Fnatic League of Legends toplaner Gabriël ‘Bwipo’ Rau has made an open apology via Twitter to T1 support Lee ‘Effort’ Sang-ho. The apology comes after T1 finally confirmed that the player was not to be blamed for the Discord leaks which have led to the reported harassment of LCK caster Nick ‘LS’ De Cesare and his family.
Discord logs were originally leaked from Effort’s stream at the end of October, revealing that the LCK caster would join as a coach following the departures of Kim ‘Kim’ Jeong-soo and Lim ‘Comet’ Hye-sung at the end of Worlds this year. The reveal sparked outrage among a vocal minority of T1’s fans who expected the historic organisation to pick up a more seasoned replacement.
Bwipo initially jumped to LS’ defence a few days after the leak, as the outrage reportedly became vitriolic towards both LS and his grandmother; a regular feature on LS’ Twitch stream. Bwipo would again write in support of his friend on November 14, following T1’s announcement that Yang ‘Daeny’ Dae-in and Lee ‘Zefa’ Jae-min have become the incumbent coaches for 2021, seemingly dropping plans to hire LS in the wake of the backlash altogether. “I want LS to get his fair shot at coaching,” he states. “He was promised one.”
The issue would continue to develop on November 18, after Bwipo states on The Crackdown – a podcast hosted by Christian ‘IWDominate’ Rivera and Duncan ‘Thorin’ Shields – that Effort should have made a statement apologising for the initial leak. T1 however would come out and state via Twitter that there had been a misunderstanding: “Efforts’s stream was shut off on October 27th but the capture software was not turned off correctly and it recorded all the activities that Effort was doing after the stream which was uploaded onto the streaming platform.”
"Effort" 이상호 선수에게 사과드립니다.
Official Apology to Effort. pic.twitter.com/AS6CfYmACx— T1 LoL (@T1LoL) November 19, 2020
Although the organisation is yet to address LS specifically in any communications over the last few weeks, it has at least now offered an apology to Effort for not acting sooner to absolve him of the blame. T1 also reached out to Bwipo following the podcast to explain the situation, prompting the toplaner’s own apology to the player.
I was just contacted by some of the T1 management regarding the statement I made on the podcast. I was told that it was a technical issue that he could not have avoided.
I'm taking this moment to apologize to Effort and T1 for causing these misunderstandings to get out of hand.
— Bwipo (@Bwipo) November 19, 2020
In a TwitLonger posted yesterday, November 19, Bwipo acknowledges his mistakes in his gung-ho approach to the situation surrounding T1 and LS: “I now understand that I failed to create a reasonable statement addressing the issues properly,” he writes. “I apologize for this.”
Later in the statement he once again offers an extended apology to Effort, and asserts that he has reached out to T1 in order to facilitate it personally. As such, it seems that Bwipo’s public involvement in this matter has come to an end.
