A couple of days ago Kotaku caused a stir in an e-cup when their reporter Jen Schiller summarised an interview with Team Dignitas e-sports veteran David "Zaccubus" Treacy.

Despite the overall tone about e-sports and players being slightly sarcastic and derogatory there was one inflammatory comment that led to a backlash from sections of the e-sports community.

The comment in question was:

Don't get me wrong, I love watching people who are better than me at video games play them for money, especially when I don't know those people.

Oh wait. No I don't.

While the reaction from a handful of Kotaku readers seemed to support the sentiment, it didn't take long before others registered their upset at the view of the piece and following several e-sports luminaries weighing in with some Tweets (what else?) criticising the piece, Kotaku vowed to write a more balanced response in favour of e-sports. Jen herself wrote a response where her defence was she was ignorant about the scene. You can read that here.

Sadly they were beaten to the punch by PC Gamer's reporter Richard McCormick who talks about how he learned to love e-sports despite being a regular gamer.

An extract from his brilliant piece reads:

I love e-sports. I mean, I really, really love e-sports. I love e-sports so much that when IMNestea played the then-named BoxeR in the Global StarCraft II League’s season 2 final, I woke my girlfriend up at some unearthly hour in the morning and crowed at her about marine splitting until she had to physically leave the room. I’ve organised parties based solely around the activity of watching other people play games, many thousands of miles away. I say it here, on this wide internet, and I don’t care who knows – I love e-sports.

But I didn’t always love e-sports. If I went back in time to exactly one year ago, found myself, and said “YOU WILL LOVE E-SPORTS IN A YEAR’S TIME!”, year-younger me would’ve scoffed in my face. I’ve been aware of e-sports for as long as I’ve been a PC gamer: I lived through the false dawns of the early 21st Century, the Sujoy Roys and the Jonathan Wendels coming so close to pushing the activity of pro-gaming into the spotlight, then falling short at some intangible hurdle. Time and again I was promised the rise of Quake, or Counter-Strike, or some other competitive game in the televised market; time and time again they failed to ignite among the wider gaming community.

Read the rest of the article here.

Although the debate is still raging on, e-sports enthusiasts can be content that not everyone in the gaming mainstream is against the world of competitive gaming. A response from Kotaku is likely in the next few days.

Sources: Kotaku,PC Gamer