Hi everyone, Gideon from BEING ESPORTS here.

I want to repeat that what actually happened here is this:

Two players have been banned with NO investigation, NO clear evidence, contradicting allegations (and I will defend this until this community finally understands) and NO ability to defend themselves in any way. In fact there was even evidence AGAINST what has been presented and the bans were still applied.

In case you are still thinking there is video evidence - THERE IS NOT. This is a hoax verified by the venue and the PoLAN admins to not be the case.

We (BEING ESPORTS) decided not to copy these bans after speaking to Luny for 90 minutes, Nicky and Roticher for more than an hour each, the organizers behind PoLAN and the people originally raising the allegations + countless hours of chat communication. Nobody else was willing or motivated to do this work which is understandable in a passion driven scene - I still want to clarify this because we have been the most attacked for this (besides the two banned individuals) while we have been the only ones willing to put in the work which annoys me incredibly much. We are the least involved in this scene and the only ones who invested the energy to do the actual job that was at hand.

I see that some you here have a very skewed idea of how a proper administration process should be handled but if you believe that what resulted in the bans is anything close to a "good way of handling things" I would suggest you give this some more thought. If this is the majority opinion of this scene, it is doomed anyway and there is nothing left to save.

What has been wrongfully said here:

1. No, Nicky and Roticher could have not just "said sorry and moved on". They were banned without being even given the chance to understand what potentially happened. A ban has been applied without even a minimum of due process so they had no chance to ever do that. Even if everything that was described happened (for which I have evidence it didn't) they still had no chance to apologize at any point in the process before the bans happened.

2. I have spoken to almost everyone involved (those I didn't speak to didn't want to speak/ chat). The people raising the allegations have ALL given different explanations of what happened. Person A said "Person B had confronted them" person B said she didn't but Person C had done it while person C was under the impression Person A had been the one to confront them. I am 99,9% confident that the assumed confrontation has never happened for specifically that reason. I also know for a fact that at least some of the raised allegations are false.

On top of that FIVE individual people (meaning different conversations not started by me on different days) at ÜBERFEST confirmed that the only person insiting on the allegations to be 100% correct was known for raising wrongful claims like this and misrepresenting things that had happened in the past (NOT LUNY) which gave me even more of a good idea of what probably happened at PoLAN.

3. I am not saying nothing of the described behaviour happened at PoLAN. What I am saying is that this does not justify a ban.

My opinion (which doesn't matter too much but I still woud like to share it) is:

People were weird (nothing sexual and nothing involving physical touch - this was confirmed by EVERYONE including Luny), they were not confronted because nobody was grown up or brave enough to confront them but they said they had because they didn't want to own them not having done it. ALL further instances of approaching Luny then were seen as in contrast to the confrontation (which never took place) and everything else was therefore interpreted based on wrong information. This makes a normal situation seem weird without Nicky or Roticher being at fault for it. This furthermore made it impossible for them to notice on site. After the event, rather than owning the mistake of never confronting them about it, a small group of people rather insisted on things having taken place that never have to make the thing sound so horrible that a ban had to take place. Even people that were originally part of the allegating group have now confirmed that this is likely what happened and did so publicly in a different part of this forum.

Also what Luny is saying about me is once again quite inaccurate in just the same way as what was described to have happened on site but I just don't want to be a part of this discussion anymore. There has been so much misrepresentation of circumstances it is just surprising that anyone still believes in it.

I am tired of defending myself and our event for being the only ones doing our job here. The only thing accurate is that I stopped responding via DMs to her (in case of ONE question) at some time but not intentionally but rather because I was speaking to five different people in DMs at that time. I was told that the important information would be sent onward to Luny by someone else involved. So her question was answered, just not directly. Everything else is partially or fully incorrect.

Let me close with this:

Parts of this community have an incredibly weird idea how these things should be handled that are far away from what I would deem a good approach. Allegation = Ban is not a logic that can ever lead to anything good in the world. At the same time they would rather be right than being honest and just and I and our organization will NEVER accept or follow this path. It is a shame that the bans have not been fully reverted by every TO involved (with an excuse on top of it) as that is the only logical way to move forward and in any other place than a niche gaming community, Nicky and Roticher should get their lawyers involved to fight (and win) this 100% of the time.

This is the only post I will add to this discussion and will be my final participation in the entire case. I will leave it open for you to decide what you want to believe.

Just ask yourselves this is you are uncertain what to believe: Why would we invest days of work and risk significant financial and reputation damage to our event to defend two community members we don't know and have never met in our life (to this day)?

Hi beloved ÜBERFEST Community,

today, I would love to make sure to share the love I have for the amazing event team with all of you so that ideally everyone in the community can find out about these incredible human beings.

I would like to start by thanking someone individually who was forgotten in the last part of our broadcast. Without him, we wouldn’t have the amazing game and voice servers on site which level up the experience for everyone massively. Furthermore, he is always quick to give advice, add ideas to the event concept and help with anything that needs to be done in advance.

Thank you Supra!

Secondly, I would love to thank our incredible team of casters who have made this event and its’ broadcast their own once again and created a show with barely any downtime, so much amazing content and incredible jokes (that definitely were NEVER any cringe) even though we had two talents less than for previous iterations. I hope you are proud of what you achieved.

Thank you Jakeowaty, Rooc, Not Steven, Damaytoe and Luke (who joined on short notice and was the perfect addition).

When talking about casters, we can’t forget those who make it possible for them to lend their faces and voices to our show. My colleague and friend took on this challenge for the first time and (I hope the community will agree) knocked it out of the park. Countless hours at home and 12 hour shifts four days in a row on site were not enough to crack him!

Thank you Paul for producing this incredible stream.

Besides Paul, we had two familiar faces as well as another ÜBERFEST newcomer that joined this year’s team remotely and helped with observing, community management, overlays, short noticed fixes and so much more.

The incredible Wiethoofd and Agro need no introduction (but tons of praise!) and we would love to give it up for our newest addition to the observers of ÜBERFEST Jayy

While it might not be too clear from home, an event like this takes so much more than just the broadcast. We need social media people, bar staff, help with buildup and teardown, problem solvers and so much more.

Thank you to the BEING ESPORTS team consisting of Benni, Shrooky (or shall I call him the Jägermeister?), Nathalie, Lukas and Kevin. You rock every single time and this one was no different. I want to take a moment to single out my wonderful partner in crime Nathalie here since she for whatever reasons unknown to me is able to put up with all of this stress again and again so that I can follow my passion. Thank you for being so perfect and I promise to get better at predicting the times we can go to bed next time <3

In a double role, he didn’t only man the bar but also created every single picture and content piece you have seen on the broadcast in 2026. From serving bonks, to cracking the code on how our beer machine worked to filming, cutting and editing our videos – he did it all.

Thank you Lukas – for all these year’s in this next event under our belt.

Another one of our staffers really showed up this year. You didn’t necessarily see his work too much because that’s exactly what it was supposed to be like. He revolutionized our bar setup, planned the Barbecue, had the idea with the ice cream, created new bonk version, planned the layout of the event and so much more.

Much love Kevin, to many more of these.

A solid tournament needs a solid team of individuals running it. Even though they claimed that this year was made easy by the amazing participants, I am sure they had tons of work to do and their proficiency shows especially in the fact that there were basically no downtimes between games transitioning into our Twitch stream. They overcame sickness and many changes of event format with ease.

Thank you to our admins DCS and Mars!

Lastly (and you know what’s coming now) – I want to thank those who trusted in our vision once again (or for the first time). There’s no event without people attending and/ or watching it from home and seeing so many familiar faces and names again was heartwarming not only for me.

We overcame quite a bit of drama and hardship to make this happen, but it was worth every hour in the end!

Here’s to you all – we hope to see you again in 2027.

Hi everyone, we are live now on https://www.twitch.tv/kritzkast

If you want to know more about the medals you can get by watching the event, check out our event discord: https://discord.gg/zHjDEEtFew

If you would like to support the event you can do so here: https://streamelements.com/beingesports/tip

Hi everyone,

today, we would like to approach you with another announcement regarding three important aspects of ÜBERFEST 2026.

- Most importantly, we will change the tournament format to adapt to the current situation (us not having the strongest teams of the last years attending). We have therefore decided to skip the "invitation" bracket and instead go with one big tournament for this iteration of ÜBERFEST. This means that every team that buys a ticket for the event will play in the same first stage (likely a group stage with two groups) which will then result in a bracket based on the performance in the first stage. This means:

1. More games for everyone in the main tournament
2. Chances to win price money for teams that previously didn't have a chance to
3. No two split brackets
4. There will still be opportunities for you to play against other teams if you drop out of the main tournament quickly as in the previous years. We just don't perfectly know how those will look like this year since we need to know more about the number of attending teams first.

- Secondly, the fact that we will likely only have 10-12 teams at this year's event (this might change but for now seems likely) means that we sadly have to make the decision to reduce the prize pool to 1.000€. We hope that this won't be too unpopular given the fact that this prize pool will go to teams that would have never won it if we would have had the full 16 teams and we hope for your understanding that our budget simply doesn't allow for more this year.

- Lastly, we will have to slightly change our refund policy to end two weeks earlier than for the last iterations. IF you want to refund your ticket for whatever reason, please make sure to reach out to us by the 15th of July (in 14 days)! We are doing this since we need some planing safety for this iteration and hope that you understand that this is still a very lenient refund policy compared to other organizers who don't allow refunding at all.

Hi everyone,

there has been a little update to our ÜBERFEST shop.

As we will likely have a few spare PCs at ÜBERFEST, we would love to offer everyone who is interested the option to purchase an individual player ticket as we have done in the 2024 iteration.

This ticket will come with:

- A high power PC for the entire duration of the event (Thursday to Sunday) for you to use to play with your friends on site
- Access to all event areas
- Everything included in the community ticket (no need to buy both!)
- Access to our B-tournament if you find a group of like-minded people on side that also have a player ticket

The price for the ticket will be 155€ (the price of our team ticket / 6 so that everyone pays exactly the same).

Important addition: If anyone who has already purchased a community ticket would like to upgrade to a player ticket, please reach out and we will give you a coupon code that will take the price of the community ticket off of the player ticket (so you won't have to cancel your order and purchase again!)

Get your ÜBERFEST Tickets here: https://buytickets.at/beingesports/2168575

Hi everyone - I would like to share this here as well:

Today, we're thrilled to share some exciting news about ÜBERFEST 2026!

As many of you know, the ability to award official in-game medals for major community events was discontinued several years ago. However, after a series of productive discussions between KritzKast and Valve, we're delighted to announce that there will be official in-game medals for ÜBERFEST 2026.

While we can't reveal the final medal designs just yet (they're currently being worked on), we can already confirm that medals will be awarded to:

- The event champions
- The second- and third-place teams
- All event attendees

The attendee medal will be awarded to everyone involved in the event, including players, community ticket holders, talent, and staff members.

We'll be sharing more details about the medal distribution process in the coming days, but rest assured—we're making it as simple and straightforward as possible.

Finally, we'd like to extend a huge thank you to KritzKast and Valve for helping make this possible. Their support allows us to recognize and celebrate everyone who helps make ÜBERFEST such a special event.

While that is of course saddening to hear, we want to thank you for letting us know through these posts.

We wish you nothing but the best and thank you for attending our other events.

While I strongly believe that what you assume is quite accurate, I hope that we will be able to help making occurances like this impossible in the future by implementing a better process and working together with the other TOs.

I hope there will be many more events for this community to enjoy and grow together through - even if they are not ÜBERFESTS. That is literally (even though some might not believe me unfortunately) the one main thing we seek to achieve.

Without knowing how much any of the two "sides" want to actually know more information, I would like to also state this here, where it might help the silent majority to come to an informed conclusion.

I am Jannik or Gideon, the person that made the final call, not to ban the two individuals at question.

The following information is factual and can be confirmed by either myself, the people involved or admins of poLANd or ETF2L.

1. No investigation of any sorts beyond the personal recollections of three people has been used to warrant the ban of both Roticher and Nicky. They have not been (to this day) talked to by any admin of the two organisations. While we applaud both organisations for their amazing work, that in itself is not acceptable and should never be allowed to happen. Due process must ALWAYS involve all sides of each case as no just verdict can be made otherwise.

2. We have spoken to all "sides" of this case in depth and in addition worked through a little more than 100 pages of text with screenshots of DMs and personal recollections. Many of these recollections line up, however in crucial situations, even the recollections of the accusing side don't line up. In one person's recollection someone was invited to join a group going to a restaurant, in the other it wasn't. In one person's recollection someone from the two accused directly harrased someone outside the person, while everyone else confirms it was actually someone unrelated. In one person's collection someone was clearly told to "step away" while the harmed person itself says that had not taken place.

This list goes on and on as there were more than 20 different accounts of important moments that don't line up.

In short: There simply is no conclusive evidence that either all of the reported behavior has taken place and/or that it was actually properly and clearly addressed on site. Many of the accusers seem to believe that somebody else had "clearly adressed the issue" while it is hard to find any proof for that.

We are NOT saying that anyone is lying here. All we are saying is that we are quite convinced that the accusers both believe that other people had confronted more than they actually have and that more things took place than have actually taken place.

This whole situation could have likely been solved by approaching an admin on site and by better and clearler communication on site. But sadly both seem to have never happened.

3. Since AFTER the unban, we have been met with the personal recollection of other people who attended poLANd stating that they also have their doubts about the recollection of the accusing people actually being 100% correct. For those wondering why this was not heard beforehand: This has happened AFTER the unban since none of this was made public before and since there was no investigation before, so just as the banned people still have not been met with the full allegations, these other people could not have shared their point of view.

Important: This has NOT been used to warrant not mirroring the bans (but it would have had it happened before).

These individuals clearly stated that they don't want to say these things in public at this moment in time as they fear being attacked which based on what happened to me and what happened to ÜBERFEST sadly has to be confirmed as a reasonable point of view.

4. There are talks about CCTV footage from on site. To our knowledge that CCTV footage is "beyond inconclusive" as yes it shows the accused walk past or stand close to the person that was alledgedly harmed but given the venue size of poLANd it is simply impossible not to do that.

5. It was confirmed that there has been no sexual harrassment, no physical component involved or anything else along those lines. The accusers confirm that the only misbehavior is "being too much in the personal space of somebody else" and "asking weird questions or making weird comments (non-sexual)".

All of this combined did lead us to the conclusion of not mirroring the ban. Considering what happened after our unban we actually strongly hope that ETF2L and poLANd will follow suit and also change their verdict on the situation as a ban is simply not warranted. I am saying this as a person that has hosted events and leagues across 10 different titles for over 10 years now. We have banned or otherwise excluded a lot of people from participation (including in TF2) but this is not a ban that has any foundation whatsoever.

A good share of this community seems to believe that ideology trumps over investigation and evidence and I want to close by saying that you are following down a dangerous and horrible path by doing so. It will be sooner than you might believe that you will be the banned person based on no apparent evidence if this is the community you want to live in.

Hi @Lupus,

we are in active communication with several teams for our invite bracket. So far there is no team that we can confirm but I assume that will happen soon.

Hello everyone!

The second wave of team tickets for ÜBERFEST is now live. There are five remaining team tickets.

As we would technically have the opportunity to increase the available team spots by another two with a bit of an investment from our end, it would be very interesting to hear how many teams are still actively debating whether they will attend our 2026 iteration or not.

Lastly, if high plane fare prices are currently avoiding you from making the decision to come to Germany due to budget restrictions, please feel free to get in touch through Discord (BE_Gideon). We might be able to help you a little bit in that regard.

To the event's ticket shop
To the event's discord

cu@

Can't wait to meet you crazy people again. cu@

Super beautiful tradition and after meeting you all, I am not suprised that a community like this has a such a tradition :D

I will do my best to not forget anyone:

For starters, thank you to the TF2 community and especially those trusting us an entirely new organizer to actually come to our event. This would have not been possible without you and it warms my heart that it worked out so amazingly well in the end. I am not overexagarating when I say that I NEVER thought, people would be so open, kind, amazing and warm this weekend.

The biggest thank you MUST go to the huge row of people that worked their ass of before and during the event. DCS, JMax, Wiethoofd, Beater, CanFo, Samus, Antimation, Agro, Supra, Benpl, Decaf, Jakeowaty, Surny, Lucky, wandum, eepily, Notsteven and Chiers. Without them basically working for food and hotel this would not be possible and I hope everyone understands and appreciates that.

Also huge thank you to our team at BEING ESPORTS Kevin, Lukas, Paul, Nathalie, Axl, and Benni for almost making me obsolete by doing their job so freakin well both on site and before the event. Seeing us grow makes me su fuck*n proud of you all.

Thank you to BaseStack for giving us a home and trusting that we would make the event work without having any idea of the number of people that would attend. I am happy it all worked out in the end and can't wait for next year.

Thank you to KritzKast for letting us use their channel for the broadcast.

Thank you to Valve for the amazing shipment of prizes and valuable merchandise.

Thank you to Memory PC for the stage setup - we wouldn't have had without PCs to do it without you.

Thank you to be quiet! for reducing our cost for lanyards and snacks and for providing prizes for our side events.

Thank you to my amazing girlfriend for not only putting up with me constantly working at events but actually joining in on the fun.

Thank you for all the kind words after and during the event. I got teary eyed more than once on the way back thinking about these.

Also thank you to my immune system for not making me get sick this time around (YES! :D)

If I forgot anyone - please don't hate me. I love you. See you in 2025.

I fully agree with all your points and I promise that we will do better in the future (in fact the refund process has already been worked on and a different shop page is being used for our next event at BaseStack so that refunds willl be a matter of days at most).

We didn't take any offense by your statement and it wasn't that harsh to be honest. Nonetheless, I am happy that we were able to resolve it and that your money was refunded now.