Soulja Boy Is Building His Esports Franchise Right Now
*By Zane Bhansali*
Rapper and entrepreneur DeAndre "Soulja Boy" Cortez Way has a new venture: gaming.
Soulja Boy announced in December that he was planning to start an esports franchise, citing the wildly popular streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins as a possible collaborator.
In December, Soulja Boy even said he might sign Ninja to his organization ー but he's since revised his stance.
Although Soulja Boy commented that Ninja is a "great friend," he said that he is envisioning a different type of player for his team.
"We're looking for the up-and-coming, 16 or 17-year old ー hungry, with a goal, with a passion, with a dream," Soulja Boy said. "That's who I want to join my esports franchise."
Way listed Overwatch, Gears of War, and Super Smash Bros. as potential games he wants to explore for his team and added that he plans to compete at the highest level in due time.
"We're going to get our feet wet, we'll get to that point," he said. "We definitely want to build it from the ground up ... and be able to compete with those bigger teams. We just have to work our way up the ranks."
Soulja Boy said he's currently developing a video game that he described as "Grand Theft Auto mixed with Fortnite mixed with Halo," adding, "you gotta take the best of each world and put it all in one game."
Soulja Boy recently released a series of game consoles amid serious controversy. The first two, the "SouljaGame Console" and "Soulja Game Handheld," were marketed as being capable of playing "Switch/3DS/Vita/NEOGEO/GBC/Gameboy/GBA" games and having hundreds of games already loaded ー raising questions of their legality.
Soulja Boy's systems were retailed through his online store for the relatively cheap prices of $149 and $99, respectively. However, commenters were quick to point out that the items in question were in fact rebranded systems from developer Anbernic that were available through Chinese online retailer AliExpress for significantly lower prices. What's more, both consoles were simply emulators capable of playing games from first-party publishers.
As of publication, Way has stopped selling both consoles, and his former website, souljagame.com, now redirects to the page for Nintendo's handheld 3DS console.
Way has since revealed another version of the SouljaGame Handheld. However, it seems to be yet another rebranded emulator, this with an eerily similarity to Sony's Playstation Vita. Nevertheless, Way is optimistic about his future in the console market.
"I have a passion for this," he told Cheddar Sports. "This is not about the money for me. I really want to create a video game console. I really want to create a character in the image that could be compared to Sonic \[the Hedgehog\] as Sonic is for Sega and Mario is for Nintendo. We could have a little Soulja for the SouljaGame."
Cheddar gets a look at Curiosity Stream's 'Beyond the Spotlight,' a biography series about the intriguing people who capture our attention, fill our social feeds, and shape pop culture.
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Professional sports is facing a reckoning right now over several stories painting an ugly picture of a toxic work environment, encompassing multiple teams in multiple leagues and dealing with different issues.
This week, the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks ousted their general manager and senior director of hockey operations after an investigation confirmed former player Kyle Beach's claims that the team's former video coach Brad Aldrich sexual assaulted him back in 2010, with upper management ignoring his claims until after the team won the Stanley Cup that season. Last night, Joel Quenneville, now the coach of the Florida Panthers but Chicago's coach that season, stepped down from his post.
This comes just a few weeks after the NFL was rocked by leaked emails showing now-former Las Vegas Raiders Head Coach Jon Gruden using racist, sexist and homophobic language. He resigned soon after the emails came to light. We can't forget, though, that those emails come from a much broader investigation of the toxic work environment in the offices of the Washington Football Team. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said this week the league wouldn't publicly release anything from its investigation of the team, but lawyers for many of the women interviewed in the case say they want a public report.
And last January, just one month after hiring him, the New York Mets had to fire then-General manager Jared Porter, who admitted to sending explicit, unsolicited texts and images to a female reporter in 2016 when he worked for the Chicago Cubs. ESPN had been in possession of the texts since 2017, but the woman in question asked the network not to run the story out of fear her career would be harmed. She only reached back out to ESPN after she left the field of journalism altogether. Porter has been banned from the sport through next season.
If you believe in the phrase "where there's smoke, there's fire," professional sports is a five-alarm blaze.
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Evan Vandenberg, the founder and CEO of Dibbs, a sports card trading platform, joined Cheddar to break down how his company allows sports fans to buy and sell fractions of sports cards. The physical trading cards are typically held in a vault while fans are provided with a digital representation of that card that they can go on to sell or even buy more fractions of the item. Vanderberg also talked about the company's $13 million Series A funding round and investments from major sports figures like the NBA's Chris Paul and NFL's DeAndre Hopkins.
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