In the world of esports, mental health issues often go unnoticed or unmentioned. Occasionally there will be a player like Dignitas’s Joakim “jkaem” Myrbostad who bravely announced it on Twitter, but this doesn’t happen all that often.
Last month on Reddit, a user by the name of Vorlex posted a fragmovie from one of his best friends and ex-teammates who had committed suicide due to depression at only 15 years old. The post became pretty popular, gaining upwards of 8500 upvotes from the community. Seeing the success of his post, Vorlex spent the past two months and upwards of 100 hours creating a charity tournament to spread awareness for mental health.
Despite initial support from neL and Boomeo, his tournament did not garner the amount of interest he had hoped…until now. Despite being submitted under 18 hours ago at the time of writing, his Reddit announcement for his Saturday tournament has over 13,500 upvotes and has already earned him two Reddit Golds. It has also seen the EU signups shoot from 4 to 64.
In addition, ESL/MLG commentator and analyst Cory “Megaman” Gilbert offered to make his comeback to casting for this tournament. FACEIT Community Coordinator kaostic also offered to run the tournament on FACEIT as well as provide social support, publicity and a prize pool contribution.
In terms of prizes, Vorlex stated that teams will have the chance to win merchandise from SK and Complexity with G2 being a possibility as well. In addition, winners might also get a chance to play against a team of professionals with NiP being a potential candidate. Keep in mind however that as of now this is an EU only tournament, though an edit to the original post did state that Vorlex is hopeful about an NA version.
Esports Insider says: We are proud to be able to promote this tournament and encourage everyone interested to take part in it and support this cause. Mental health issues are very much real and exist in places we might not expect them to. We wish Vorlex the best of luck with his tournament and remember, suicide is not the answer.
