Counter-Logic Gaming is an esports organisation founded in 2010, initially as a League of Legends team. Over its history it's had enough success to branch out into various other games (as well as being acquired in 2017 by MSG Sports, a major US sports holding company), and currently fields teams and players in Fortnite, Super Smash Bros, CS:GO, Valorant and Apex Legends.
But it's the League of Legends team that's making headlines for all the wrong reasons—and through no fault of their own. Following recent results, including a 2-1 loss, CLG posted a video to its official channels showing the team being chewed-out by manager Daniel 'Tafo' Lee, and basically telling them that changes are incoming, this 'might be the last time we have this roster of five playing', before the video rather unbelievably cuts to an advert for Bud Light.
The video has since been removed, though esports maven Jake Lucky has (unluckily for CLG) saved it.
Since they took hours upon hours to delete, here is the video, but please grab a bud light first pic.twitter.com/zmxcqnDGxWJuly 12, 2021
There's some odd melancholy music playing in the background, and when we return from the advert the coach continues to make it worse, telling a room of players who clearly wish this wasn't being filmed that "I know you all worked so hard, so it's hard for me, I love each one of you guys, you guys are all like brothers so I just want to respect you guys as much as I can for understanding that this isn't working for the team."
Then we cut to another advert for Bud Light.
This is, not to put too fine a point on it, humiliating for the players involved. This is a conversation that shouldn't happen in public for all sorts of reasons, and the video was up for several hours before someone at CLG realised the organisation had done bad, at which point it was deleted and replaced with this statement.
pic.twitter.com/OhcLEQ9ZDPJuly 12, 2021
"Our goal was to share an authentic moment with our fans and be as transparent as possible leading up to potential changes that may occur this week," it reads. "We recognize the negative light that it brings to our players, and for that we apologize and have taken down the video."
Well it was certainly an authentic moment. No-one should take life advice from me, but I proffer the following self-evident observation: talk to your employees about negative stuff behind closed doors. No-one should ever get that news in front of the world's eyes, whether they're an executive or an esports star. It's not decent.
Or as League caster Foxdrop put it:
Son I'm sorry to say but you're adopted. Please don't cry. Here, enjoy the refreshing taste of a Bud Light™️July 12, 2021
The text of CLG's original tweet read as follows:
"This might be the last time we have this roster of five playing" - @Tafokints
On the @BudLightGaming Cooldown we take you behind the scenes of a private team meeting #LCS #CLGFIGHTING"
So yeah: don't do this to your players. Especially don't do it with hashtags about them 'fighting' and especially especially don't do it while tagging in Bud Light and cutting to commercials: that's almost beyond parody. Counter Logic Gaming seems a perfect name for this bunch.
