On December 16, 2018, an Overwatch player who goes by the name “Ellie” had dominated the Overwatch game and became the first female ever to be put on ESports team, but the situation had gone awry on January 5, 2019 “Ellie” was actually a “he” along.

ESports is a rapidly growing, multi-million dollar gaming industry that also organizes professional and amateur gaming competitions. The Esports industry reports that a quarter of all esports fans are women, but according to Nielsen, it’s widely known that the vast majority of ESports players are men.

In early January, the team for the top Overwatch containers confirmed the rumors that the female player was a man posing as a 17-year-old girl.   

So the full breakdown of this experiment is when the Overwatch contenders announced they had recruited “Ellie” (it’s a Gamer-tag, not an actual name) to join the high-ranking team Second Wind.

The women in this competitive gaming industry all were with excitement and encouragement for “Ellie” on social media, but also mixed with this enthusiasm was sexist and toxic responses.

The biggest controversy was when they announced that the team decided not to publish “Ellie”’s real name; saying it was to protect her privacy, but this began rumors that “Ellie” cheated to raise her player ranking.

There were theories around her real identity then after only 12 days of being recruited to Second Wind; it had announced that she had been resigned. Lots of females gamers and other gamers took to social media to express how disappointed they were about the resigned, most people assume that “Ellie” quit because of the harassment and threats she had been getting.

This is not the first time a female in the gaming community has been accused of cheating or getting harassed on social media.  A girl by the name Kim Se-Yeon was accused of hacking the game to level up her wins rate, but Se-Yeon proved that she was in fact not cheating and stream herself playing for over an hour.

Days later an announcement broke out from Esports insider named Rod Breslau and he spoke with a male player of Overwatch and Twitch streamer in which his name is “Punisher.”

As reported by Breslau and Becca “Aspen” Rukavina that Punisher is in fact “Ellie” and how different women players stated that Punisher asked for them to help him in performing this online social experiment.

Also, on that day of Breslau’s announcement , Rukavina took to her Twitch and announced the situation as well stating that “Ellie is not Ellie” and Punisher “did not expect this to get out of hand.”            (This information was found by Kaylee Fagan at www.yr.media.com)

Many people all over the gaming community have their thoughts of how women get treated in this industry and about this situation that had occurred. A YouTuber that goes by the name Gloom made a video about the social experiment; the video is called “girl gamer gets caught lying ft.Penguinz0.”

Gloom stated in the video that “women aren’t weak women don’t need to be protected {she} been gaming {her} whole life {she} been just fine.” Gloom proceeds\ed “nothing is keeping {her} from doing the things that {she} love in fact when {she} wins a game on Overwatch, there’s no announcement that says this is a boy’s game like that doesn’t happen and {she} doesn’t like doing the whole ‘as a women thing’ cuz {she} doesn’t think it’s necessary {she} play games all the time and {she} really not had a problem granted {she} don’t get offended really easily.”

Gloom continues “maybe people should stop getting offended so easily and just have fun and do the stuff that they like.”

Also, her friend that is featured in the video named Penguinz0 said,“there is no closure” and “there was no point” about this experiment. Thus, there are many differing opinions about the experiment, like two of our 7th graders named Megan Shala and Sarah Rasimowicz.

For example, Shala stated that “[she] thinks it’s true and it’s also kinda sad and people think that only boys can become gamers and girls are just going to mess everything up, girls are going to mess up the high sources [she] means if you have fun doing it go ahead.” Also, Rasimowiaz stated that “[she] approaches the same way” when it comes to gaming no matter if female or male.             

Among many responses and many facts at the end of the day, we all should treat each other with respect and understand that everything is made to be shared with others, not just by one.