Philadelphia Fusion tank player Kim “Sado” Su-Min was suspended<\/a> from the Overwatch<\/em> League before the inaugural season even began. His upcoming debut has been anticipated for months<\/em>.<\/p>
The South Korean player was accused of boosting Overwatch<\/em> accounts for money\u2014a serious <\/em>offense for Blizzard and the Overwatch<\/em> community. Boosting is the act of using another player’s Overwatch<\/em> account to falsify their ranked level. “Boosting is one of those things where you are directly influencing in a negative way the experience of thousands of other Overwatch<\/em> players,” Overwatch<\/em> League commissioner Nate Nanzer told Dot Esports<\/a> in March. Blizzard considered how bad Sado’s boosting was before issuing his punishment. Dallas Fuel tank player Son “OGE” Min-seok was also<\/em> suspended from the Overwatch<\/em> League for boosting, but only for four games.<\/p>
Related: <\/strong>Philadelphia Fusion Overwatch<\/em> League player Sado suspended for account boosting<\/strong><\/a><\/p>
The team hasn’t shied away from the controversy; they joked about Sado<\/a> giving Philadelphia player Joe “Joemeister” Gramano “a boost” to grab something he couldn’t reach in a cooking video, but took a more serious tone<\/a> in a Fusion spotlight video on the tank player. The joke wasn’t received well by the South Korean Overwatch<\/em> community, which has generally taken a harder stance on boosting. It was poor timing on the Philadelphia Fusion’s part; the Overwatch<\/em> community was already debating the merits of South Korean Overwatch<\/em> League casters refusing to say OGE’s name during a Korean broadcast.<\/p>
OGE didn’t really<\/em> ever apologize to fans about boosting, and that angered the Korean community.\u00a0“These fans love and care so much for their favorite teams and players,”\u00a0a Twitter user wrote<\/a> about the situation. “Maybe the reason why they’re so angry is because boosting is that serious of a problem in their region and it’s frustrating to see that Blizzard doesn’t seem to be treating it with the right level of severity?”<\/p>
OGE’s introduction to the league<\/a> was less than warm from the Korean side\u2014and with Sado’s actions being deemed worse, he’ll likely face some controversy in his debut. Sado has been remorseful since the beginning, though. He’s spoken publicly about the financial and emotional instability that led him to boost Overwatch<\/em> players for money: he’d just dropped out of high school and needed money to support his family.<\/p>
“But I know all of these reasons can’t justify my boosting activity,” Sado said<\/a> in a letter to fans. “I harmed other people in the act of earning money. I should have thought about the right way to make money, but I didn’t, and I sincerely regret that.”<\/p>
It’s a lot to unpack when considering Sado’s welcome back to the Overwatch<\/em> League: ethics, digital labor, and cultural differences. Boosting is<\/em> just different in Korea than it is in the United States. (The Korean government has even proposed a law that could make boosting punishable by up to two years in jail<\/a>.) It’s a major problem and mocking Korean perception of it belittles the community and its concerns.<\/p>
