sorry for the late reply! so Huk (Chris Loranger) is the president of gaming for Boston Uprising, the Overwatch League team. he’s said a lot of questionable and downright racist things in the past about Korean players, and a huge fiasco was leaked yesterday in regards to things he did to the Boston Uprising team. To try to make it short and easy to understand, ill do some bullet points.Â
- Huk segregated the team so that non-korean and Korean teammates were not practicing together. he racially segregated them. by doing this, he assigned additional responsibilities and tasks to staff members- making Uprising basically into a racist mess.
- For the third stage, Park (Crusty- the previous head coach) switched from Uprising to San Fran Shock. This left only Gamsu as the translator for the rest of his teammates. So, while having to learn the Strats, practice, deal with the mental stress and wear down of overwatch league- they decided to hand the responsibility of translating to the only teammate at this point who could. This was incredibly unfair because Gamsu is basically then put in the middle of a shitty situation that I’m sure he didn’t want to be in. All because Huk/Uprising was too cheap to hire a translator at the time. (they did eventually get a translator mid fourth stage. so from April 4th to around May 30th, they had no translator apart from an already busy Gamsu)
- As expected, tension continued to rise and fighting within the team became more and more often. (the following players I talk about are Korean players who were upset and put into a hostile environment Huk created out of racism and lack of providing enough translators)
- Kalios got mad and fought often with the team staff members, which resulted in him being banned from the practice facility.Â
- Things got REALLY bad with Striker. the fighting got so bad that he would often storm out and even damaged some of the computers. This sound bad on his end but please keep in mind the type of situation he was put into. The players were pit against each other and became frustrated with one another, notably after Striker’s rage quits. Which, again- all of this was caused because of the situation they were put in.Â
- Striker told Huk he wanted to play for a new team next season- that he refused to play for Uprising. Huk agreed and allowed that option, however, when other teams tried to pick Striker up, Huk requested compensation in excess of five times the players’ salaries. So basically, if a team wanted to take Strike, they had to pay 5x the normal amount. This made Striker miss out on opportunities.
- In other words, after Striker showed anger and resentment, Huk tried to lock Striker into the team by making Striker’s going price ridiculously high so no one would ant to pay that much to have him on their team. Huk tried to ruin Striker’s opportunity and force him to stay in a hostile, racist, environment.Â
- Moving on, their housing situation was pretty trash. Each team pays for their players to have a place to stay. Some teams rented out entire houses, other multiple apartments, etc. For Uprising, three players were required to live in two bedroom apartments with a mere room divider placed in the living area for the additional player. So, imagine after being segregated from your team, constantly being angry and upset that you cant express yourself because the team wouldn’t get a translator, you’re packed into a small apartment and don’t have the chance to breathe. It sucks.Â
- All the meanwhile, staff members were verbally attacked by Huk and were often yelled at to the point of crying all bc of minor mistakes.Â
This is a lot so I just want you to imagine that you were given the opportunity to play in the first ever Overwatch League. However, you don’t know the main language that the teams use- English. You’re worried about it but they promise you not to worry. They say they’ll get a translator, pay for housing, and make sure you do alright. So, despite being nervous you take the leap and go for it. You get here, only to find that you are segregated from all your teammates because you don’t speak English, and you arent given an actual translator (apart from a teammate who can translate- but remember this isnt his job. his job is the same as yours. to play, learn, and deal with the hundreds of other things overwatch league players have to do). You can’t communicate accurately, and you have a raging staff member who’s an asshole to everyone and treats you like shit. It would really suck.Â
TLDR: Huk is a racist staff member for Uprising who split the team in half for Koreans vs Non-Koreans, didn’t get them an actually translator who isn’t already busy trying to play for the team, and then held players hostage when they tried to leave.Â