In her own words: empathy talks women’s Counter-Strike, transphobia in esports
I spoke with Shimmer in-game leader Lucy “empathy” Verkaik on Dec. 4, a day after caster Auguste “Semmler” Massonnat targeted the 19-year-old in a series of tweets attacking transgender women in the ESL Impact Circuit. We discussed a number of topics, including her experiences in the league and as a trans woman in Counter-Strike. Shimmer, an orgless team from North America, will compete in the Impact Season 4 finals in Valencia, Spain from Dec. 8–10. The full interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Follow Shimmer and empathy @ShimmerCSGO and @empathy_cs
Q:What is your full name and alias?
Hello I am empathy, I play CS. My name is Lucy Verkaik.
Q: Tell me your esports story: how you got into all of this
I played a lot of console games when I was little. Originally I played Zelda and Metroid and eventually I got a computer and just started playing FPS games like PUBG, and then eventually, in the beginning of 2019, I started playing CS and playing it so much, and I’m somehow here.
Q: How has competing and coming up in the scene been like for you?
It’s been interesting. I didn’t come up in Impact, I was playing mix leagues before. Like right before Shimmer, I was playing with the roster that’s now Take Flyte for a very short amount of time. Before that, I played with a few Advanced mixes and I played a ton of [FACEIT Pro League]. It was mostly just that: grinding [pick-up games] and stuff out of the league. By the time I was publicly out, I already had offers.
Q: How did you find yourself in the ESL Impact league?
It was kind of random. This season, I was originally on an Advanced team with a few friends, and I was planning on playing that for the entire season. I ended up needing money because I wasn’t able to transition out my parents’ house — they wouldn’t let me, and if I did [transition], they were probably going to kick me out. So I ended up needing to leave and figure something out. But at the same time, the regular scene was just super toxic to me, and I think they’re very rude about all that stuff. The CS scene just treats everybody terribly, and it kind of made sense for me at the time to just be in a place where I could be myself and not have to worry about the pressure of anybody else. Especially after being in such an awful situation, where I was forced to not transition for years.
Q: It was that happenstance of the situation: the pros outweighing the cons?
Originally I wanted to try to play both at once, but realistically there was no way you could divide the time enough to do that.
Q: Right — if you wanted to be a proper competitor in that sense?
When I first made Shimmer even, I wanted to play Advanced and play on Shimmer at the same time, but there’s just no way I could play on a top Advanced or ECL team and also IGL on Shimmer: there’s not enough time to do both things. Also just playing roles I’ve never played in my life, it’s very weird — I didn’t AWP before I’d been in Impact, I only AWPed when I started playing.
Q: Talking about the period before you were out and the period after, did you find that you were treated very differently, did you notice a lot of difference?
Yes *laughs* yeah, you definitely will. I’m sure anybody else who has gone through the same thing will notice how you basically can’t solo queue a PUG without getting one person throwing and calling you slurs, especially in NA. It’s incredibly terrible — it’s just awful. There’s so many Advanced players — I’ll hear my friends talking about how other players that are in the scene just make fun of me consistently. It’s upsetting that people just get treated badly for no reason — it’s just unfair.
Q: Do you believe the Impact space is important for queer people and women?
It sucks that we have to have a different space because I really think that if this scene was just nicer in general, and more accepting, you wouldn’t need that. When playing with my friends — cis females even — they just get treated so terribly as well. The randoms in CS PUGs genuinely are toxic to women in general, and it’s not ok. Realistically, no one’s going to give the light of day to anybody who has played Impact or any trans person. Just because people don’t like it or accept it or whatever. It just makes it impossible to find a team where you have to get along with four other people and one of them isn’t biased against you constantly.
Q: I’ve never had to think about that. There are enough issues with five people trying to form a team to begin with, with personal issues. If there’s transphobic or bigoted hatred there I guess it’s kind of a nonstarter.
I’ve been in situations where one of my teammates will say somebody isn’t comfortable with playing with me and that’s super unfortunate because, in the CS scene, it’s hard to find a group where one person isn’t transphobic, or a terrible person or secretly have a bias against you the entire time. It’s just awful that that’s the way people think. Realistically it should just be about winning, and who is the best teammate and who puts in the most work, but it’s really not — it’s all just who is friends with who and who is the most liked. Especially in NA, it feels like that’s all that matters.
Q: With all the problems North America has with being competitive, you’d think a simple issue of compassion and sympathy … I’m sorry that’s something you’ve had to deal with.
It’s not just me: it’s almost every trans player, or even cis female, has experienced constant hatred in the CS scene. Unless you only queue with your teammates, but even then, it feels like people get typed to, every game, the most awful, inhumane things.
Q: This reminds me of the story that came out a while back about the Valorant player meL. I think the story had come out that she had opportunities to join “mix” teams in that space, but didn’t because of players having reservations about literally just playing with a woman. Do you feel like that’s a very surprising story?
It’s not everybody that’s like that, there’s definitely a few players that are nice and are very good people, but even if you get an opportunity like that, it feels harder. For example, I subbed games with Take Flyte for Thunderpick, and for the entire time, after I watched the VOD and looked at HLTV, everybody was shittalking me. I’m playing a mixed tournament and everybody is saying super transphobic shit. What do you want? Do you not want me to [play]? Either way, people are just going to be toxic, it doesn’t matter what I do.
Q: Do you think if you weren’t trans you’d get remotely any of the attention that you’ve gotten?
Oh yeah. I was doing way better before I was out fully. I don’t think people realize. Let me explain it this way. Shimmer has won 10 Cash Cups in the last year, right? That’s like $750 divided by six people. That’s, I don’t know, $125 … assuming you’re going to win 10 out of 12 Cash Cups, which is super unlikely, but we have. That’s [$1,250]. One week of FPL is $1,500. You can grind every week, by yourself, without having to practice with a team — it bothers me so much that stupid people would think I would do it for money. Literally from one week of FPL, I will make more than I’ve made this entire year.
Q: Of course, the people who are so “concerned” about the sanctity of the ESL Impact league — I don’t think they’re —
They’re not concerned. They wouldn’t be concerned about me taking one spot when ESL just deleted a spot for NA, South America and just completely wiped out the league for Asia and Oceania. That is a way bigger deal and awful because there’s genuinely no reason for people in those regions to grind now. There’s nothing they can do and it just ruins the small area of opportunity. It’s terrible … I’ve brought so many players that had never heard of Impact into Impact in NA. I’ve helped so many newer players that ask how to play the game … it’s not a problem of just one player that’s good coming into the league, it’s a problem of the scene itself not having any opportunity.
Q: Do you think the economic incentives are there — do you think it’s open for people to make a career [in esports].
Yes. Absolutely. I definitely think it is. You can look at me. I went from playing random PUGs to FPL-C in six months. Two years after I started playing, I was already signed to EG. I know most people aren’t able to do that and I was extremely fortunate to have that opportunity, but I do think it’s possible if people have the work ethic: that’s the most important thing.
Q: You talked about being on EG. How was that compared to the rest of your career? Did you find it particularly different?
Yes. It was extremely different. I don’t know how to explain it. The situation was kind of terrible with that team. Not to hate on any of the players or anything, but it very clearly wasn’t going to get better and it didn’t feel like there was anything we could have done to make that five work. I just think it’s an attitude collision or a playstyle difference, and I think the way EG handled the situation was pretty bad. The way they went around explaining to me was not good and it was kind of the entire time. There was always a constant conflict internally since I joined basically, and it wasn’t just me, it was the whole team. There were so many issues and I was just miserable.
Q: Was it just a five that didn’t work on a chemistry level, just fundamentally?
Basically yeah. Nothing we could say to the org would make them understand. It felt like no matter what I said or what I did, it didn’t matter because it wasn’t going to change the outcome of what happened. I don’t want to talk about specifics but it just wasn’t good and I was actually a lot happier when I started playing on Shimmer. It’s just such a better environment. It’s not even the org’s fault, it’s definitely the players that were on the team not being ok.
Q: Do you think you’d still be playing CS if there was no Impact league?
Absolutely … I definitely would have played at least to the release of CS2, because I just love GO so much. That was my favorite thing. I would be miserable all day and be like “let me just queue PUGs.” I just loved the game so much: from a playstyle point of view it felt so perfect and so well-rounded. CS2 kind of lost some of its touch with me, not in a “I hate it” kind of way, but I don’t think it’s as enjoyable as it was before. I don’t think that’s something that they can’t fix. I’m hopeful that the game gets polished out more. I would have definitely kept playing and trying my best just to make it work. I don’t think there’s anything that could have made me switch unless the scene was unbearably bad — which maybe it would have been if I stayed playing mixed CS.
Q: You’ve talked about how the “regular” scene has treated you, but how has the Impact community been like?
A lot of the players in the scene are extremely nice. There’s definitely a few bad — not bad, but toxic people in the mix, but there’s a vast majority of people that have had this similar experience of being treated terribly in PUGs and just want their own space where they can play and not have people treat them like garbage for something they can’t control. On that aspect, it’s so much better, where it’s more about the game than most other things. There definitely are still issues and it’s not great: the league definitely needs work and it’s not perfect. It’s a needed space.
Q: Closing thoughts on this Impact topic. What do you think, out of anything, would you want people to understand about the Impact scene?
That’s a good question. Especially from a lot of the hate I’m getting personally, it’s not just people trying to play an easier, “fake” league: it’s people grinding just as good. A lot of the teams, like Nigma [Galaxy] and FlyQuest [Red]— even Shimmer — don’t get enough credit as being players outside the Impact league. There’s so many players that have potential to be good, and no one will ever look at them as anything but Impact players and it’s kind of terrible. I think it’s a league where people can improve without the toxicity from outsiders. People just need to give respect to the top players in teams.
Q: I don’t want to spend too much time on it. Before yesterday, did you have any sort of interactions with Semmler before?
No. I’d never spoken to Semmler in my life. It was actually kind of shocking. I woke up and I get out of bed and I’m just minding my business. Phoebe goes “have you seen the tweets?” And I’m like “the tweets? What tweets? There are tweets?” I look and I’m like “oh. I see.” Then I’m getting spam messaged by 50 people. It’s just random. I expected ESL to tweet something because statistically I was the #1 player in the entire league and I think for the entire year on HLTV — I’m still listed as the #1 player for how many maps I have, and no one had said anything. So I knew there were going to be people upset before ESL tweeted that, just because people are always upset whenever a trans person does anything. I didn’t expect someone like Semmler, with a reasonably sized audience, to just spew hate on me for no reason.
Q: Do you believe you had support with the community when it happened?
Absolutely. At first, when I didn’t say anything, it was just people being toxic to me. It was kind of sad, because I’ve gotten one congratulations and I’ve got 50 people messaging me hateful things. The second I tweeted something about it, 90% of it was positive. There’s still definitely people saying awful stuff, but there’s so many incredible people that have reached out to me and been so nice. It’s great to see how many cool people there are in this scene. Not even from this scene: people from all over have been messaging me. It’s been incredible support.
Q: With how much in the actual ESL Impact scene is going on right now, this controversy is very poorly timed. You had the announcement from ESL about the slot changes for the different regions and then, on top of that, tomorrow [Dec. 5], you are flying out to Valencia for the finals.
It’s definitely been taking a toll. It’s definitely made me very scared of the upcoming seasons, because we’ve already been struggling to get an org in North America and the announcement — if it doesn’t change — I’m pretty sure there’s not going to be another org in North America, like another major one like FlyQuest or EG was. I think it’s just terrible for the scene because a lot of the players that would have come in, that would’ve improved the playing field aren’t going to do that anymore. There’s not as much of a reason for people that want the top competitive league to play [ESL Impact] instead, other than it just being nicer. But, from a certain stance, you don’t get anything out of it because there’s so little money and if you do want to make it in esports, and there’s no orgs in North America, it’s actually in my opinion significantly harder to make it in Impact than it would be to make it in mix CS, at least to the same scale. It’s definitely been extremely stressful in that regard, just thinking about what I’m going to do next season — am I going to have to somehow move to Europe to keep playing, and what is going to happen.
It’s also the amount of hate I’m getting, and having to damage control it — that taking up so much of my mind, is just stressful and it definitely did keep me up last night: looking at all the stuff on Twitter was just insane, so it definitely is poorly timed in that regard, but I don’t think it’ll affect us too much, I think we’ll still come with our best level of play.
