The Electronic Sports League (ESL) has announced that it will no longer allow Team YP, a YouPorn-sponsored esports team, to compete in its events. While many fans have criticized the organization’s move for what they perceive as unnecessary censorship, the ESL says that it has no choice in the matter due to local pornography advertising laws and sponsor policies.

“Advertising pornography is not legal in the markets we operate in, and the vast majority of partners we’re working with have strict ‘no drugs, no alcohol, no pornography’ rules that we’ve contractually taken on board,” an ESL spokesperson said in a statement. “These aren’t new rules, but ones that have been in our rulebooks for a long time.”

“We spoke to the manager of Team YP earlier this year and in that conversation we explained the situation and rules in detail, and offered to look for potential alternatives in a bigger group. At the same time, we are consulting with our legal teams about this. We will inform the team and the management as soon as we have any updates.”

While the ESL is certainly not the only esports league out there, it is currently one of the biggest, and getting shut out from its competitions is a serious blow to Team YP, but at least for now, the team isn’t taking it lying down.

“As long as the fans, the players, the community want us here, we will continue being here,”  Claire Fisher, Team YP’s main eSports coordinator, told Gameranx in an email. “Much like we are nothing without our players, we are nothing without the community. We want to continue supporting our teams, we want our players to have equal opportunities to achieve greatness, attend tournaments, get noticed, and climb the ladder.”

Fisher noted that the team’s sponsor hadn’t been a problem for the ESL before, and it was only within the last month that the organization had started taking an issue with the team’s logos.

While the team reached out to the ESL to try to work on a compromise, Fisher said that “the discussion, sadly, was very closed, there was very little room for negotiations.”

Image courtesy of TeamYP.com