PGL Major Stockholm Talent Announcement Sparks Debates Across CS:GO Community
The lack of diversity was the focal point of the discussion.
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PGL released the talent lineup for the upcoming Stockholm Major 2021 on 4th Oct 2021, sparking debates across the CS:GO community. The majority of these discussions were focused on the subject of lack of diversity in esports, as no female talents had been hired by PGL for the first CS:GO Major in more than two years.
Many female talents and other community members associated with the title raised their concerns about esports not being inclusive and equal towards women. Their struggle to find an equal footing in the world of esports is a known fact and we recently explored this topic in a previous story about women in esports.
CS:GO personalities weigh in on the lack of female talent representation at PGL Major Stockholm 2021
Both positive and negative opinions were put forth by known community figures. An exchange between Canadian caster Matthew "Sadokist" Trivett and British host Frankie Ward presented a detailed discussion related to the topic.
Sadokist was clear that "everyone should be hired based on what they are and not who they are," having said that he further explained the talent lineup for this particular Major was hired "in an attempt to make this a 'legacy' major".
Frankie joined in on the discussion pointing out that "I think it is pretty important to have at least one woman in the biggest CS event of the year". She also brought to attention that other women watching this tournament would also appreciate seeing female figures talk about the game.
Serbian broadcast analyst and caster Janko "YNk" Paunović just had a question to ask, who should be replaced from the current talent lineup and the female talent replacing them. To which he got a rather interesting response from Dagny "daggstar" Veinberg who works with ESL and DreamHack.
Esports journalist and broadcast analyst Duncan "Thorin" Shields had a lot of takes on the whole situation, giving a variety of perspectives and even dismissing a few.
British caster Lauren "Pansy" Scott who has been busy with Valorant, despite having moved on from CS:GO had her opinion on the hired talent list.
While a lot of perspectives were shared and expressed, there always tends to be a bit of toxicity involved. The CS:GO talents cracked down on Jonas "calc" Gundersen - COO of Ninjas in Pyjamas, who mocked PGL by saying that they successfully showed diversity by hiring one person who wasn't a white male.
While Chad "SPUNJ" Burchill and Sudhen "Bleh" Wahengbam took light jabs at Gundersen for his comment, popular CS:GO caster and host Auguste "Semmler" Massonnat called him a "racist" and "degenarate scum".
The sixteen-person talent lineup for PGL Major Stockholm 2021 will be running the tournament from 26th October to 7th November, as CS:GO teams slowly finalize a slot for themselves through the IEM Fall 2021.
