Overwatch League has no female players, a fact that’s been glaringly apparent ever since the league’s debut media event, where Korean pro Kim “Geguri” Se-yeon’s name came up multiple times. Now, however, a report from ESPN claims that Geguri’s signing to an OWL team, the Shanghai Dragons.
ESPN cites “multiple sources close to the players and organisation”, and says Geguri will be joined on the Shanghai roster by two other Korean players: Lee “Fearless” Eui-Seok and Cheon “Ado” Ki-hyun.
Geguri, who is so good that she was once widely accused of cheating, will be the first woman in the Overwatch League. She’ll also provide much-needed reinforcements to a Shanghai roster that hasn’t won a single match so far this season, despite occasionally rallying to pull off feats such as swiping a map from top-tier team Seoul Dynasty.
This comes after a week in which Geguri alluded to joining “a foreign team”, which many took to mean that she’d signed with a non-Korean team in the Overwatch League. However, she also expressed confusion over people’s reaction to the news, tweeting that she’s “been talking about going to a foreign team for a month”.
We reached out to Overwatch League to find out more, but as of writing, the organisation had yet to respond. Yesterday, however, a rep told us that “for someone to be considered part of the Overwatch League, the League office must both receive and approve a contract for a given player”, and added that “the League office has not received a contract for Geguri”.
Comments
6 responses to “Report: Geguri Will Be The First Woman Signed To An Overwatch League Team”
Great news. Its only when we start seeing pro female players along side males as equals will the terrible ingrained sexism of this industry start breaking down every more. In the meantime I have had said it before and will again, there should be more woman in front of the camera as well. They have known for years this League was going to be a thing so where are the female casters? why have none be trained up and why (unfairly) Soe still seems like the only token female in the whole entire broadcasts of these games. That is just ridiculous.
I watched the weekly show the other day, it as painful, the days of watching four men sitting around yammering away seems so dated. You cant tell me in the entire world there are not more woman who play and love Overwatch so much with presenting skills, Blizzard could not have spent the last year fostering and training a new generation.
Casters aren’t trained up; most were private casters, higher profile community members, pro players or developers (Phreak).
A lot of popular games and tournaments do have female casters, especially Mobas; obviously there is room for more, but there is no system there just handing out training, a lot of the constant casters started out on their own.
Is she good enough?
That’s all I need to know.
Well she is Korean
Good enough that pros were calling her out for cheating…
Surprised she wasn’t picked up by Seoul Dynasty… or the Korean Spitfire… or Korean Excelsior.