I agree that Epic Games should have never allowed them in the tournament in the first place. That’s a mistake on Epic’s part and it does make them seem like they’re trying to weasel out of paying prize money.
This is discrimination. But not all discrimination is unjustified. I discriminate against people all the time. I discriminate against unpleasant people when choosing whom I interact with. I discriminate against companies that have a history of doing bad things. Epic discriminates against residents of a country that broke a decades-long peace in Europe. I believe it is justified.
I think a good compromise solution would be to donate the prize money to a humanitarian organisation. That way it doesn’t seem like Epic is only doing it because of the money.
Nobody looks good here but kudos to Epic for having a backbone and trying to do the right thing.
Agreed, but I will say it’s easy for Epic to have a “backbone” when it involves not paying out $200k. Seems like a perfect scenario for them, unless runner up makes a claim to the prize money.
The gray area of them playing from Belarus is not so gray in my opinion. Everyone knows they have Russian’s hand up their ass.
Lawyers will get involved. If they wanted to send a message they could donate the winnings to the Ukrainian red cross
I like that.
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I’m sure it was the 40% of Tencent’s stake over anything else.
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Honestly, being in Belarus is not a big difference from being is Russia. That’s like them saying “we want to get our money from things that Russia can’t get, but we don’t want to really leave Russia”