UPDATE April 5, 1:00PM PST: Both Lastro and Rascal have been fined for the language used in the match chat.
According to the Overwatch League Player Discipline Tracker, each player has been fined $1,000 USD for “inappropriate chat during a league match.”
Original story below.
With the Overwatch League season continuing online on April 4, Los Angeles Valiant support Jung-won ‘Lastro’ Mun made waves after some rude messages he posted during a match appeared on stream.
The 19-year-old South Korean’s team was taking on the reigning champions San Francisco Shock in the last match of the day when he popped into match chat, randomly posting two messages including of an explicit nature.
Clearly, the player was not aware that the match chat was visible to all viewers on the official livestream.
The rude comments were visible to everyone watching and both teams, which made the situation that much more awkward.
While his fellow teammate Caleb ‘McGravy’ McGarvey found the comment funny based on his reaction, the Shock tank Matthew ‘Super’ DeLisi took charge of the situation and informed the Valiant player that viewers were able to see match chat.
Amusingly, another player on the Shock, Dong-jun ‘Rascal’ Kim copied Lastro’s comment, but with his own spin on it. (Timestamp 1:18:49 for mobile viewers)
“Please don’t say that,” Super urged. “STOP!”
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Even the observers were getting in on that nonsense by replying with a series of question marks to push the inappropriate language off the page.
“Idiots, they can see on stream,” the Shock tank added. “Omg I’m so sad.”
I thought the viewers could not see the match chat because everyone was typing in it. I wrote it as a joke, although I should not have done it regardless of whether the viewers could see the match chat or not. I will make sure something like this never happens again.
— Lastro (@Lastro_OW) April 5, 2020
By this time, even Lastro’s own team was roasting him and the commentators started acknowledging the situation, calling it “feisty.”
After the match, Lastro took to Twitter to apologize for his actions and made it clear he didn’t know that viewers were able to see match chat.
“I wrote it as a joke, although I should not have done it regardless of whether the viewers could see the match chat or not,” he claimed, and promised to make sure it won’t happen again.
https://twitter.com/HanbammerOW/status/1246598673405968384
The incident has since gone viral with a video of the incident being played to the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme gained popularity. Additionally, a fake image has made the rounds appearing to be from the Overwatch League Player Discipline Tracker suggesting that Lastro had been fined $3,000.
Thus far, the actual discipline tracker has not been updated and it’s unclear if the player will face any actual fine for the comments.