Paris has been ablaze over the last few days as a surge of riots and civil unrest washes over the city and surrounding area. On social media, we’re seeing stores and homes plundered and shattered by rioters, and it seems as though nowhere is safe. On October 17, Team Vitality’s Parisian headquarters were broken into, looted, and smashed.
Clips have surfaced on social media showing looters tearing apart gaming PCs in the streets, prying the expensive components out and running off with them, as well as brandishing Team Vitality’s Counter-Strike 2 trophies, some of which have reportedly made their way onto platforms like eBay.
Vitality Struck by Paris Riots
France is suffering under the weight of what has been dubbed another French Revolution, but it’s manifesting in widespread dissent, intense violence, arson, and the looting of every store and restaurant in Paris. It has been estimated that 550,000 people took to the streets in the last few days to protest, resulting in as many as 150 police officers being injured in the line of duty.
It’s the culmination of enraged students protesting poor conditions, France’s national debt causing rising concerns, cyberattacks destroying produce in hundreds of locations, and ongoing political tension all mounting.
But in a post on social media, Team Vitality, one of the most recognizable and successful esports organizations in the world, revealed it hadn’t been able to avoid the ruckus.
In case you don’t have the facilities to translate that, the organization’s ‘V.Hive’ headquarters in Paris was ransacked, with looters dragging PCs out and disassembling them in the street, before parading through the city holding Vitality’s hard-earned trophies aloft.
Today, the venue remains closed to visitors, and it might be so for a hot minute, given the extent of the damage and the items taken by looters.
The company’s CEO, Fabien Devide, took to social media to share his disappointment:
We have always wanted teenagers and people with modest incomes to be able to come play, reconnect, and share their passion at a low cost. Despite inflation, we have never raised our rates.
V.Hive is also the symbol of our maturity. The determination to show that esports is not just lived behind a screen but that it brings people together, creates encounters, memories, and human connections.
I just lived a waking dream with our performance in Shanghai, and today, thousands of kilometers away, I see a part of me go up in smoke.
Are you in France, and have you been impacted by the civil unrest? Let us know how you’re coping on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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