Renowned British esports journalist and occasional live stream commentator Richard Lewis has called out and criticized several major gaming publications in his acceptance speech for the Esports Journalist Of The Year award at the Esports Awards 2019 last weekend.

This is Lewis’ second time winning the award, after doing so for the first time in 2016. In his roughly 4-minute-long speech, he specifically mentioned the names of Polygon, Kotaku, and Waypoint to condemn them for their inaccurate and unprofessional reporting on the esports industry, as well as unethical gatekeeping practices.

Lewis started his acceptance speech by giving props to fellow esports journalist Cecilia D’anastasio from Kotaku, praising her work and saying that she could have just as easily stood on that podium receiving the award instead of him.

After that, he proceeded to call out the three gaming publications; Polygon, Waypoint and Kotaku by saying:

“We have to look after ourselves because there are these external media companies.

They’re looking into esports and they want to write the history and tell the stories.

And you know who I’m talking about: Polygon, Waypoint, the Kotakus, people like that.

Their approach to writing about esports is two-fold.

They’ve consistently embarrassed themselves writing pieces that expose their complete ignorance about our scene, lack of sources and unoriginal opinions on topics we have talked to death about for 20 years.

The second thing has been to write hit-pieces and smears, mostly propagated on half-truths or out-and-out lies.

They write about it because they think if they can get one or two or 12 of you out of the way, they can get their friends and cronies in and gatekeep our industry.

He then went on to mention specific articles, including Kotaku’s article on a CSGO Major apparently being a Trump rally and when they rallied around to stop the abuse of a female Overwatch player who didn’t exist.

Lewis received standing ovations for his speech, including from the likes of famous streamer Dr. Disrespect. He later clarified the finer details of his speech on Twitter, with several posts, which you can check out below.

Hard to put out one tweet that encapsulates last night. Was great to spend time with so many of my esports family even briefly. Congratulations to all the people who were honoured at the awards. The winners tell me that esports is in a great place. Back to the hustle tomorrow.

— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) November 17, 2019

Also, if you’re wondering why so many people stood up and applauded what I said, think how many of those people that did have been misrepresented and lied about by outlets like the ones I named. People are sick of it from top to bottom. Let’s see if the message has been received.

— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) November 17, 2019

Check out his entire acceptance speech for Esports Journalist Of The Year award in the clip below, and look out for him calling out the major publications beginning from the 1:10-minute mark.