OpTic Chicago star Seth ‘Scump’ Abner has continued his public outcry against the Call of Duty League, accusing them of treating players unfairly and revealing that the ongoing situation has forced him to “question continuing to compete.”
[jwplayer fKo7sjsG]
In a rather rare display of public vocality, Scump took several shots at the Call of Duty League on Twitter, his latest one perhaps being the most inflammatory.
After tweeting that he feels the CoD League is using fines to essentially suppress and censor players’ opinions that go against the league and Call of Duty in general, the veteran continued the onslaught with a post claiming that the CDL had “made” them sign contracts under pressure.
“The CDL also made us sign a player ‘contract’ in front of them without allowing us to run it by our lawyers at the player summit,” he wrote. “It was a ‘sign it now or you can’t play at Minnesota [2020 Launch Weekend]’ type of exchange. I’m probably going to get fined for this too, just letting y’all know.”
What’s more, Scump revealed that this ongoing dilemma has caused him to think about potentially leaving the professional CoD scene: “They’re doing us dirty and most are scared to speak out at all because they’re going to fine us. Has made me question continuing to compete.”
Just prior to these tweets rolling out, he’d just finished venting publicly about the CDL apparently fining him for promoting a game other than Call of Duty on his Twitch stream, which was due to a sponsored offseason broadcast.
He also compared the current situation with the CDL’s predecessor, the Call of Duty World League, claiming that “the CWL has no control over our channels, CDL owns them apparently.”
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
In response to Scump’s tirade, Dallas Empire’s Ian ‘Crimsix’ Porter seemingly hinted that his former teammate may have been the only pro not to be on board with the players’ plans to unionize before the 2021 season. However, Scump says he’s now told James ‘Clayster’ Eubanks that he’s had a change of heart.
He followed up with a more elaborate explanation on his livestream: “When the original players union petition was brought up to me, I got no information on it, just nothing. No one reached out again for months and months, and I tweet today and Clay instantly reached out: ‘let’s do it,’ and I was like ‘let’s go, run it.'”
Here's @scump speaking about potentially forming a CDL Players Union: "Let's go, run it."
Looks like it's now all just a matter of when, and not if. pic.twitter.com/goE6fRbFHC
— Dexerto Esports (@DexertoEsports) November 15, 2020
All of this started with a seemingly harmless Twitter post in which the 2017 World Champion went on a bit of a rant questioning why ranked playlists never gets included in CoD games at launch, with Black Ops Cold War being the latest example.
After a brief interaction with Treyarch’s David Vonderhaar about the topic, things began to escalate as Scump’s tweets and replies to others turned into conversations accusing the CDL of using fines as a censorship tool.
We have since reached out to the Call of Duty League and are awaiting official comment. As always, we will continue updating this story as more information becomes available.