BlackMane Fined £400 and a free entry pass

The dignitas player BlackMane has been fined for his actions on the stage as well as other comments made throughout the CoD4 Rustlers tournament. This decision has come from the head of Multiplay themselves.

There has been a lot of discussion about the way BlackMane conducted himself in the CoD4 tournament. The first signs came in their game against TCM where there was a lot of flame bouncing back and forth. This wasn't just binds, but actual text chat saying things of a rather explicit nature. This is when dignitas received their first official warning for abusive behaviour.

We all saw how they acted on the stage, and there are a number of pictures to prove it. Blackmane at the end stood up and shouted at the YoYoTech players. This could be seen live over the QuadV cast, by lip reading the players, but you couldn't actually hear them say it over the stream. Multiplay were not happy with this, and a decision has been made.

The decision came after a long discussion with Blackmane himself, and the tournament admins came to the decision that decided that Blackmane would lose his share of the prize money, £400 and would also lose his free entry to i37. MD of Multiplay, Craig "Wizzo" Fletcher, backed up this decision.

"At that level no matter what pressure you are under you can't let it get to you," said Wizzo. "If you do that in football you get 3 match bans, you get fined. If this is going to become a real sport like any other, the players need to start taking responsibility."

"If eSports and these events are going to continue to grow and get sponsorship we can't tolerate that level of behaviour on the stage. And this is a warning to anyone else who thinks they can behave like that."

Though this behaviour is not tolerated, we hope that the teams will walk away knowing that this will not be tollerated in the future. This slightly tarnishes the CoD4 tournament, but hopefully we won't be seeing this again.