Evo has officially cancelled the EVO Online 2020 event after allegations surfaced against CEO Joey "Mr. Wizard" Cuellar, accusing him of sexual harassment and acts of pedophilia. Evo has since fired Cuellar and filled the CEO position with Evo co-founder Tony "Ponnder" Cannon, but not before severe damage was done to the event.
The allegations were made public Thursday, July 2, by FGC veteran Mikey "Crackpr0n" Pham, who published a massive TwitLonger, detailing Cuellar's acts of sexual harassment.
"A lot of the old boys club would often have us do stupid shit just for a laugh, and they'd give us tokens or buy food for us if we'd be willing to do whatever stupid thing it was," Crackpr0n wrote. "Most of it was genuinely harmless. Scream something dumb really loud, shit along those lines."
Regarding Cuellar in particular, Crackpr0n elaborated:
"Wizard was especially into this. He would pay people hundreds of tokens to do things like take off their clothes and jump in the water hazard pools for certain amounts of times. 99% of the time, it was young boys."
Crackpr0n continued to share his own story with Cuellar who, after a talk about the size of Asian people's penis size, dared Crackpr0n to get erect and show him a picture for $20. Crackpr0n was 17 at the time.
"So I brought a bunch of porn to SHGL, went into the bathroom stall while he waited outside of the bathroom for me to call him in. It wasn't an easy task to get erect, and when I did I took out the ruler, unlocked the stall door and called him in, I instantly got flacid as soon as he opened the stall door. I stared at the ruler and the thought in my head was like "this still better count it was over 5 1/4 by the time he opened the stall door"
He made a joke about it "Man you shrank hella fast" and gave me $20."
The response from the FGC developers was immediate, and the line-up of games for Evo Online grew thin extremely quickly. Mortal Kombat 11 and Street Fighter V were the first two games which withdrew from the event. In the next hour, Them's Fightin' Herds, and all of Bandai Namco's games — including Tekken 7, Dragon Ball Fighter Z, and Soulcalibur VI — followed.
“In light of the recent accusations of misconduct made against Evo organizer Joey Cuellar, Capcom will no longer be participating in Evo 2020. Out of respect to those who have been affected and to the current investigation, we felt this was the appropriate course of action. We apologize to the players and fans who were looking forward to these tournaments," Capcom wrote.
The events are a major hit to the FGC community. Evo has long been the unofficial world championship for the fighting games, far and away the most prestigious event of the year. Having none this year should come as disappointing to FGC fans, especially given the underlying reasons.
Evo 2020 was supposed to begin tomorrow, July 4 and run until August 2, played entirely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizers planned it as a marathon of FGC tournaments spanning five weekends and 11 games.
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