While controversy after controversy plagues Hollywood, the world of professional video-gaming is no better a place. The “Overwatch” League last season, which is the highest level of professional play, was comprised of 12 teams. Among these was the Boston Uprising.

Before the start of the inaugural season, the Boston Uprising was expected to finish the season at 12th rank. This spot was reserved for the Shanghai Dragons, who did not win a single match all season. However, Boston was ranked in the middle throughout the first few stages. Controversy struck in the third week of stage three, when multiple Twitter accounts accused main DPS (damage per second) player Jonathan “Dreamkazper” Sanchez, age 21, of accepting explicit images of under-aged women, the youngest being 14. The Boston Uprising staff immediately terminated Sanchez from his contract.

However, the team was finally looking like it was on the rise. Fans felt devastated and betrayed about this. Since Sanchez was the star of the team at the time, Nam-joo “Striker” Kwon and Stanislov “Mistakes” Danilov had to majorly step up their game. Immediately following his release, the team went on a 14-game win streak, the longest in the league’s short history. The season left the Boston Uprising much higher than the predicted 12 place; it finished in third overall.

Just because the season is over does not mean that the troubles stopped for the small team. Popular YouTuber Michael “mykL” Padilla, who is notorious for learning information about teams and leaking it to the public, stated that a player on the Boston Uprising leaked some information on the horrible conditions that the players endured. According to Padilla, the Boston Uprising players were forced to share two-bedroom apartments with three teammates in each room. They were not provided dining room tables to eat on, which was shown in a few videos that the players showed to fans. On the Discord servers owned by the players to communicate with their fans, many of these facts were confirmed. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Fusion, another team, was living in a huge mansion with a swimming pool and a tree house.

Along with this, Padilla claimed that, if a player wished to fly home, they were required to pay for their own airfare, which, again, does not sound too horrible. However, all of the other teams in the league are allowed to visit home regularly, and their airfare is paid for by the team.

Perhaps most startling of all is the treatment of Shin “Kalios” Woo-yeol. Woo-yeol was employed by the Boston Uprising as a substitute tank player on the team. One day, Woo-yeol was spectating while his team was scrimmaging against another team. Without prompting, Woo-yeol was kicked from the match. The reason this happened was the manager of the Boston Uprising, Chris “Huk” Loranger, wanted to spectate the match, but all six slots were filled. Kalios, instead of being able to support his team, chose to stream on his Twitch channel instead. The title of the stream was, essentially, “I’m playing Maple Story 2 because I got kicked from the scrims.”

Following the match, Loranger scolded Woo-yeol for being unprofessional. Woo-yeol disagreed and asked, since he was not involved in the practices or in the scrimmages, if he could go home. Loranger denied his request and assured him that if he wanted to go home, he would not be welcomed back. Loranger confirmed the rumor about the apartment living but stated that the apartments were very nice and that he did not appreciate the slander.

In addition, the former head coach Da-hee “Crusty” Park intentionally caused a divide between the English-first-language speakers and the Korean-first-language-speakers, which may have jump-started a lot of the issues with toxicity in the team, but this is still speculation. In the end, it does not matter how high-end the apartments are if grown men who are playing video games professionally on a million-dollar scale are forced to share bedrooms for months at a time.

Image from Overwatch League via YouTube