Gigabad Journalism: How Gameinside.ua Has Continually Attacked G2 And Now Hooxi
The Ukrainian publication shamelessly exploits their readers emotions with poisonous rhetoric and wonky reporting
Once again G2’s CS:GO in-game leader Rasmus "HooXi" Nielsen finds himself the most talked about player. This time though it wasn’t because of his team winning or losing, nor was it because of an unbearably overused meme. Instead he was victim of a seemingly fabricated story designed to inflame passions and once again turn the attention to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It is hard not to feel great sympathy for Nielsen finding himself in a hostile spotlight again. He has been one of the most discussed signings of the last year with many determining him to simply not be the right calibre of player for G2. I myself have contributed to that. I declared that a team with him in it would never win a CS:GO trophy. He has since won two, G2’s first in five years. We can talk about the caveats but these are the facts. It is also worth noting that this was accomplished after the shock death of his father just a day before a tournament began. There is no doubting the player’s mental fortitude and professionalism.
A Ukrainian commentator, Oleksandr “shoker” Osheka, posted screenshots of a Telegram conversation purporting to be between a Gameinside.ua contributor, Volodya “v1rum” Kostyuk and Nielsen. The conversation showed a request for the player to compete in a charity tournament that went sideways after the response was a handwave and a demand of an appearance fee. When this was rebuffed as it is for charity the response then shifted to support for the Russian state. Osheka, outraged at what he had seen, made them public saying “Are you okay HooXiCSGO? At first you say that your team is just a group of nerds who grinding CS, but now you have wrote this. Shame on you.” The nerd quote refers to this Twitlonger by Nielsen when a fan had unfurled a Russian flag in the middle of a photo with the G2 team.
To any discerning journalist the details of the story make it absurd on its face. First, while I understand the broad privacy benefits of using Telegram, I’m supposed to believe a Danish professional Counter-Strike player has an account and it’s openly known by Ukrainian players and journalists alike. Secondly, why would a professional player at one of the largest esports organisations in the world ask for a somewhat derisory $500 for an appearance fee? What possible economic difference could that make to Nielsen? Thirdly, while I cannot profess to know what Nielsen’s thoughts about the invasion of Ukraine are, a cursory glance at the language used makes it feel almost impossibly artificial. “Russia’s victory is inevitable… Let [Ukraine] learn the language of diplomacy” reads like the Russki propaganda accounts on Twitter and not a happy-go-lucky Danish counter-strike pro.
Nevertheless the tweets were spread by other Ukrainian esports personalities and fans without any critical assessment as to whether they were real or not. Hate messages in English and Cyrillic piled up on Hooxi’s most recent, unrelated tweet.
“KYS” read one. “Hope you will rot in hell” said another. Even those that were on the fence as to their authenticity seemed to have doubts once it was supposedly confirmed by Ukrainian commentator Vitalii Mykolayovych "v1lat" Volochai and former Na’Vi pro Arsenij "ceh9" Trynozhenko.
As an aside the impunity that Volochai has been afforded is outrageous by any standard. This is an individual who has openly expressed support for a division of the SS
,He has publicly declared “I'm not a hypocrite. I hate Russians. I am the most Russophobe. You will burn in hell. Well, fuck you Russian.”
While he often spends his time demanding that people denounce Russia and Putin he has also told his nearly 200,000 followers on Twitter to report Russians decrying Putin’s actions to the Russian state.
In addition to all this he runs a Telegram where he regularly posts encouragement for the members to harass anyone not speaking out against Russia in esports. That this individual could have any credibility whatsoever is astounding.
Regardless Gameinside.ua wasted no time in reporting the story, which is also a sourcing nightmare. It was one of their own contributors that had made the approach to “Hooxi” and therefore must have leaked his own messages to the commentator who made them public. They then reported on the leak, that they must have been initiated by the gameinside.ua contributor, without mentioning any of these critical details as to how the story happened. They also published the story almost on the stroke of midnight, giving it the longest amount of time possible to avoid any response from G2 or Nielsen. In the piece they demanded that “the Ukrainian community should immediately react and call for a total boycott of G2 on the world stage.” They also produced the following risible graphic for promoting the story on their social media channels.
Somewhere along the line they added an update to the story, which also shows the frankly embarrassing editorial standards of their publication. “Some readers rightly had reasons not to trust the screenshots we published” they confusingly wrote. “Such a position has a right to exist, so although we fully trust the source who gave us the information, we are currently trying to gather additional evidence that the person who made the anti-Ukrainian statement is in fact the captain of G2.” They were seemingly oblivious to the fact this is exactly what they should have done before this story ever saw the light of day.
You might not know the history of Gameinside.ua but it is a rag that uses a simple business model – exploit the Ukrainian invasion to generate clicks on its mostly speculative, occasionally false, reporting. If this summary seems uncharitable then do consider the following. It’s the same publication that wrote a scathing piece about Ukraine’s biggest esports star, Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyljev. His crimes? Focusing on a message of peace between the two nations.
“Once again, we are convinced that it is better for athletes to play and keep their mouths shut,” they wrote “because it shows a lack of brains and basic understanding of the situation in Ukraine. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Oleksandr is in peaceful Dusseldorf, where there is no war and Russians, instead of killing like they do near Kyiv.”
“Perhaps Sanya will see the light when he returns to Ukraine,” they added “although we doubt it. It is much easier to justify the behavior of Russian bloggers and play on the same team as those Russians who have not said a word in support of Ukraine than it is to return and defend your homeland.”
It’s truly ghastly to think that a Ukrainian esports publication would publicly deride their biggest ambassador for continuing his career instead of risking his life on the frontlines. After this piece ran the player was inundated with claims he was a coward and a traitor to his own people.
Gameinside.ua also made much of another ridiculous overreaction from a Ukrainian public figure. Ivan "Johnta" Shevcov, now a professional Valorant coach, saw former teammates Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov, a Russian, and Valerij "b1t" Vakhovsjkyj, a Ukrainian, embracing for a photo posted to the latter’s Instagram. “I can’t understand why Na’vi can’t explain to the players/media people that even if you are best friends with Russians, you can't take pictures together and show that it's OK for Ukrainians and Russians to be together? Especially when you are the LARGEST Ukrainian esports club. Even in this case, when Illya is a graduate of the NAVI Academy and may be the best person in the world for someone from NAVI.
He still represents a country that ruthlessly kills Ukrainians EVERY FUCKING DAY!
Hey, are you guys okay?”
Adding their own incredible editorial Gameinside.ua added “We would like to remind you that m0NESY, who is constantly called a friend and a cool guy in NAVI, has not made any statements in support of Ukraine… Also, the player's public profile recently published congratulations to the Russian Federation of Esports on the opening of a branch in the occupied territory of Ukraine in the so-called LPR.” They conveniently left out the detail that Osipov had fired the individual who had made that post.
You will of course have noticed something of a recurring theme. When they’re not leveraging s1mple’s reputation and reach, they’re doing the same to G2. The G2 organisation has become a particular target of theirs ever since FLAGGATE. If you’re not familiar with the incident it goes like this. G2, while competing at BLAST’s World Finals in Abu Dhabi, were approached by a fan to take a photo with them. The team lined up, the player crouched in front of them and then stretched out a flag he had tied around him. From their vantage point the flag couldn’t be determined, especially as it’s not the traditional Russian flag. As Nielsen himself said in the aforementioned Twitlonger where he refers to his team as nerds “The flag was upside down when he had it wrapped around him and I noticed an eagle looking figure so I thought it was a Serbian flag.”
This of course was not good enough for the Ukrainian Esports witch-hunters brigade and certainly not Gameinside.ua. “an unprecedented event took place that not only caused intense emotions among the Ukrainian esports community, but also once again made us realize that most Europeans in esports do not care about Ukraine, do not care about the shelling of peaceful cities and the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians” was their take.
They then went on to characterise Osipov, who is still just a seventeen year old, as being a focal point for encouraging Russians to feel part of the Counter-Strike landscape. “[he] was trained and sold by the Ukrainian club to G2 last year and who became a media personality that encourages Russians to support the European team and feel involved in it.”
To top it off they openly stated that Nielsen was a liar, once again without proof or benefit of the doubt being given. “The G2 club has not officially condemned the actions of its players. Its page remains silent. Only a direct appeal from the Ukrainian community was answered by the CS:GO team manager, who obviously lied, because the photo clearly shows that the players could not help but see the Russian flag and could not help but understand what was happening. In the end, even in this message, the manager is more concerned about the players' performance in the final than about the senseless act they committed.”
Clearly the publication has taken the decision to make the G2 organisation a villain in their community. As such, can we really trust any reporting about the organisation as genuine? Can we honestly say that it’s beyond the realms of possibility that they knowingly published false conversations in a bid to try and force a boycott as revenge for the flag incident? All is fair in love and war, right? I would never even think a publication could stoop to something like that but when you demonstrate a complete lack of journalistic ethics and actively put players in danger with exaggerated invective, it certainly plants a seed of doubt.
It’s rare for a publication to wear its biases so proudly on their sleeve. Even the American mainstream media attempts to paint itself as bipartisan. At Gameinside the “reporting” consists of a simple formula. Place anyone who doesn’t demonstrate second-hand patriotism for Ukraine in the crosshairs, share their “transgressions” in private with Ukrainian influencers then unleash collective outrage that the publication chronicles without any additional investigation or inquiry. The Ukrainian fans, obviously hurting about the situation in their country, find an avenue to channel that pain and the abuse hurled at the players is catharsis. All the while of course Gameinside get the clicks, get to look like upstanding, patriotic Ukrainians and generate both income and praise.
It might be easy enough to dismiss this as just clickbait. I’ve been featured in my fair share of that and I remain one of the most lied about people on the internet. I recall the 48 hours of death threats I got when a Russian website falsely claimed I called Na’Vi’s coach a clown when in actuality I’d said their playstyle was outdated to the point it was “beyond a joke.” Those threats are of course from mostly angry teenagers and don’t mean anything. What Gameinside.ua is doing is potentially a lot more dangerous than that. By implying that the players they target are “traitors” or “pro-Putin” or whatever else they invent, there’s a chance no matter how slim that they may become targets of violence. After all, there is a war on and the emotional intensity that generates can lead to extreme behaviour from people who ordinarily would not participate in it. This coupled with a broad dehumanisation of Russian people in the media, even conscientious objectors and anti-state activists, is making for an unpleasant landscape.
Of course Nielsen has denied that it was him in the messages today. “Without giving too much attention to the "journalists" that are trying to put up fake conversations or comments from my side it actually boggles my mind that it is so easy to put up shit like this without any consequences” he wrote. This comment alone adds further weight to the idea the conversations were completely fabricated because if they weren’t you could ultimately elect to kill this story with silence, rather than set yourself up for a towering fall should you be proven a liar.
I will add though there will be consequences. Gameinside.ua was a relatively unknown publication even when they invoked the name of the number one CS:GO player in the world. Now, in their open season against G2, they have made fools of themselves in front of one of the largest fanbases in the world. Their reputation will be permanently tarnished and esports fans now know that unless you want to read drivel designed to tug at your heartstrings and create scapegoats for geopolitical occurrences beyond any of our control, then you take your eyes and your clicks somewhere else.
Very insightful read! I had no idea it was the same scummy publication who put out that piece on s1mple after he gave his emotional 2022 IEM Katowice Speech, I genuinely hope that they get their karma in the end and that we stop seeing these disgusting hit pieces and smear campaigns put out on popular players for the sake of drumming up clicks and further dividing the scene.
Keep calling them out. It is a travesty that people believe such obvious lies, but they do. The propaganda machine is strong on both sides. People need to start to think for themselves and judge if something makes sense or not and If you are not informed enough then it is better to be silent than to take a side blindly. It is such a disgusting trade to earn your money by creating so much needless discord.