Danil Reshetnikov · @Diamondprox_LoL
14th Dec 2022 from TwitLonger
How @BiFrost scammed me for 6 months of salary in @NLClol . ❤️+🔁 please!
I got signed by BiFrost on 23d of May to play in NLC for the salary I clearly stated was the bare minimum needed to support my family. They knew at the time that I lived in Russia and that it could make transferring money harder.
For the first 2 months I've seen zero effort from the org to find out which options to pay me will work out.
Only after we lost in play-offs and I got free time to constantly poke them about that matter, they started to "act".
At first I proposed them a bank that was fully connected to SWIFT, but they said that their bank doesn't allow payments to it. Meanwhile my friends who also lived in Russia and played for Vanir (org from Norway too) recieved their salaries to the same bank.
It was already a September, so 3+ months without pay. Things didn't accelerate much. I proposed many other options such as paying in Crypto, paying for my traveling expenses to either get bank account somewhere else, or get paid in-person. It took them a lot of time to give answers to those options, but it was still a "no" to everything.
Organisation didn't provide assistance to me in any way in this situation, even though I've already worked for 4 months with no pay and had some very important bills stacked. Meanwhile they also pressured me to start streaming for them, though contract clearly stated it was "voluntary" activity and they were the ones choosing to play Aurora Open without me at the time. As a goodwill gesture I obliged and streamed for them for a few months even if sometimes it meant cancelling my plans.
Somewhere in October I found an option to transfer money through my friend from another country. They agreed to an option, but said that they can't pre-pay last 21 days of November because of sponsor money etc. So I agreed to wait 'till contract expires to recieve the full-pay and to not bother my friend multiple times.
On 22nd of November I sent an invoice as was required by BiFrost. By the end of that week they said "the payment got adviced and will be proceeded starting Monday", so on 28th.
Then I received no info on Monday (I told them specifically that I needed a proof of payment to be sent to me) and on 30th I received a message from their CEO which all of this talks have been with that he is leaving the org and "will provide everyone with a new POC of the people in charge within today or tomorrow.".
I must also add that on 28th of November I received information from my former teammate that none of the players were paid for the last 3 months.
Only on the 3d of December I recieved an e-mail of someone, dont even know who. Sent a question regarding the payment immediately. Didn't get any reply for 2 more days, so feeling something very sketchy I went to Riot and NLC to ask for help dealing with this situation.
On 6th of December I (and my teammates) received this masterpiece:
https://imgur.com/a/kpMm4fb
Some other details and how my teammates got scammed as well can be found in the post of our coach:
twitlonger.com/show/n_1ss6sh7
So basically they fucked with me for months, wasting my time, making me go in-debt coz of stacked bills instead of looking for some other income, to just scam like that in the end (while also knowing well that they dont have money to pay).
I'm so stressed from this whole situation for the past few months tbh and very afraid to join any LoL team in EUM/EMEA/whatever in the future. Especially since my closest e-sports bro Edward was hugely scammed in another EUM region this summer too.
It didnt matter what we signed, contract in this industry feels like a piece of toilet paper that org owner can wipe his ass with and suffer just loosing spot in whatever League he scammed his employees in.
By my calculations I provided BiFrost with 1000+ hours of work, plus whatever time I practiced for Aurora Cup. I'm not sure I want to work my ass off 12+ hr/day 7/7 for months again to get paid ZERO and betray my family by not supporting them.
I truly hope that Karma exists in this world and it will hurt badly when it will strike.
As for myself, I still love to work on LoL and I don't want to let the knowledge I accumulated over 10 years of pro-play to go to waste, but I will not join another org without many precautions now. And if orgs dont want to operate with those - I'll probably just keep streaming or find another job.
Anyway, thanks for reading and spread the word please, so maybe others won't suffer the same fate we did!