Fnatic fires its strategic coach over inappropriate comments toward a minor

While it’s been a great time for esports in general due to the Coronavirus driving up interest, it’s still a difficult time when things like these crop up. Esports organization Fnatic just announced a swift adjustment to their League of Legends team staff. Namely strategic coach Marius “Veigar V2” Aune. He has officially been dropped from the team after several messages surfaced. Fnatic described them as “extremely concerning messages.”

Speaking inappropriately with a minor

The messages in question showed up on Twitter when user Deestinyer responded to a thread highlighting previous toxic online behavior by Aune. On the images, Aune was seen to be making extremely sexual comments in response to Deestinyer’s remarks. The Twitter accounts in use were ones he used to control, but they have since been suspended or deleted from the social media platform.

The content of some messages directed at adult women were already cause for concern. This is especially the case, seeing as Deestinyer was underage at the time the messages were sent, dating back to 2018. But this was far from the end of it. Aune even went so far as to send an image displaying a child, Deestinyer’s seven-year-old sister, and said he’d “choose the little one to the left.”

Another screenshot showed Twitter user XDDDDDDivan asking if Aune “cums.” He responded with “only on little one,” once again making an incredibly sexual comment in reference to a child.

Fnatic’s quick response

Fnatic originally hired Aune as a full-time analyst at the start of the year. But they didn’t have to spend long thinking how to handle this. Just hours later after the news surfaced, the organization released a statement on Twitter. It said: “We have been made aware today of several extremely concerning messages sent by a contractor associated with our League of Legends team. These messages were sent in 2017 and 2018, prior to his association with Fnatic. We have immediately severed all ties with this individual.”

The response was quick and decisive to remove Aune from Fnatic’s staff. But it was an appropriate response given the inappropriateness of the comments made. This is just further evidence of how careful we must all be when communicating publicly or even in private. Professionals are held to a higher standard and must always represent themselves in a positive light, otherwise things like this might happen. It may have been years ago and maybe Aune has felt regret over what was said.

But that doesn’t dismiss the fact it was said.

Ryan Goodrich

Ryan has been writing since long before he could even write. He's written resumes, software user guides, consumer electronic reviews, and myriad web content spanning a variety of industries. But now he's writing about video games, which is much more interesting.

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