Overwatch/TF2 observer denies sexual assault allegations despite email confession
A few days ago, Team Fortress 2 event producer and freelance Overwatch observer Alex ‘Dashner’ Pylyshyn was publicly accused of sexual assault by two alleged victims. Dexerto had attempted to contact Pylyshyn for comment but were unable to as all social media accounts had been shut down and even entire forum posting histories deleted. However, over the weekend, we received word from the accused who says he denies all allegations and intends to fight them legally.
His first port of call has been to issue a cease and desist to Ryan ‘Console’ Modugno, who has now deleted the public forum posts that detailed his experiences with the accused. In their place now reads a single sentence: “For legal reasons, I have decided to take down my post and all following posts.”
Pylyshyn told Dexerto via email, “I categorically deny the accusations of sexual assault being made by Mr. Modugno and [Redacted] (otherwise known as Delacroix). Since I am currently in the pending phases of defamation proceedings, I cannot go into further detail at this time. However, I would like to point out that Mr. Modugno has retracted all claims after direction by my attorney.”
However, Dexerto was able to obtain an email that shows Pylyshyn apologizing to Ness ‘uberchain’ Delacroix for “abusing” her.
“Even without evidence on your part, I could not feel right challenging it,” the email reads. “I made your life a living hell, I manipulated you, I abused you. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am a horrific person.”
The email does reiterate the claim that Pylyshyn did not abuse Modugno.
In response to the email, Pylyshyn specified, “My email correspondence to Ms. Delacroix of November 14, 2019, was intended to express remorse for the emotional turmoil in our relationship and should not be interpreted as an admission of abuse. I may not have treated her well as an emotional partner during our relationship, which I deeply regret, but I certainly did not sexually abuse her.”
We reached out to Modugno, who didn’t want to speak further on the matter of his allegations due to fear of legal reprisals. However, he did want to qualify that in his original post, it may have seemed like he referred to Beyond The Summit employees as being aware. Instead, it was community event staff that were working with BTS to create the event.
“When I mentioned the BTS team asked me to step down, I was mentioning the team in regards to the team handling the TF2 event, not necessarily BTS’s staff,” he clarified. “From my understanding, now, we were independently running an event at their venue with support from BTS.”
This seems to be verified by Discord logs featuring a conversation between Samantha ‘samiface’ Emery, one of the event organizers and a long-standing event organizer in the TF2 scene, and Pylyshyn.
“I should have trusted you when you said it was a bad idea to get involved in TF2 stuff again,” Emery said. “I should’ve known someone would try to get attention this way. I should’ve known better. I’ve always thought we were better than this. I guess TF2 is just willing to cut off its nose to spite its fucking face.”
Beyond The Summit staff had previously denied any involvement in or knowledge of the matter. We reached out to Emery for clarification on these comments.
Pylyshyn has indicated to Dexerto that he intends to pursue these matters legally against both parties. We shall continue to provide updates on this story as they develop.