Pro Player Gets Banned for Tweeting
Austin Bursavich is a long-time competitive Magic player who had recently accumulated a lot of success, including back to back Pro Tour/Player's Tour Top 8 as well as having the current highest elo rating. He is also well known amongst the community for let's say, not giving a f*ck when it comes to voicing his opinion or facts that he believes should be public. 

This is exactly what got him in trouble. Austin recently leaked the news regarding the most recent Esports update, where Wizards of the Coast essentially cut a lot of the professional tournament's prize pool and moving all paper tournaments to Arena. 

He had apparently got the news from Magic Pro League and/or Rivals League members and stood by the fact that it was unfair for them to have that information in advance while other qualifier players had no clue. From his Twitter account, right after leaking the info: ''An arena PT is a huge change for many. You may need to get a new computer, or even start building your collection. You have 5 weeks!''. I highly suggest you check out his Twitter page (@mtghofbot) if you want to read the whole thing (including actual screenshots from Wizards of the Coast emails).



Long story short, he got banned from organized play, MTG Arena and Magic Online. Officially the reason being that he did not cooperate with their investigation of finding who were the MPL/Rivals members who leaked the information to him. 

My personal stance on this is that Wizards can do whatever they want, but it will come to a cost. This sets a really bad precedent on how freely someone can interact in their social life outside of tournaments. From what I understand, Austin leaked the information so that all qualified players are on the page, at the same time for a tournament that is happening very soon. 

I hope that they reconsider what they did, or at least take time to explain themselves, because this is going to scare away a lot of players.

Author: Pascal Maynard



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