Amateur CoD organizers accused of lying about precautions taken at AGN

After defending themselves and blaming players for what appeared to be a LAN Call of Duty tournament, the American Gaming Network have now been accused of lying by an attending player.

The amateur CoD scene goes hand in hand with drama and this past week has been no exception. Despite the AGN being asked by Activision to cancel their Indianapolis tournament and publicly proclaiming to have shifted it online, footage revealed dozens of players in attendance at a small venue. The organizers proclaimed their innocence following massive backlash, but an attending player has revealed why those excuses were “all bulls**t and lies.”

As is officially known, the AGN event was scheduled for LAN play on August 1 in Indianapolis before being canceled and shifted to online just 10 hours before the event was scheduled to start. Players were filmed playing at the venue, many without masks or wearing them improperly, and AGN then insisted this was against their intentions and entirely a fault of the players themselves.

• Read more: Amateur CoD event goes ahead covertly despite announcing it was canceled

In a Twitlonger, a player, ‘Trace,’ who attended the event laid out why it was dishonest for the organizers to shift blame toward the players: “If you think this is still on the players, then I don’t know what’s wrong in your head.”

The NBA and NHL paved the road for safe bubble play, so Trace expected some of those precautions to be put in place, including liability waivers, temperature checks, and mask requirements. (No comment on the most important of bubble precautions: mandatory 14-day quarantines after travel and daily testing.)

While waiting until 10 hours before an event to move it to online, at a moment in which “95% of the teams/players are now in Indianapolis” is an entire debacle in itself, but that has been clear from the start. 

• Read more: Warzone players outraged by lack of basic CoD feature in Plunder

But ignoring those logistical issues, the bigger controversy here is that Trace contradicts AGN’s statements by revealing that it wasn’t just the players who showed up to the event space despite the shift to online play. “The whole AGN staff was there at one point … so when everything got out publicly, all of a sudden they disappear.”

As evidenced by one of a series of tweets that the AGN owner retweeted, the organizers insisted their innocence and that the players simply “ignored” their directions. Conversely, as evidenced by Trace’s experience, “this whole event was filled with nothing but lies.”

The situation is obviously nuanced. The event space was open to the public and Indianapolis is currently hosting bigger events like AAU basketball. But Activision asked for safety precautions and, while the organizers did try to technically shift the event online at the last-minute, it’s clear that this situation is unideal for all parties involved.