On December 20th, bbq Olivers posted an official apology on Inven KR for the racist remark made by their new player, Sebastion ‘Malice’ Edholm.

The controversy sparked when a post was made within the League of Legends KR community regarding how Malice, the Swedish jungler for bbq Olivers, made a racist remark during his solo ranked games on the KR server prior to joining bbq Olivers. Apart from calling his fellow teammate, "monkey", he also had past experiences of being toxic towards other players, calling out to Pirean, "pire09an", referring to when Pirean scored 0/9/4 with his Orianna in a tournament.

Regarding this controversy, bbq Olivers stated that although they have internally discussed releasing Malice from the team, their final decision was against it since these actions were made in the past prior to Malice becoming a pro gamer; also, they have taken into account how Malice himself admitted his wrongdoings and wanted to fully apologize to the players and the fans he had offended.

Despite bbq’s sincere apology, the KR reaction regarding this issue is not so positive; there are some who question bbq’s inability to make a background check on their players prior to signing them, while there are also some people demanding Malice to apologize to Pirean for his insult. However, there are some that say it would be going too far if bbq released their players for their past behavior prior to joining the team.

Meanwhile, bbq also stated that the controversy regarding Malice’s boosting is not true at all; they are aware of how boosting can seriously damage player experiences and they were unable to find any proof for that Malice actually boosted.

Following is the full text of bbq Olivers' apology in Korean (to go to the page, click here).