Porn company Brazzers said it wants to sponsor professional fighting-game players via a Twitch.TV livestream with fighting-game community (FGC) member Long Island Joe. Rob Steele, director of special events for Brazzers, announced the formation of a sponsored team with LI Joe as its captain. Brazzer hopes to not only form a team but also host tournaments.
Brazzers is an adult movie production company with 30 hardcore websites. A sponsorship from such a successful business is certainly lucrative but may draw unfavorable attention to accusations of hostility toward women in the FGC.
A controversy about misogyny erupted during an episode of Capcom’s Street Fighter X Tekken promotional event Cross Assault when then-team captain Aris Bakhtanians defended sexist comments made toward a female player.
“The sexual harassment is part of [the] culture. And if you remove that from the fighting-game community, it’s not the fighting-game community,” Bakhtanians said. He later apologized.
LI Joe assured his audience during the three hour livestream with Steele that the sponsorship will not lead to an infiltration of pornographic elements into FGC events and streams.
The FGC response to the news has been largely favorable, though, the reaction to outlets reporting on it is not. Several vocal members of the community, including Cross Assault player Sherry Nhan, have called out Kotaku for playing up the connection to porn and associating a picture of skimpily dressed Street Fighter character Cammie with a Brazzers ad.