Shaifu · @Shafulyn
4th Mar 2019 from TwitLonger
Read if you care, I know it's very long but it's important to me.
Hey guys, I am writing this tweet to share a little bit of my experience and the status of my current situation.
As some of you know, I've been recently playing in a balkan team, named Nerotec, in the EBL. However this is no longer the case, I am not part of the team anymore and there's been a lot of complications which I would really like to talk about here. I will start from the beginning and finish on the present.
It all started a few months ago, when I was offered the spot for the team. It was your average team offer of course, but I was not quite interested in it because I was never planning to play for a balkan team and it was really not my intention to either. I refused the offer, however a couple of days later, I got messaged by the same person offering me again, this time with a salary involved since initially there was no salary. I asked on an estimate sum and I was told around 400 euros/month throughout 2 months of playing.Knowing I am not too picky on money sums I agreed to it because 400 euros a month sounded really good to me and it was exactly what I needed for myself.
It all went good, until a few days before the EBL started, where the man who was supposed to be the owner/investor/funder/sponsor whatever you wanna call him, he was nowhere to be found. That's when I thought "Yeah I guess our contracts and promises are broken out that means I should leave right?" but the manager told me he will find a way to pay me for the time we are playing and so I agreed only on the condition that he would contract all of us legally, that everything he says here is true. Of course he agreed to do it, nothing out of ordinary here right?
On every scrim I was asking on updates about contracts and everytime I asked, I was told that "soon". For almost 2 weeks we kept going like that until our manager came to tell us that an org might contract us, he mentioned the name Valiance. He said that they agreed to contract us and pay me the salary I was promised aswell. That sounded like good news however it came off a bit awkward because we had no physical person coming to tell us those news, it was basically just our manager's words. Nothing really changed tho, after every scrim I was still asking for updates and I was getting delayed or excuses. Around that time our midlaner, @TheRoyalKanin got kicked and I was highly confused about it, because I was never told we might be in position to swap one of our players, regardless of that I was really against it too, because I dislike when teams swap players instead of finding a way to train them.
After our midlaner got replaced we played for another week(around 4th week), and on the friday of that week I decided to stream, and there's people who watched it so they may know about this incident. On that day, someone came into my stream and he turned my world upside down, I don't know how to explain but I just wanted to shut my stream down reading what he said. He told me that my manager owes his team 1100 euros, because he bought the EBL spot from them for 5500 euros and he only paid 4400. Those news gave me a TON of redflags, I was already suspicious but those news just made me OUTRAGEOUSLY suspicious because he had proof and screenshots about it too. I went onto the discord group and I told my team, including the manager about it and I demanded solid proof that we're still getting anything out of this team, at least contracts and prizepool. My manager of course denied everything the person in my stream said, he said that it's not true and everything he paid was through EBL admins. He also said he would give me proof the day after, which was Saturday in the same week.
At that moment I was still not at peace with it, so I made a private group with my teammates, including the coach and I told them "This is obviously a scam, there's no more hiding it so we either investigate everything ourselves or we give up and we don't play anymore". I told them that we should stop scrimming because there's no point scrimming for a team that doesn't even legally exist. They still wanted to scrim, which I cannot blame them for, but I personally gave up on it. I did not want to play until I received solid proof about everything.
After I got kicked, I went on to my ex-teammate, TheRoyalKanin and asked him "What did our manager tell you when he told you to leave the team?" and he said "You guys decided
to kick me". I was literally so mad, because I was never asked about replacing him to begin with, I am pretty sure nobody even decided to kick him, the manager just did it anyway on his own terms. TheRoyalKanin was also expecting contracts just as much as I was and I am grateful he was supporting me everytime I asked about them.
After all this I also told an EBL admin about this, about my story regarding this team, and I was given no response, I was left in the dark. It's not the admin's fault, but I would have really apreciated a response regarding this situation... Esports is unfair sometimes and all we can do is deal with it.
In the end I don't want anyone to tell me "it was an obvious scam" or whatever, I did this by my own decision and I am glad I got out of this before it was TOO late.Regretably I really needed that money, my manager knew about my condition and the fact that I need to transition and all he did was abuse that for his own gain.
I want everyone who reads this, if you want to go pro, remember, you as a player you decide your own worth, if you deserve a contract, then fight for it, because noone else will and don't let people scam you and get away with it. You deserve better as a player, paid or not paid.
As of today I am once again free agent, you can find more information in my pinned tweet if you like.
Thanks for reading.