Of Frogs And Scorpions In Esports

Team Liquid have found out just how little they are actually going to change in Saudi Arabia. Oh well... You've still got that bag of money at least.

“And the scorpion learned all about the values of the frog and realised they were right"

Following on from our summary of all the propaganda contained within the Esports World Cup documentary “Level Up,” one of the funniest things of 2025 happened. Fellow reporter Mikhail Klimentov revealed that after all of Team Liquid’s posturing about their “historic” use of a rainbow on their jerseys in Riyadh, the logo was blurred out for anyone geolocated as watching from Saudi Arabia. In addition to that a two-minute segment where the team’s CEO Steve Arhancet states that he himself is gay is cut completely from the final episode. The kicker? The organisation only seems to have learned this through Klimentov’s request for comment.

“We are disappointed to learn, upon your request for comment, that the Saudi broadcast of Esports World Cup: Level Up has been altered to remove images of our Pride jersey, as well as important parts of our Co-CEO Steve Arhancet's story as a gay man in esports,” Team Liquid’s reply read. “While we understand that streaming services may change content to comply with local regulations or content policies, we disagree with this kind of censorship and we have reached out to the Level Up production team and Amazon to look into the matter. Progress doesn't happen overnight, but we are hopeful in our conversations around the topic, and we will continue to wear our jersey with pride across the globe, including at the Esports World Cup.”

It is the perfect punchline to the joke Team Liquid have perfectly set up, namely that it is going to be them wearing the vaguest of rainbows on Saudi soil that moves the dial and not the activism of groups like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. Arhancet, in an interview with gaymingmag.com, said “we had all of our players wear a pride jersey on broadcast, not just on Twitch and YouTube, but being broadcast through the linear TV network in Saudi Arabia and the rest of MENA. It was potentially the first time that queer Saudis would stop and see themselves and their life represented in their home country…Maybe there’s a queer Saudi that has suddenly felt seen.” It now seems that version of events might not be entirely true and Liquid management didn’t think to check what actually was broadcast domestically in Saudi.

Photo courtesy of Steve Arhancet’s Instagram

So, after months of enjoying the cultural cachet afforded to them by the most brazen attempt to double dip I’ve seen in this ridiculous business, they now must answer a tough question. Namely, “if the point of the exercise was to have people from Saudi see LGBT representation, what will you do now that your business partner is explicitly censoring it from the people that need to see it the most?” They won’t answer it. They will instead do what every other organisation participating in the EWC has done; they’ll stay quiet and take the money. After all, that has always been one of the points of the exercise, to buy their silence.

It is awful but it is still impossible not to see the funny side. Since Team Liquid partnered with the EWC, Arhancet has been on a media tour where he has talked openly about being gay for the first time in his esports career. In his mind it was in service of showing that you could changes hearts and minds with earnest engagement. Now, after this latest revelation, it should be clear that his new friends in Riyadh don’t respect him for who he is. They’ve taken one of the industry’s most influential CEOs and reduced him, very publicly, to the status of useful idiot and they are loving every second of it.

Now I understand that this will make some of you squeamish because I am essentially talking about someone else’s sexuality within the context of critique. Well, if you feel that way, fuck you. Anyone who has been paying attention instead of cashing checks knows that the claims of “progress” within Saudi have been wildly exaggerated by people who are trying to facilitate how they sleep at night. It was the same when Riot Games had their LGBT representatives lecture staff who had concerns about their EWC partnership that the use of their game is also a big win for the LGBT in Saudi. Their rationale? The canonically gay characters in their game will be shown on the big screen and everyone watching will know that as soon as Twisted Fate gets done exploding the nexus he’s off home to get in a hot tub with Graves… Except they are not canonically gay in Saudi and if you could make the characters hug or kiss the game would be banned. Like all gay video characters in Saudi they are in fact Schrodinger’s queer; gay in the territories where gay rights are accepted, very fucking straight in the places where they aren’t. Similarly, it seems Arhancet has been reduced to the status of a character. He is NOT gay on Saudi TV. He never will be. Team Liquid will never support the LGBT there either. You see, gay doesn’t exist in Saudi the same way pride – in every sense of the word – doesn’t exist in esports.

What did anyone expect from a country that had agents from the Ministry of Commerce seize toys and clothes displaying rainbows from stores? A place that banned the truly transgressive piece of work Pixar’s “Lightyear” for a same sex kiss from beings rendered by software. Where this post of a shirtless man in shorts was deemed a “cybercrime” under morality laws and the person responsible sentenced to three years in a maximum security prison.

The hubris it takes to think a logo on a jersey, or a few self-aggrandising interviews are going to change a nation’s culture, especially the aspects of a theological nature, is a special kind of deluded. And so, we arrive at the lesson. It seems it is only esports executives that are not aware of the old fable about the scorpion and the frog. It is often mistold so the potency of the message gets diluted, but it goes like this… A scorpion is at a river and unable to cross as he cannot swim. A frog happens upon the stranded arachnid and is duly asked for a ride across the waterway. The frog is hesitant because scorpions are known to sting and eat any animals they encounter but the scorpion makes a compelling argument. “If I sting you while on your back I would surely drown” it said. “Climb aboard” replied the frog and began to swim to the other side with his new passenger. Suddenly the fire of a thousand suns burned into his back and his limbs grew heavy. He realised that he had been stung. As the frog slipped beneath the water he asked, “why would you do this when you knew what the consequence would be?” The last words of the scorpion were “How could I resist? It’s in my nature.”

For more than two years now I’ve watched people that should in theory be my colleagues tie themselves in knots trying to explain to me that the more exposure to frogs the scorpions receive the more likely the scorpions are to become frogs too. They’ve made complete, but wealthy, fools of themselves in the process. None of it was necessary as this is the easiest landscape to negotiate from a PR perspective. You simply admit that when the price is high enough you will betray your stated values and choose self-interest. That’s it. Most people aren’t into being martyrs for causes in their single experience on this plane of existence so most will understand and at least respect the honesty. We get it, you’re shit at running an esports business and you believe you have a divine right to operate and the Saudi money enables that. Hell, you can even frame it that it is a necessary evil to keep the hundreds of people you employ from losing their jobs. People will shrug and say, “well at least they’re being honest” and get on with their day doomscrolling. This collective attempt to deceive everyone that you place LGBT rights, women’s rights, the treatment of migrant workers and civil liberties above your bank balance is absurd on its face now. Just stop doing it.

To end, let me provide some food for thought for Mr. Arhancet and Team Liquid, who still insist that there would be nothing to gain from publicly boycotting the event. Over in Apex Legends a trans competitor publicly stated they refuse to compete in a country where the state could choose to murder them. This isn’t just a one-off “life changing money” tournament either like it was last year. It’s their official ALGS circuit this time around. At great pain to their professional career and personal finances they stood down from the competition for the second year in a row. I doubt this will be featured in a documentary either.