Elias “Upset” Lipp is a professional League of Legends player who is on his second stint at Fnatic. Lipp’s confidence in his own abilities, his risk-averse playstyle (according to community perception), and an incident that occurred in 2021 have caused a lot of hatred from the community to flow towards him. You could call him ‘controversial’, but Lipp hasn’t even done anything to court controversy.
At the 2021 World Championships, Lipp left his team at the tournament to be with his wife, who had suffered a sexual assault. Before the details of why Upset had left the tournament became public knowledge, his teammate Adam “Adam” Maanane publicised his frustration towards Upset, drumming up a lot of hatred for the bot-laner. Despite the justified nature of Lipp’s actions, a lot of this hatred still endures in the community.
Unending Harassment
In a lengthy off-season interview with Jake “DonJake” Morley, Upset discussed the level of harassment he faces from the League of Legends community.
“First, they say stupid things about gameplay that they don’t understand for the most part. Then they go a line further and try to discredit everything I’ve done in my adult life […] It’s very sad obviously, because it’s a topic for me that can be heavy, and then the last step is attacking people in my family, like writing the most disgusting sh*t. DMing people in my family, or DMing Paula [wife], writing that after I lose a game, they hope I get cancer, or I kill myself,” Lipp says.
“It’s like, who is the most popular person to hate right now? And just go completely over the line, and the worst part is, this will get you many likes. […] I have no idea what makes people act so horrible online, but it’s very sad when you’re the person being attacked like that,” he continues, saying that public perception is part of a player’s image and can affect their career prospects.
“It will [happen to other people] and people will literally kill themselves,” Lipp says. “I have a lot of love in my life because I’m lucky, and I grew up in a great family and have a great partner. If I didn’t have this support and all my life was League, and I put so much into it, and I didn’t have the discipline to not read social media, and this is all I read about myself, why would I feel like a worthy person who should love themselves and feel good about their life? Why would I?”
In a Reddit thread about the video, the response was contentious: “It’s always so hilarious watching Western LoL pros doing the whole woe is me routine when they literally have the easiest lives imaginable in the world. Imagine getting paid generational money to play a children’s video game for one hour a day for three-and-a-half months and still crying about being a professional, they are so pathetic,” writes one perfectly well-adjusted and pleasant individual.
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DonJake weighed in on the discourse, expressing his disappointment: “Pleasantly disgusted at the comments of this post so far. It’s been my goal thus far this offseason to humanise players, and for a player to talk about his struggles and even point out that it’s not about him and that if someone had gone through the same without the support network he has, it could’ve gone horribly wrong. Well wow: all I can say is preaching humanity to a community that seemingly lacks it in spades has made me very apathetic today.”
Upset will continue as Fnatic’s bot laner into 2026, along with Panagiotis “Empyros” Tantis, Iván “Razork” Martín Díaz, Vladimiros “Vladi” Kourtidis and Park “Lospa” Joon-hyeong.
League of Legends
- Released
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October 27, 2009
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Blood, Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco
- Engine
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Proprietary
