NA Advanced organization sign team with history of racist comments

Luxe, a small American esports organization have announced the signing of timbermen, who recently rounded out their roster with Matthew "nero" Seymour and aleph.

The decision to attach this team to one's fledgling brand is curious as the team are one of the most notorious squads in recent years for their incredibly racist and offensive comments, their threats to players both online and at LAN events, and their overall lack of human decency toward fellow competitors.

Luxe must be ignorant of their past, which could have been found through a simple Google search, so this article will serve as an introduction to their new players.

Disclaimer: Some Readers will find the content below offensive or upsetting due to timbermen's use of racist and homophobic language and allusion to sexual abuse.

The first time timbermen found themselves in the hot seat was when they were dropped by Polar Ace on January 20th after sixteen days with the organization from community backlash due to Shane "shane" Dressler and Derek "dare" Brown's extensive ESEA ban histories for malicious activity, racism, and threatening other players along with calling a player the "N-word" multiple times in 2019.

This first kick of the squad underpins two key trends that will be important later; organizations failing to do any basic research about their players and numerous people making excuses for the team's behavior.

At the time of the Polar Ace kicking timbermen, Noah "insane" Eheart posted a TwitLonger stating that the community had the wrong idea about shane and dare and that while they had their flaws he "promised that nothing like this will happen ever again".

Editor's Note: It did happen again.

Next up in the team's history of being the problem children/edgelords of NA CS:GO was when they managed to top their previous fastest dismissal from an organization when they were dropped by Rebel after just a week.

This time, the team were kicked out of Rebel due to longtime timbermen player and pseudo-coach Jake "eptima" Allen being handed a year-long ban on ESEA for "impersonating other players on the Rank G TeamSpeak and using racial slurs and trolling while the players are in game".

Despite eptima's attempts to explain in a TwitLonger that while he did in fact impersonate Kyle "OCEAN" O'Brien, he was only doing it for fun and never actually utilized slurs, his appeal was strangely denied and he remained banned until mid-2021.

In mid-2021, timbermen once again (seeing a trend here?) found themselves embroiled in controversy for racist and offensive comments. The squad were dropped by Depth two weeks after being re-signed due to anti-LGBT and offensive remarks made by Wyatt "snav" Phillippi and Bryan "HavoK" Kuzawinski in a FACEIT PUG. The duo told the opposing team they were "probably nto [sic] raped as a kid" multiple times before calling them "tranny losers".

This new series of outrageous comments by timbermen players was just the tip of the iceberg as players from all stratum of the NA CS:GO community replied to the initial tweet with their own stories of team's wide range and offensive, toxic, and, in some cases, even illegal behavior.

Here's some highlights:

• Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski called the team "complete scum" for "saying terrible shit" in PUGs he had played against them.

• HLTV's Danish "Nohte" Allana shared an anonymous story alleging some members of timbermen were caught posting "child porn in the FPL-C lobby chat" presumably for the shock value.

• A female streamer posted a clip of snav being disparaging of her performance in a pickup game.

While all of this is horrible beyond reason, a Pastebin posted later by EliGE blew their past behavior out of the water as it showed multiple instances of shane and snav along with a number of former teammates using the N-word, using the F-word, making dozens of jokes about rape, while topping it all off with insults directed toward Josiah "JoJo" Jimenez in a private Discord server.

For their actions, the team were banned for a year from ESEA and were indefinitely banned from FACEIT. In the classic NA tradition, the majority of the players involved penned (really sincere I promise) TwitLongers promising to do better in the future.

Shockingly, the team did not commit to doing better as timbermen went on to be banned from All In Esports Expo 2021 in August due to allegedly threatening and making insulting comments towards JoJo.

With that, we come to the present day where after nearly three years these players still have a space in our scene, despite clearly learning nothing after being punished with slaps on the wrist over and over again.

Luckily for them though, they have found a bird of a feather to flock with as their recent addition, nero, recently came off a three-week ban from ESL due to reprehensible comments directed towards Walker "walker" Harris whose parents are deceased.

With this all laid out, it raises the question of why any organization would support these players. Dust2.us reached out to the owners of Luxe for comment however they did not respond by the time of publication.

Update: A representative of Luxe has provided Dust2.us with a statement regarding the signing of timbermen.

The recent signing of the timbermen team is a controversial move to a lot of people/orgs. But people grow and learn from past mistakes also mature over time. Timbermen was also punished for their previous actions. This does not mean we support any of the previous conduct that happened years ago examples (in private banter) (toxicity in game). We believe the players in question have changed their conduct and are not the same individuals of yesteryear. As an org we believe in giving others the chance to show the growth and changes who make them who they are today. Change, reform, rehabilitation that is what punishments are for. We are simply allowing them the chance to show the change and hope the CS community will see it also. Thank you for your question and concern.