Ellie steps down from Second Wind without playing a single match.

By rohan
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Updated: January 3, 2019
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Female Overwatch Player Ellie announced her decision to step down from competitive Overwatch. This comes as a result of the community’s insistence on her to prove her identity even as she had great performances overall. The sexist nature of these comments steps from disbelief from members of the community that a female could play at such a high level. Despite this, the community kept pestering her for proof. Ellie, whose identity is still a secret even spoke on stream in order to ‘prove her identity’. This is not something that is usually asked of male players/streamers on a regular basis.

This points out yet another problem for the esports community in how they perceive new and upcoming players. Most of the community felt that Ellie was actually some professional player playing on a smurf ID. They brought into question her identity and even whether she was a female player at all.

Here is a stream of Dafran [ player for Atlanta Reign ] speculating that the person playing on the account and the person talking were not the same person. All of this ultimately was a bit too much for Ellie, who had to prove herself repeatedly both in-game and off the game as well.

(2/2) their Messiah. Between needing a player to live up to huge expectations and having to question their own safety, it seems that the OW community isn't ready to just view a player as just a player. We wanted a player, but it seemed like the public wanted something else.

— Justin Hughes (@SwerteSiJustin) January 2, 2019

Justin Hughes, owner of Second Wind speaks up on twitter.

We wanted a player, but it seemed like the public wanted something else.

Second Wind owner Justin Hughes came out harshly on the community in a series of tweets. He feels that the community was very hypocritical of their own attitude.