After Discord messages from the Hangzhou Spark’s Kim “GodsB” Kyeong-bo explaining the team’s debut loss reached Twitter, the team released a statement clarifying the situation.
GodsB on discord
“Just to talk abt Lijiang today, when we paused the game the lag was so bad, and when we asked if sth could be done abt it, they simply answered “3 mins left,” and when we asked if Blizz could fix it, they said they’d ask and then said “1 min left.”” https://t.co/tgk0Vo6Jj3— 아나탈 (@gatamchun) April 24, 2021
Spark supervisor Tsungyu “Xiaogui” Huang went on Weibo and clarified that the internet connection was poor despite “an abundance of time and effort” from the Overwatch League to make sure that wasn’t an issue on game day. Regardless, when the match started, the connection “went boom.” Meanwhile, Xaiogui attributed GodsB’s comments to a miscommunication.
“The reason our players made those comments post-match was because our translators created misunderstandings under the stressful, chaotic situation,” Xiaogui wrote, according to a Reddit translation. “During this communication process, our translators’ expressions made our players mistook it as they were being pushed, and their not-fully-informed comments led to misunderstandings in the community.”
After apologizing for the confusion, Xiaogui also explained how the team’s rookie main tank Lee “Takoyaki” Young-hyun was hit with a sudden bad internet connection from where he was playing in South Korea despite multiple attempts to check it earlier. Finally, he admitted that the team performed poorly enough regardless of the internet issues that they would have lost anyway.
GodsB’s original comments spark frustration
Based on a Twitter translation, when GodsB first spoke out about the issue, it seemed as if the Overwatch League ignored the Spark’s connection issues to prioritize the continuation of the match. GodsB implied the team was given three minutes during a mid-game pause, as normal, and ignored when they asked for more time and assistance. Additionally,
“We endured it for map 2 [because] we were a Winston comp, but in map 3, our youngest got so furious after dying on Orisa, and declared he couldn’t play like this,” GodsB wrote on Discord. “His shift key only went [through] after he lost 300 HP. No one’s gonna know unless I say [something] so I’m saying it here.”
Despite the struggles, the Spark did win a map against a highly ranked Fusion team. If they can get find a permanent solution for their ping, they should have a chance to improve for their next match.
