XB 'Trashtalking' Controversy captured on News

At this week's GK Cup, DK became the main focus of the tournament, while outside of the competition, their members have formed the basis of large forum discussions. The reason is because during the match between DK and PanDa on the second day, DK member xB fired a series of taunts and crude remarks at PanDa. Kill BR (Batrider)! Kill BR! Kill BR! Kill BR! Don't run! Yeah, you better run! Enigma! Enigma! Enigma! Enigma! Go ahead, run! Nice! Want a win? Please just kill one of us! Because the competition did not isolate the players in sealed rooms, some of the mutual taunts and remarks made could be clearly heard by the audience as well as those who tuned into the stream, and it was caught on. Later on, PanDa's manager Efeng expressed towards xB on MicroBlog that he was upset over the taunts and remarks he made. We managed to get hold of Efeng immediately after this. Let's hear what he has to say about the act of trashtalking your opponents at competitions. >> Efeng: Actually, this is something we see in every team. I think trashtalking is not a big deal. I feel this is one of the unique aspects of DotA. From the past [?], we have always witnessed games on the big screen, and maybe for DotA, it's different. We see interaction between team members, while there's trashtalking going on between the teams. Again, I think this is a unique quality, and I'm not trying to go against it. But what happened today, which led everyone getting upset, it was because things went overboard. We feel trashtalking is okay, but we didn't feel there was a need to use vulgarities, while xB used a couple of swear words. When that happened, I was actually sitting at the back of my team while Farseer (DK's manager) was behind DK. We were both watching the match. When the first swear word came out of xB, I sent a text to Farseer because DK and PanDa were actually on good terms. You could say the two DotA teams are quite cooperative. DK might actually be planning to create an ICS [?] division and so we may be working together there as well. Furthermore, we're always practicing together and when we're at competitions,we'll go out for meals together. I guess it almost feels like we're brothers [from another mother]. Then, all of a sudden, we hear remarks like these - we found it hard to accept them. Well, if we were playing against other teams and they did this to us, we could have pretended not to hear them. But because our teams have a close relationship, I refused to swallow what they said about us. While I was sending that text to Farseer after the first swear word was uttered, two more came along and we were both pretty mad about it. And, I guess because our players were rather inexperienced, they got affected pretty badly by what they said. We insisted on our opinion that 'Trashtalking? Well, it's fine.' But if you choose to be vulgar, and especially if we're supposed to be on good terms, then it gets out of line. Actually, xB realized his mistake soon after and he has since apologized on forums as well as his MicroBlog. During our interview, he also revealed what he had to say. >> DK.xB: I think trashtalking is necessary at offline events. Every team will contain players who will trashtalk. For DK, probably everyone will be trashtalking - it's more or less our personality [?]. Thus, our screams usually get really loud. With regards to the match against PanDa, I actually did not realize it at first but after the match, I realized that perhaps I got too excited. To be honest, we came to GK quite afraid of them. We felt that we had the lowest win rate against them. So during that match, I got too caught up with wanting to win them. I feel that I will still continue with the trashtalking because I feel that it's - how do I put it - a strong morale booster. It can raise one's spirits dramatically. As long as you respect certain 'boundaries'when you trashtalk, you can raise team morale while doing a heavy blow to your oppponents'. In fact, in many sports, taunting has become a common sight. For example, famous NBA player Marcus Cousin will always wave his finger to the audience every time he does a successful block. He knows that if he does this to his opponent, he will be penalized severely. While in eSports, taunting has been around for almost forever. It can make the competition more intense to watch, but more importantly, players have to learn how to limit their taunts. This is something players should seriously reflect and consider.