Professional CS2 player Justinas “jL” Lekavicius reacted sharply recently to his fiancée’s experience during FACEIT matchmaking, labeling toxic players as “disgusting” and “sub-human” for threatening women playing the game. The player also urged FACEIT to intervene and create a better place for women in Counter-Strike.
On Jan. 30, jL wrote a sharp tweet criticizing toxic players in CS2, particularly FACEIT’s matchmaking system, for their attitudes towards women just trying to enjoy the game. He used his fiancée’s situation as an example, claiming she was threatened, made fun of, and told the worst things imaginable for no other reason than her being a woman playing CS2. JL called people of this kind “disgusting sub-humans” and said that the daily grind on FACEIT “is fucking miserable as a female” and that he “can’t believe so many people stoop as low as this and it’s normalized.”
A FACEIT employee reached out to jL, asking him to share the match code so the toxic players could be dealt with, but many in the replies said this wouldn’t be enough as solving individual cases can only go so far. The issue of toxicity towards women in CS2, and gaming in general, has been a widespread issue for years and has resulted in numerous cases of women quitting the game, or gaming, altogether. As someone who knows a successful female CS2 player, I cannot even describe what I’ve heard players call her and for no reason (as if a reason would justify the obscenities cast her way regularly).
The case of Lekavicius’ fiancée is just one of many, and before Valve (and gamers themselves) steps in to systematically uproot such forms of toxicity, they will unfortunately continue to be a reality so many women in Counter-Strike face. We all understand a competitive game can get heated, and someone’s skill makes or breaks a match, but at no point should personal background play a role and be the cause of such vitriolic toxicity.
The only advice I can give to women suffering from toxicity is to use the mute function. It ruins immersion and breaks team play, but by God, it’s better to lose some MMR than your will to play.
