Minor League player Sebastian “Lumzee” Duma has been permanently banned from competing in Paladins. The announcement was made yesterday in a statement from Paladins Esports.
The decision came down from the Skillshot League Operations. The SLO investigated Lumzee following a complaint filed against him by an unnamed Minor League player. SLO found the allegations against Lumzee to be true. According to them, Lumzee had been “persistently displaying signs of racism, homophobia, and other behavior unbecoming of [the Paladins] competitive community.”
Lumzee had been the captain of Paladins Minor League team BOORK since December 2018. Following yesterday’s announcement, Chris “Bitey” Mohn has stepped up to fill that role.
Bitey has acknowledged having some foreknowledge of Lumzee’s conduct in a statement he released yesterday. You can read an excerpt from it below.
This news comes against a backdrop of recent incidents of hateful and inappropriate conduct in esports. Skillshot has affirmed that it will not tolerate behavior like this in Paladins.
“We pride ourselves on developing an inclusive and accepting space for all players to compete in Paladins tournaments without feeling as if their personal lives are under attack. We take situations like this very seriously, and will continue to do everything we can to retain this inclusive space for our competitive community,” the announcement states.
“In terms of what happens next, it’s pretty much what you’d expect a team to do,” Bitey told Daily Esports. “Find a new player, shift the team’s positions around and move on.”
“We’ve already completed the roaster changes for the time being so things are already moving on rather quickly.” Paladins veteran player Nick “Aspect” Ginther announced yesterday that he had joined the BOORK roster. Aspect was previously a member of team Splyce and has competed in Paladins Premier League in addition to Minor League. He will fill the role of Support for the team.
We reached out to Lumzee, but he refused to comment.
