done.”
Motif are based out of the United Kingdom and have teams in Rocket League and VALORANT.
This is a developing story and will be updated with new information as it’s made available.
Published: Feb 8, 2022 10:29 am