Police were called to the Counter-Strike tournament at Dreamhack Winter over the weekend after a fight broke out backstage between DOTA 2 player Jonathan “Loda” Berg and eSports journalist Richard Lewis.
A statement released by the LAN party — the world’s biggest, with over 20,000 in attendance — says:
During the afternoon today at DreamHack Winter 2015 there was an incident at the CS:GO backstage area, where Loda and Richard Lewis were involved in verbal dispute that escalated into a physical confrontation. The situation was witnessed by DreamHack staff, who intervened and pulled both parties apart when the confrontation began. After cooling down the situation, DreamHack Security Crew was called to the site, and took official statements of the involved the parties. DreamHack also notified Police that came to the location to take statements from both parties and witnesses.
It appears the altercation began on Twitter:
@RLewisReports Ya Lets meet up and talk about it. Im at dh.
— Jonathan Berg (@LodaBerg) November 28, 2015
I’m easy enough to find dawg. I’ll be on stage. What you doing today? @LodaBerg
— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) November 28, 2015
So I go and talk to @RLewisReports and he physically assaults me… He strangles me until admins pulled him away. Police inc!
— Jonathan Berg (@LodaBerg) November 28, 2015
Will stay quiet about the issue now. Shouldn’t have brought it to the public just yet. Just don’t think violence should exist in e-sports.
— Jonathan Berg (@LodaBerg) November 28, 2015
For those wondering I’m ok! 🙂 just a bit sad that someone so directly involved in e-sports would sink to this level.
— Jonathan Berg (@LodaBerg) November 28, 2015
And here’s Lewis’ tweets on the matter:
About to travel home, lots to talk about when I get back. As per usual the PR machine kicked in and this means lies were peddled over truth.
— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) November 29, 2015
Big take home point for me is that a player, who aggressed onto me in a fit of white-knighthood, was pandered to after I defended myself.
— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) November 29, 2015
I now realise that the correct response to someone putting their head in your face, while security watch, is to let them hit you.
— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) November 29, 2015
Why an event organiser wouldn’t stand by someone they hired after someone attempts to attack them at their event is beyond me.
— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) November 29, 2015
Sadly the way dreamhack handled things and what they asked of me makes it difficult to want to do an event for them again moving forward.
— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) November 29, 2015
I don’t even have any issue with @LodaBerg about this. He should have maybe kept it off social media but he did what he felt was right.
— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) November 29, 2015
Wasn’t the ideal way to meet @LodaBerg but we talked and shook hands like people should after differences are ironed out.
— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) November 29, 2015
And the Dreamhack statement, which is co-signed by both Berg and Lewis, goes on to say:
It is of the utmost importance for DreamHack to operate an event in which all visitors, staff, exhibitors, and competitors can feel safe. All parties, DreamHack, Richard Lewis and Loda deeply regret that an environment existed in which this situation occurred, and that the confrontation escalated as it did. All parties have jointly talked with DreamHack Security Crew, as well as police and believe the best actions are to put aside our differences and come together to move forward with the conclusion of DreamHack Winter 2015.
We’ll have some more positive coverage from DreamHack Winter over the next few days.
Comments
21 responses to “Fight Breaks Out Backstage At Counter-Strike Tournament”
The guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm casts CS:GO?
As a Larry David fan I can say they look nothing alike 🙂
he didn’t mean larry david.. he refers to the character richard lewis in curb.
LOL !
Same name, completely different dude.
Considering one is fictional, the other not, I’m pretty sure he was aware they’re different.
As a Larry David fan I can say Richard Lewis is real 🙂
Ahahahah that Richard Lewis.
Word of advice. Next time you find yourself with someone who ‘agressed on to you in a fit of white knight-hood’ be sure you have your ‘but really I’m the real victim here’ card with you.
Obviously Mr Lewis should learn to not post immature vulgar comments bragging when he’s lucky enough to get laid (which I’m guessing doesn’t happen often since he had to post on Twitter about it) lest someone reads it who knows the girl in question. No sympathy for that tosser at all. (although I’m just assuming but judging by his initial respons and the reply from the guy saying let’s talk about it – which he seems to respond oblivious he’s in trouble – and the final comment about white knighthood)
The missing context is that Loda’s girlfriend was holding that sign during the Starcraft tournament at Dreamhack.
Wow. Ok, that makes way more sense then. It’s not ‘white knighting’ if the subject is your girlfriend.
Wow. Sleep with someone’s girlfriend, then humiliate the boyfriend on twitter.
I’m amazed it was only a scuffle with headlock.
Yeah, that’s the info we needed to know. Now it makes sense!
It was actually a CS:GO tournament. Hiko is a very well known NA CS:GO player who plays for Team Liquid. RLewis never slept with anyone either, he was simply making a joke about Hiko’s Mum, completely unaware that the sign he used was being held by Loda’s girlfriend.
Still doesn’t match up to some of the old moments from SGL.
People used to be way angrier back then. I think it was having to carry around CRT monitors.
13″ CRT — because I couldn’t carry the 21″ CRT around. Christ, the weight of that thing was immense.
So this article doesn’t really explain very well the whole reason behind the “fight”. Basically, RLewis was making a YourMum joke to a well known player, Hiko, from Team Liquid, a CS:GO team. However, the sign he used was actually being held during the tournament by Loda’s girlfriend, who for some reason refers to herself as the mother of various e-sports players, like Hiko. The girlfriend is involved in the CS:GO scene, and from what I understand various other e-sports scenes such as SC2. If reddit is to be trusted, the girlfriend is not very well liked. RLewis never slept with anyone, he was simply making a joke to Hiko, who he is friends with, unaware that the sign was used by Loda’s girlfriend. The whole thing is stupid, but I feel like people should know what really happened as the comments here show that no one has any clue about the incident.
If that’s right then this is a really dumb fight. I’m always a bit confused as to why grown ass men act like such children. I’ve been able to de-escalate situations involving very drunk and very angry people, and these two dumbasses can’t sort out a simple misunderstanding with words when both are sober and it didn’t even start face to face? Shame on that journalist for having so little self control, and shame on Loda for getting his ass kicked by someone called Richard Lewis.
Kelly Milkies is the team manager for Alliance (at least their Dota division, possibly others) and she acts as the “team mum” by doing the gopher work for players. Alliance is the sister team to Evil Geniuses and they both fall under the same parent company so I imagine she helps out across multiple teams in multiple games.
She’s very unpopular in the Starcraft 2 scene because she used to date Moonglade and very publicly left him for Huk during GSL. She was also a caster for a while and acted very unprofessionally, including walking out mid cast, on multiple occasions. All of that was a long time ago and she’s since settled into her behind the scenes role.
Yep, that’s her. She’s also not a very big fan of RLewis as Alliance was about to pick up the iBuyPower CS:GO team before RLewis inconveniently exposed them for match fixing and got 4 out of the 5 players indefinitely banned from all Valve tournaments. This was a huge incident a while ago, and Kelly made some not very nice tweets, which I think have since been deleted, about how RLewis was lying about the match fixing, and more recently about how he ruined the lives of the players he got banned.
Details? Information? Background and context?
Sir you are confusing proper Journalism w/ Gamez Jurnalizm!
Sarcasm aside… yeah I clicked on the link hoping to actually get a story/information instead of a half assed twitter fight devolving into a real world incident w/ no actual context and in fact what actually happened… should have known better but I guess all the proper articles from AU Kotaku have spoiled me?
I had no clue as to who any of these people are before today and here is what I take away from this all. Both people involved were unprofessional but Richard has clearly come off worse on all this. If you have issues in your personal life you leave that at home when your at work. He should lose his casting position for the simple fact of being 1 of the 2 parties that caused a fight to happen at work. In any other job you’d be out on your arse for this. By his own tweet all Loda did was get too close to him so Richard’s rational response isn’t to back up and get some distance but rather to choke him until dragged off by security? The hell is wrong with you man?
This is of course not even mentioning how Richard has handled this on his twitter. Abusing people who disagree with him, telling them to go jack off to tentacle porn? The height of class and handling a situation like an adult there while Loda has seemingly shut up about it as far as I can tell from his twitter so wether or not he is totally in the wrong, he is certainly handling it better.