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Dear Mr. Ferraz,
I appreciate the time you have taken to explain your viewpoint [1,2,3] on the recent issue of Steven "Destiny" Bonnell's verbal abuse while he was a member of your team, Quantic Gaming. I realise that these are your personal views and not an official statement from your team, and thus I am directing my reply to you personally. However, in your position as CEO of Quantic Gaming, your views carry significant weight, which is why I felt the need to post this response publicly as an open letter.
You seem to believe that the public is at fault for the public outcry surrounding this issue ("the moment you go to sponsors directly, you ... place the ENTIRE TEAM at risk ... you guys just do whatever you feel is best ... you are going to do what you want anyhow, regardless of [the consequences]" [3]). As CEO of a company whose business model relies primarily on maintaining a positive public image, is it not your responsibility to cultivate that positive public image, rather than the public's responsibility to avoid forming a negative image?
You do not seem to understand the logical fallacy of blaming the public for public outcry. Voicing their opinion is exactly what the public is supposed to do; this is one of the fundamental tenets of democracy. You have absolutely no right to demand that certain forums outside your jurisdiction (ie. the sponsors) should be reserved for positive opinions only. If you cannot maintain an organisation that produces significantly more positive reviews than negative ones, that is most definitely not the fault of the reviewers. If anything, it is you who "place[d] the entire team at risk" when you contracted a player known for his offensive behaviour, and posted a press release supporting the continuation of that offensive behaviour [4]. Blaming this on the public is as ridiculous as Nixon blaming Watergate on the media for making it a big deal.
You also suggest that we should contact your staff, instead of your sponsors [1]. If you expect anyone to heed that suggestion, perhaps you should invest in building a reputation for responsiveness. At least one person has contacted you in the past about the exact same issue and received no response (and given the specificity of the complaint, I doubt he was lying) [5]. There is also a public record of a similar complaint you received a few months ago to which you failed to respond [6]. Our only word from your management is an official statement supporting Destiny's behaviour [4]. Your own sarcastic comment "OK, you guys win! Take all our players, take all our funding, we'll just go away and do something else, alright?" [2] demonstrates your complete unwillingness to accept opinions that differ from your own. And as of today, a whole week after the fact, your team still has not made an official statement about the issue. So I ask you, why should anyone believe you when you claim that you would have taken action without the threat of sponsorship withdrawal?
And while I am asking, what exactly is your opinion on the issue? Given Destiny's notoriety, you cannot deny knowledge of his history of verbal abuse. Given your press release [4], you also cannot deny that you thought his behaviour was acceptable. The only conclusion is that you thought his verbal abuse was acceptable. More precisely, I would hazard a guess that you thought it was acceptable because the people who had previously complained about it had not been so numerous, and you expected to receive an opportunity to address the issue before it escalated. In other words, you wanted to milk the publicity for all it was worth before it turned sour.
Now that Razer has made it clear that they do not wish to be associated with verbal abuse, I am curious as to what you had previously told them about Destiny. Did you tell simply not tell them about his verbal abuse? Or did you promise you could control him, while telling the public something entirely different [4]? Either way, it seems like the whole issue could have been avoided if you had asked your sponsors honestly whether a contentious new prospect fit in with their corporate image, and they had disallowed the hire in the first place.
The blame for the fallout does not lie with the public for voicing their opinion, nor does it lie with Mr. Bonnell for maintaining an on-screen persona that clearly succeeds in attracting viewers. The blame, Mr. Ferraz, lies solely with you and your management staff, for signing a player known for his offensive behaviour, publicly endorsing his offensive behaviour [4] while ignoring complaints [5,6], and misrepresenting his offensive behaviour to your own sponsors.
Yours sincerely,
A Concerned Starcraft Viewer
References:
[1] http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=335636¤tpage=19#374
[2] http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=335636¤tpage=24#463
[3] http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=335636¤tpage=26#514
[4] http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=274332
[5] http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=333649¤tpage=45#892
[6] http://twitter.com/#!/flyingcolour (tweet on 1 January 2012)
  
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... and I thought TL just had enough of e-drama.
Anyhow, this is a well-written letter, and it seems like you've been keeping up with the other threads as well. I'm curious to whether or not he'll respond directly to this letter.
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Don't you have anything better to do...
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On May 09 2012 03:56 pirsq wrote:A Concerned Starcraft Viewer
There's your problem.
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On May 09 2012 04:18 nttea wrote:
Don't you have anything better to do...
Why bother posting in the thread if that's all you have to say? It's a blog post...
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On May 09 2012 04:18 nttea wrote:
Don't you have anything better to do...
No, I'm a postgraduate student =P
I really do think there is an issue with the public statements made by people involved. Destiny's comments on his stream are one thing, going on TL/Reddit/Twitter to say fuck you to everyone who objected (as opposed to "calm down guys, that's just my on-screen character, it's what viewers are paying for") was much more of an issue for me. Same with Mark Ferraz coming to a public forum and saying "hey public, you suck". If you want the public to treat you with respect, you need to treat the public with respect.
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How long do you want to continue the witch hunt for? If you're looking for mainstream acceptance of esports, you're just broadcasting the image that "progamers" are just a bunch of poor-mannered, whiny brats. If you want public figures to clean up their acts, approach the player and team directly. Don't write "open letters" or threaten their sponsors. "Open letters" are just a front to catch attention and whine about something, written in an extremely antagonistic manner.
Before you tell others to clean up their acts, clean up your own act. You're not acting like responsible viewers either.
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Why don't the people respond to his points rather than bashing his decision to write it?
I agree with his points and look forward to Quantic's response
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It's many days too late for people to care about this thread, although admittedly it is quite well written.
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On May 09 2012 04:07 OpticalShot wrote:
... and I thought TL just had enough of e-drama.
Anyhow, this is a well-written letter, and it seems like you've been keeping up with the other threads as well. I'm curious to whether or not he'll respond directly to this letter.
I don't think this counts as edrama; this is a very logical, well thought-out, accurately cited op-ed. Edrama consists of straw man arguments and nerd raging. 
No matter which side of the fense you're on with this issue, the OP brings up some very excellent points. At some point the team management has to be responsible for their team. I recall during the orb controversy, EG's Alex Garfield made a comment about Idra's inappropriate behavior on twitter:
@beesinyoface yes, i do. every time it happens, he hears from me. have you noticed it happening recently? if you have, let me know. source
At some point team management has to be responsible for their player's actions and conduct. Sure, maybe it's not fair that this controversy hurt the whole team, but players represent their whole organization when they are streaming/playing at tournaments/etc. I'm not saying Destiny deserved to be fired, but it is a bit absurd for Quantic's management to throw up their arms and proclaim this is all the community's fault.
I'm not advocating for people contacting sponsors. There's a time and place to do so, 5 minutes after the "controversy" erupts is not reasonable. But it did get Quantic's attention. Up to that point it seemed like Quantic really wasn't taking the situation seriously. PR 101: when shit hits the fan you release a statement ASAP to let the public know you're paying attention to them and taking the issue seriously. If Quantic had released a statement when this first came to light saying that they were looking into the situation and would be reviewing Destiny's conduct; I think many people woud have been dissuaded from contacting sponsors. The community in some regards are like Quantic's customers. It's our fandom that allows them to make money. They can't just ignore the community's outrage and hope it goes away, that just makes things worse.
Quantic's management should take this opportunity to review their internal proceedures and how they respond to issues from the larger community. Yes this was small time drama that got out of hand, but that can (and regularly does!!) happen with any company; humans will be humans. What makes the difference is how a company or organization responds to and addresses those issues. Telling customers that their outrage was unjustified isn't going to make things any better, again PR101.
On May 09 2012 04:18 nttea wrote:
Don't you have anything better to do...
You're the one leaving pointless comments on this blog, so who really doesn't have anything better to do.
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On May 09 2012 04:50 Heh_ wrote:
How long do you want to continue the witch hunt for? If you're looking for mainstream acceptance of esports, you're just broadcasting the image that "progamers" are just a bunch of poor-mannered, whiny brats. If you want public figures to clean up their acts, approach the player and team directly. Don't write "open letters" or threaten their sponsors. "Open letters" are just a front to catch attention and whine about something, written in an extremely antagonistic manner.
Before you tell others to clean up their acts, clean up your own act. You're not acting like responsible viewers either.
Read his post, and if you did, read it again. Because you just sounded really really stupid in pretty much all of your points. Why would he clean up his own act? As far as I know he isn't a pillar of the SC2 community, Destiny is. Also, he pointed out why going directly to the team didn't solve the problem.
@OP, I agree with most of your points, thank you for writing a well summarized argument.
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On May 09 2012 05:00 Complete wrote:Show nested quote +On May 09 2012 04:50 Heh_ wrote:
How long do you want to continue the witch hunt for? If you're looking for mainstream acceptance of esports, you're just broadcasting the image that "progamers" are just a bunch of poor-mannered, whiny brats. If you want public figures to clean up their acts, approach the player and team directly. Don't write "open letters" or threaten their sponsors. "Open letters" are just a front to catch attention and whine about something, written in an extremely antagonistic manner.
Before you tell others to clean up their acts, clean up your own act. You're not acting like responsible viewers either. Read his post, and if you did, read it again. Because you just sounded really really stupid in pretty much all of your points. Why would he clean up his own act? As far as I know he isn't a pillar of the SC2 community, Destiny is. Also, he pointed out why going directly to the team didn't solve the problem. @OP, I agree with most of your points, thank you for writing a well summarized argument.
I've read it, and I've read it again for your sake. What is the need to publicize every single thing? If you take offense with Destiny, talk to him. If he ignores you, bring it to his team. If the team refuses to respond, then think about publicizing the issue. Why do people immediately printscreen and post it on TL/reddit? Can such problems be solved discreetly, without raising such a huge uproar? The next question is, is this uproar even justified? All this drama is hurting everyone. Not just Destiny. His ex-teammates also suffer negative publicity, and the scene in general gets looked down upon (both players and viewers). You're just looking for drama for the sake of it.
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On May 09 2012 04:21 Gheed wrote:There's your problem.
I have to agree with you. esports is turning into one ugly abomination.
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Very well written letter. You raise a few good points. Looking forward to seeing a response from Quantic.
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8748 Posts
I don't think contacting sponsors was the best way to get Destiny to adjust his behavior. It's just a way to get him fired. It's improvement by dumping anyone with any major negative incident and hoping that there are people who will fill the void left by the dumped and not have any major negative incidents. That's not the best way to improve things.
In this case, any consumer contacting Razer served absolutely no purpose. Razer doesn't tolerate that kind of language and behavior. Consumers telling them that they won't buy more Razer products if they support people who behave like that are only reminding Razer why they have that policy.
If a player has some good qualities and some bad qualities, we shouldn't want to dump the good with the bad. Hopefully the bad can be changed. For example, people like Naniwa and Idra are much better representatives now than at their beginnings. And for some other examples I won't name, there are several players who were caught cheating in previous games and have now become successful and good mannered SC2 players. So I think what we should look at is whether a person will do more good than bad and whether the bad can be changed.
For some opportunities, there are intolerable bad qualities (like in this case with Razer and Destiny). But theoretically, the public could make any bad quality or even bad incident (that could have occurred in a state of mind or under circumstances that stretched a person way out of character) intolerable by sponsors. That is, if enough of the community expresses their disapproval and hatred, a sponsor is left with no choice but to cease support. This is where it's possible for the public's voice to be irresponsibly used and destructive.
The more easygoing part of the community is beginning to dislike the hateful and easily offended part of the community because things are being destroyed for reasons that they consider tolerable. This is causing civil war. Every controversial issue brings out the people who want something destroyed in a fight against people who want it preserved.
I could go on and on describing these issues but I've got other stuff to do! Someone else carry the torch!
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I think that the biggest problem with drama is that it's the people who are the most fanatical who are the loudest. These people will go out of their way to make sure that their opinion is heard, and their opinion is often riddled with insults. It is these conditons that cause drama in the first place. The best way to have the community as a whole stop the onslaught of drama and 'civil warring' is to just ignore the fanatics and remain level headed in any argument.
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This is the kind of post that was needed first...going to sponsors IS a good way to remedy something but only after other options are completely exhausted. Likely, it would have happened anyway in this case but the community needs to go through the proper channels to ensure that another solution is available. I don't like Destiny and this latest incident hasn't improved his image in my mind but in the end, that doesn't matter.
An open letter to the CEO is much more direct and doesn't threaten the team as a whole. Sponsors cannot change rosters, they can only stop providing support. In a community that is going through growing pains like ours, we need all of the support we can get. Destiny needed to be held accountable by his boss. If that didn't happen through pure negligence/ignorance, then it's time to take it to their sponsors. It is the CEO's obligation to respond to any negative press and to offer an apology and/or an explanation. In this situation an explanation wasn't really available, Mr. Ferraz needed to come out immediately and condemn the behavior to distance the team from the negative event. The OP is more than than reasonable...there should be accountability in the upper echelon of any company.
If a CEO makes a response, his team gains respect from fans for being decisive even if that means he has to get rid of a player. Sometimes I feel like eSports has child-like management without much experience...this might be true on the whole. As mentioned before, people like Alex Garfield are the ones who get it right. Somewhere along the way, management forgot that managing people was the main focus. It's not too much to ask for some clarity from the person who should have dealt with the situation in the first place.
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On May 09 2012 05:58 Liquid`NonY wrote:
If a player has some good qualities and some bad qualities, we shouldn't want to dump the good with the bad. Hopefully the bad can be changed. For example, people like Naniwa and Idra are much better representatives now than at their beginnings. And for some other examples I won't name, there are several players who were caught cheating in previous games and have now become successful and good mannered SC2 players. So I think what we should look at is whether a person will do more good than bad and whether the bad can be changed.
This goes back to the twitter post I linked earlier. EG's Alex Garfield has had a lot to do with the changes in how Idra has conducted himself. Team managers and coaches have got to be responsible to ensuring their players are properly representing their team. If you were saying some of the things that Destiny regularly says on his stream, would I be wrong in assuming Nazgul might speak to you about it?
I think the OP has a very valid point, Quantic hired Destiny knowing all too well what type of personality he has and how he regularly conducts himself. I think it's pretty obvious that Quantic hired Destiny to be able to tap into his legions of fans and extreme popularity in some circles. But that same attitude which makes him so popular with some fans also makes him quite appaling to others. He's a devisive person, and Quantic knew what they were getting into or at least they should've known. I honestly can't be too sympathetic that the whole thing blew up in their faces; it shouldn't have been hard to see how that was going to turn out. I'm not arguing he should have been fired, but rather I'm arguing that the Quantic team management acted irresponsibly. They loved the extra viewers Destiny was brining them, and so they were all too happy to look the other way when his conduct was unbecoming of the team. You can't have it both ways.
Again though, I will reflect your sentiments about contacting sponsors. Immediately contacting sponsors five minutes after a controversy has erupted is totally unreasonable. The organization should be given some time to respond or release an official statement before you try to destroy them. But on the other hand, the Quantic team management bears some responsibility here. One tweet letting the community know they were looking into the issue would've been enough to asway so much of the hatred. I don't know at what point they became aware of the issue, but the fact is they never during the whole time made an attempt to address the community outrage.
I know the situation doesn't scale properly to be compared with a real world sport; but imagine if a player in a smaller niche sport like indoor soccer were caught on camera using racial slurs against a minority and the team never made any statements about it or their intentions in the matter. There would be civil rights groups calling for blood; and you better believe people would be calling sponsors. You'd have people who don't even like indoor soccer calling sponsors and complaining. Simply PR efforts like letting the community know you've heard them, regardless of your intent, can go along way. Quantic screwed up here, and should be reviewing how they could have better handled the situation instead of making posts on Team Liquid about how reactionary the community is.
On May 09 2012 05:58 Liquid`NonY wrote:
The more easygoing part of the community is beginning to dislike the hateful and easily offended part of the community because things are being destroyed for reasons that they consider tolerable. This is causing civil war. Every controversial issue brings out the people who want something destroyed in a fight against people who want it preserved.
Obviously, I can only speak for myself. But my problem with the whole situation was the knee-jerk reactions that are becoming all too typical across TL. The "he did no wrong" crowd are just as guilty of this as the crowd calling for his blood. I don't mind if people are offended or not offended by Destiny's conduct--if they back themselves up with logical discussion and actually bother to read and think about what others are writing. The problem stems from too many people who read the OP and immediatley post whatever ill-formed thoughts first jump into their minds. That pisses me off far far far more than anything else.
-edit: sp
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Here's the truth of the matter (the 'contacting sponsors thing') now that that door has been opened it's not going to close, like or not (and not saying I agree or disagree with them) now that people have seen that contacting sponsors 'makes things happen' I don't think it's going to stop. For better or worse that 'avenue' has been opened up and it's not going to close.
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Why the fuck does everybody keep responding 'management should have been contacted first before sponsers" when the OP literally cited that managemenet has been contacted in the past multiple times and did nothing? READ PLEASE.
@Nony talking about contacting sponsers not being the correct response, and keeping in mind that management in the past hasn't been responsive about these types of issues, here's a question to anybody:
What's the middle step? What do we do/who do we contact that's not management or sponsers? We still don't like his actions, think he should be punished for it, and/or think he needs to change his ways. Everybody seems to think contacting sponsers is the wrong thing to do because it hurts esports. But if we want something to be done, and we don't trust management to do anything about it (what incentive do they have outside of extreme circumstances if the sponsers aren't following the scene very closely?) then what's the next step?
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On May 09 2012 06:55 Complete wrote:
Why the fuck does everybody keep responding 'management should have been contacted first before sponsers" when the OP literally cited that managemenet has been contacted in the past multiple times and did nothing? READ PLEASE.
Proof please. 1 forum post and 1 twitter post was linked. The former had no proof about any emails going on. Concrete evidence please, not some dumb rumors. The latter is about a different incident; I do not see anything about Destiny making racist remarks. Maybe YOU should read carefully before you post.
As they say, empty vessels make the most noise.
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EPT
