StarCraft Player Kicked From Tourney After Incredibly Insensitive Tweet

Protip: If you want to win the Fragbite Masters tournament for StarCraft, don't say you're going to "rape" your opponent.

Deadspin reports that Mihaylo Hayda, an Ukranian StarCraft player, was disqualified from a StarCraft II qualifying match for tweeting that he was going to "rape" his opponent. The tweet said, "Going to rape some girl soon #fragbitemasters". If there wasn't the hashtag at the end and it hadn't been tweeted in the middle of a qualifying match for the Fragbite Masters Season 3 tournament, it could have been a lot worse for the player who was merely disqualified from the tournament.

Hayda's opponent, Madeleine Leander, had no idea what was going on when her game was paused only a few minutes into the first map until after the game when she finally saw the tweet. "I was invited to play in the tournament Fragbite Masters," Leander recalls, "My first reaction was "but I'm not good enough". It was however not the first time an underdog was invited to a tournament. It would be stupid to say no, I thought." Underdog or not, it doesn't excuse Hayda's tweet and it certainly doesn't excuse the way that he executed it. "I don't even know what to say," Leander admitted, "I was very surprised to say the least. This coming from a pro player is scary."

Although Hayda as disqualified from the rest of the tournament and apologized on Twitter later, saying, "Sorry to everyone, sometime i really doing stupid tweets, hate myself for that :( sorry," and "No tweets from me next 3 days, really ashamed, again sry everyone :( #wannakillmyself." People are wondering about how genuine his words really are, though he did express apologies to Leander in private as well.

The bigger issue at hand lies in the response to the actions taken by the tournament organizers. Many of Hayda's supporters insist he did nothing wrong, and that such asinine commentary is part of the culture. While there were those who clearly supported Fragbite's decision, as tweeting such spiteful, insensitive and derogatory statements is completely reprehensible, far too many defended the tweet itself as part of gaming. It's a mentality that needs to change. There are innumerable ways to trash talk that don't involve threatening someone with sexual assault. The only way to enforce that kind of change are for organizations to do exactly what Fragbite did in this instance, and ensure there are consequences for such actions.