Team Spirit to discipline academy players after they made sexist remarks towards Imperial Valkyries

Players of Team Spirit White, one of the Spirit’s academy rosters in CS2, have made misogynistic comments towards the women of Imperial Valkyries during practice on October 21st.

After the practice paused because of a tech issue with the server, Artur “fernando_mag” Kaliuzhnyi and Kirill “k0gaSs” Emelyanov made a sexist remark towards Imperial Valkyries via the in-game chat.

Imperial Valkyries’ assistant coach Reinis “hyskeee” Grīnbergs provided a screenshot of the in-game chat on X, and its content can be found below:

kogaSs said that he would give it to each of you in the mouth.

Imperial Valkyries expose Team Spirit on socials

Tory, the captain of Imperial Valkyries, said she had never experienced something like this. Credit: Rachel Mathews | © ESL

The Imperial Valkyries, particularly the in-game leader Viktoria “tory” Kazieva, immediately replied to the offense made by Team Spirit with numerous question marks.

She later exposed the episode on X too, saying that she “never experienced worse behavior” towards her team.

Even FACEIT Premium is not that bad compared to this. Team Spirit, please do something about this.

Hyskeee, like tory, also asked Team Spirit to intervene.

“It’s crazy that even people in practice from an organization like Team Spirit can talk stuff like this when practicing against girls,” hyskeee said.

“I don’t know who is responsible for your academy, but maybe it could be good to teach some basic behaviour to your ‘future of CS,’ hyskee added, tagging Spirit’s scout Aleksey “OverDrive” Biryukov and Spirit academy coach Dmitry “S0tF1k” Forostyanko.

As the screenshot went viral on both X and Reddit, Team Spirit released an official statement.

Team Spirit to issue disciplinary sanctions to players involved

Dmitriy Bukhteyev, the head of Team Spirit academy, said that the organization will hand a disciplinary sanction and that the comments “contradict Spirit’s values.”

You can see Team Spirit’s statement in full below:

Today some players from our Team Spirit Academy White roster made statemetns that contradict the values we uphold in our academy and organization.

Team Spirit stands firmly for high ethical standards, respectful behavior towards opponents, and strictly condemns any form of discriminatory remarks.

In light of this incident, the players involved will face strictest disciplinary actions.

On behalf of myself and the organization, we sincerely apologize to tory and her team.

Though Team Spirit rapidly addressed the situation, it’s another sad day for women in both esports and gaming. A 2016 paper from the University of Southern Mississippi discovered that 75.9% of women experienced forms of “verbal harassment or discrimination” in online FPS games.

This only shows that women need a safe space to compete in esports, like CS2’s ESL Impact, which will no longer exist after Season 8 concludes in November.

Feature image credit: © Team Spirit