Rape “jokes” made by an ex-Overwatch pro who was sponsored by the Australian Defence Force has led to the ADF publicly denouncing him and withdrawing its support. Prior to the dissolution of the commercial relationship, the ADF had sponsored videos from Elliot “Muselk” Watkins and Alen “ChampChong” Catak before pulling the plug after discovering old social media posts.
Muselk was well-known for representing Australia in 2016 in the Overwatch World Cup. In a drive to up recruitment numbers, the ADF enlisted the help of Muselk and ChampChong to create videos to that effect. According to the Daily Telegraph, the two were sponsored to the tune of $52,500 for their efforts. Since the ADF joined forces with the pair, it has surfaced that both had made tweets in the past which amounted to demonstrations of racism and rape jokes. The Daily Telegraph article referred to Muselk’s Racist Bastion video where he laughs during an Overwatch match at a comment about another player being “raped” and jokes about an in-game character sexually harassing others (below from 0:46).
ChampChong, a YouTuber, has since deleted their tweets which also contained racist content and referred to women in derogatory language, including calling a tweet about an exchange with a woman where he called her a “whore”. Neither Muselk or ChampChong have commented publicly on this matter at the time of publishing.
The ADF has not taken kindly to the comments that they made, and it has now been reported that the videos created by the two for the ADF have been removed. It is unclear as to whether the ADF will continue sponsoring other creators to produce the same content. This doesn’t come as a surprise, but the response from the ADF has been swift and it has acknowledged that those jokes are clearly offensive and not in line with the organization’s values.
