Over the past few days, there has been a lot of drama over the recent harassment of female Overwatch player, Ellie.

Ellie was a top 500 Overwatch player who would eventually sign with the Overwatch team, Second Wind. Following her signing, multiple news outlets reported on a huge onset of harassment following Ellie’s signing.

Much of the harassment was due to a large amount of players claiming Ellie was a fraud.

While some of the evidence suspicious players pointed out was questionable at best, some players pointed out the fact that Ellie was the only player on the Overwatch contenders site that didn’t have their legal name listed.

While some took the whole thing too far by threatening to dox Ellie, questioning her legitimacy due to some of the evidence players found is fair game.

Second Wind team owner, Justin Hughes, said that, “When we brought her onto the team, people acted like we had brought on a symbol of empowerment.”

He continued by blaming the Overwatch community for the loss of Ellie.

“It seems that the OW community isn’t ready to just view a player as just a player. We wanted a player, but it seemed like the public wanted something else.”

In fairness to Hughes, he wasn’t only upset about the players questioning Ellie’s legitimacy, but he was also upset at the people that saw Ellie like “their Messiah.”

After Ellie’s departure, many took to social media accusing people of being intolerant.

Multiple news sources, such as Kotaku, pushed a narrative that Ellie was being attacked for her gender.

“Ellie is one of very few women in Blizzard’s Overwatch Contenders league, and some fans speculated that she could be any number of notable male players impersonating a woman.”

Rock Paper Shotgun also published an article titled, “Overwatch Contenders controversy has once again made things more difficult for women in esports.”

Since all of this drama, news has come out suggesting that the entirety of Ellie’s Overwatch career was just a social experiment.

According to Cloud 9 Overwatch streamer, Aspen, Ellie was just a social experiment created by overwatch player PunisherOW to expose sexism in esports. Aspen says that Punisher was the actual player playing as Ellie.

The team that hired Ellie, Second Wind, has also release a statement claiming they did not know of Ellie’s true identity when they hired her.