Kotaku Reporter Doubles Down on False Overwatch Controversy Article

Spencer Baculi |

Jan 8, 2019

Last week, the Overwatch community found itself embroiled in a controversy surrounding both the apparent resignation of a professional female Overwatch player, Ellie, due to rampant harassment and the subsequent revelation that the player in question never really existed at all. Kotaku, a video game news outlet site, was among the first to break the story in an article titled “Overwatch Pro Quits After Harassment Over Whether She Was Really Playing” written by Kotaku reporter Nathan Grayson. While the piece did report on the bizarre Ellie situation, it also featured a strong editorial condemning the general Overwatch community for being sexist and toxic:

Esports is not a meritocracy; it’s a male-dominated scene in which gender essentialism runs rampant, and in which women are often made to feel unwelcome. Even in a game as ostensibly inclusive as Overwatch, a woman can’t just be “a player”—not without ample infrastructural support from an understanding team—and Ellie’s situation exemplifies why. This situation has led some fans to question what Second Wind did to help Ellie before she left and why the team didn’t publicly decry the harassment she was enduring before her departure. On Twitter, Hughes replied that “we do what we can for our players, but when it comes down to it, there are only so many things we can do when safety of a player comes into question.”

In the wake of the revelation that Ellie never really existed, many began to ridicule and criticize Grayson for not only running a story that was false, but also for using the story to demonize an entire community. Respected eSports and Overwatch League community figure Rod ‘Slasher’ Breslau was among the first to criticize Kotaku and Grayson for their reckless reporting:

Unintentionally, certain game/culture journalists from sites like Kotaku and Polygon ran with Ellie’s removal without proper due diligence, now a recurring problem for the media’s esports coverage. All to the detriment of the serious issue of women facing harassment in games.

— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) January 6, 2019

In response to mounting criticism, Grayson posted a lengthy explanation (which can be read in full here) regarding the writing of the article to his personal Twitter account:

re: the ellie story–a lot of people have been yelling at me about it for the past 48 hours, so I want to clarify some things

— nathan grayson (@Vahn16) January 7, 2019

people have decided that other reporters and I didn’t do our due diligence initially, and while I can’t speak for other reporters, I’m guessing they, like me, followed pretty standard protocol for these things: reach out to involved parties, wait for responses, and then write

— nathan grayson (@Vahn16) January 7, 2019

Grayson first points to an alleged deadline and his inability to contact any of the involved parties as a reason for the article’s publication:

sometimes nobody replies. that happened here, and it sucks! if you’re on deadline, it means you’ve got to work off what’s available. is it ideal? no. a lot of things about online reporting–as well as social media, esports, and the internet, all of which played into this–aren’t

— nathan grayson (@Vahn16) January 7, 2019

Though, as independent video game journalist Brad Glasgow points out:

Kotaku is an online publication. Any deadlines it creates are arbitrary and self-imposed. pic.twitter.com/P6zd20MtIz

— Brad Glasgow (@Brad_Glasgow) January 7, 2019

And apparently the deadline wasn’t such a looming menace as to prevent you from editorializing in the piece. Weird.

— Brad Glasgow (@Brad_Glasgow) January 7, 2019

If Grayson truly had a deadline, it was a shockingly short one: Ellie’s resignation from Second Wind was announced on January 2^nd, 2019, and barely 24-hours later Grayson’s article was published on Kotaku. It is suspect that a news outlet would give a reporter less than 24 hours to research, investigate, write, and publish an article concerning a story with so many mysterious elements. Furthermore, by his own admission, Grayson ran the story with its intended narrative despite being unable to reach any of the parties involved directly for comment due to the alleged deadline.

These actions display an egregious and worrying lack of journalism ethics. The Society of Professional Journalists include the following guidelines in their Code of Ethics:

Journalists should:

– Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work. Verify information before releasing it. Use original sources whenever possible.

– Remember that neither speed nor format excuses inaccuracy.

– Diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.

Grayson then continues, explaining that he only wrote on what could be proven given the evidence he had available:

some people are acting like, in hindsight, it was INCREDIBLY obvious that ellie was a fake. that’s some whiplash-inducing historical revision, bc a few days ago, it most certainly wasn’t. people were making charlie-day-ass conspiracy charts to try and make sense of it, ffs

— nathan grayson (@Vahn16) January 7, 2019

the most solid, verifiable stuff I had at the time of my first article suggested ellie was real. in addition, that seemed to be the going assumption of prominent people in the overwatch esports community, including ellie’s own team

— nathan grayson (@Vahn16) January 7, 2019

These assertions prompted a response from the Director of Talent and Programming at ESP Gaming, Richard Lewis, who provided Grayson with evidence that Ellie had been outed as fraudulent two-weeks prior:

Ah yes… The person with NO digital footprint, name, background or even time spent in the game, who came into existence just a day after a player on the team she got drafted to said girls shouldn’t be in his MMR bracket, looked like a REAL person. You even listening to yourself?

— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) January 7, 2019

Punisher had been outed 2 weeks before on Reddit. https://t.co/VyoSOcUlJH

Multiple pros had said it was Punisher.

How were you not even able to run a Reddit search on this shit?

— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) January 7, 2019

(Note: While the original reddit thread linked by Lewis has since been purged of comments due to the controversial nature of the topic, an unredacted version can be read using Removeddit.)

Near the end of his statement, Grayson admits that he ran the editorialized Ellie story because of the subject’s gender and his own perception of competitive gaming:

lastly–and this was a judgement call I made consciously at the time–I chose to believe a person who claimed to be a woman, bc anything else would’ve fed into the preexisting atmosphere of rampant skepticism (verging on paranoia) surrounding women in competitive gaming scenes

— nathan grayson (@Vahn16) January 7, 2019

Grayson also avoids taking responsibility for running the erroneous article, instead framing the article’s publication as a form of activism:

you can say that, given the outcome of things, I played a role in ultimately reinforcing people’s erroneous assumptions about women, but the alternative would’ve been to reinforce those assumptions in a diff way–and to implicitly be *always* operating under those assumptions

— nathan grayson (@Vahn16) January 7, 2019

that seems pretty awful to me, so I’m not gonna do that! and this isn’t me trying to sound all self-aggrandizing or whatever; I’m just outlining my thought process in hopes of helping people understand how this all unfolded

— nathan grayson (@Vahn16) January 7, 2019

However, many readers and fans were ultimately unhappy with Grayson’s statement, and were quick to criticize what they felt was a dishonest and disingenuous non-apology:

Long thread just to say:
I pushed an unverified narrative

And it bit me in the ass.

— 🄽🅄🄰🄽🄲🄴 (@OliWilly) January 7, 2019

I understand how you were fooled but how was the skepticism verging on paranoia? A pro player literally popped up out of nowhere, skepticism is the most logical thing in that instance.
Also is it sexist the guy couldn’t get signed to a team but his alter-ego Ellie could?

— MaxedLuck (@thomps_austin) January 7, 2019

that’s not a good thread. that thread completely misses the point that you straight up falsified a story and intentionally ignored your due diligence in order to publish a piece because you lack principle. ACTUAL journalism student here, by the way.

— Zach (@rkozbutt) January 7, 2019

You have only yourself to blame. An obvious smurf account suddenly presents itself as a girl playing at pro-level. Because of identity politics, you believe in it as if it were the truth revelead by god himself. Then you go after people who did YOUR job for you. Be responsible

— Douglas Amaro (@DouglasAmaro83) January 7, 2019

Dude, take the L and apologize. You and all of your journo buddies jumped the gun because you couldn’t wait to report about an oppressed woman. You could have easily found proof if you guys had actually decided to look

— SuperSlacker (@SlackerSuper) January 7, 2019

What do you make of Grayson’s thread? Do you think he was quick to jump the gun in order to push a narrative about women in gaming? Do you think he made the right call in trying to get his story out as soon as possible?