Pro-players for Blizzard's online team shooter Overwatch have had to pay fines for inappropriate words used in match chat.
As reported by Dexerto, Los Angeles Valiant's Jung-won "Lastro" Mun send messages saying "sex" and then "big dick" in the chat during the team's encounter with rival team San Francisco Shock. Lastro seemingly didn't realise that this was the match chat, which could be seen by not only the rival team, but also everyone watching the showdown. Shock's Dong-jun ‘Rascal’ Kim joined in before Shock tank Matthew "Super" DeLisi informed Lastro that everyone could see the messages.
Per the Overwatch League Player Discipline Tracker, both Lastro and Rascal have been fined $1,000 each for "inappropriate chat during a league match."
This is the first disciplinary action that has been taken by the Overwatch League this year.
Lastro apologised on Twitter (below), saying that he wrote the messages as a joke and didn't know that anyone else could see.
I thought the viewers could not see the match chat because everyone was typing in it. I wrote it as a joke, although I should not have done it regardless of whether the viewers could see the match chat or not. I will make sure something like this never happens again.
— Lastro (@Lastro_OW) April 5, 2020
Overwatch League matches for last month and April became online-only after being cancelled due to concerns over the COVID-19 coronavirus. Blizzard also axed events in China in January for the same reason.
Activision Blizzard recently struck a deal with Google worth $160m on the Overwatch League.