Controversy hit the Gfinity London tournament this evening, resulting in TCM withdrawing their team out of respect to the competition and the organisers.
The incident occurred during a pause in the match between Eternity Gaming and Copenhagen Wolves. Eternity Gaming were ahead and if they won the group would need another round of matches to settle who would go through. The TCM player Patrick "Pheilox" Riehle, not wanting any further delays, is alleged to have passed information about positions to Copenhagen Wolves in a bid to allow them to come back into the match, thus preventing an extra game for them.
However, the incident was caught - minus audio - on Twitch TV and Eternity Gaming were informed of this. What followed was much justified complaining and no real resolution for the admins. If they offered a restart Eternity would surrender their in game advantage, if they continued Copenhagen Wolves potentially had some awareness that could allow them to turn the game around.
TCM Gaming management reacted swiftly to ease the admin's burden and decided to not only withdraw from the tournament but also remove the player from the team.
They gave the following statement to Cadred:
Due to a player indiscretion during a match between Copenhagen Wolves and Eternity Gaming, we have withdrawn our League of Legends team from the tournament.
We apologize to GFINITY and all the teams involved and would like to make clear with immediate effect, we have terminated all services of Patrick 'Pheilox' Riehle.
As we do not condone the actions taken by this player.
TCM-Gaming is a company that prides itself on Professionalism and Fairplay and this is why we have taken this immediate course of action against the player involved..
The game has now been resumed and TCM will play no further part in the competition, leaving four players disappointed following the action of one player in a moment of madness.