The winner of EA Sports’ Madden Bowl tournament has been attracting attention for all the wrong reasons, with the developer being forced to respond to a number of racist and offensive tweets from their champion.
In the days following the event evidence emerged of Chris “Dubby” McFarland, who won the $250,000 tournament, using racial slurs on Twitter a number of years ago. The player was clearly unfazed by this, taunting those who were looking to dig up his problematic past.
According to a statement from the Madden Ultimate Team account, McFarland also posted messages during and directly after the Madden Bowl that were considered “inappropriate” by the developer.
As the Madden Bowl is part of the ongoing Madden NFL Championship, EA clearly wanted to take action to ensure that McFarland’s behavior was not an ongoing issue when he returns for later stages of the Championship.
According to the statement, EA has made the player aware that his conduct was unacceptable and fined him a small amount of his prizemoney.
The player himself seemed defiant in the face of the action, posting on Twitter an hour before the statement that “this is the day the real Dubby dies. Feel free to unfollow.” He also claimed that his previous tweets had been for “the Culture”, not public consumption.
McFarland will still take his place in the Madden Championship in May—and EA officials will be hoping he is able to behave until then and not cause them further headaches. With Madden still very much a fringe part of the esports community, this is exactly the kind of negative attention that won’t help those who wish to grow the game as an esport.
H/t Polygon
