Randy · @Chapapi14
29th Jul 2021 from TwitLonger
Regarding: Gaia scamming
As many of you know there have been a lot of internal struggles with the team lately and our performance has not been the best towards the end of the split. This is because the whole team was never paid by Stefano (aka Uncle Spud) , the team owner of Gaia esports. Our contracts were all breached, none of the players except for myself got paid and I was only paid for my first month of work. This has caused incredible stress on the team and forced many of us to find work in other ways. I currently provide for my mother and girlfriend. More importantly my girlfriend is pregnant and we are expecting in November so I had no choice but to find other means of making money so that we can move out and provide for our child. This led to many of our scrims being cancelled since I had to pick up coaching orders to make ends meet, resulting in a poor performance.We have been meaning to announce this pregnancy but we have both been very stressed out and have not found a good moment to announce this joy in our life and I’m sorry we couldn’t announce it better but I need to explain my situation. I’m going to detail how this owner violated my contract multiple times, disrespected me, fired almost all of our staff including coaches and analysts while also flexing his 100k paypal account on the internet. Relevant screenshots will be linked under each section.
Joining Gaia:
I had multiple offers going into the summer split including one which was offering a better salary than Gaia esports but I turned them down in favor of a little bit less salary and a more favorable lineup. When I was first contacted by Gaia they said that payment would be issued on the 15th of July and the 15th of August. However I only agreed to join the team if I could be paid on the first of each working month (June, July) and this was stated in my contract. This was because I had financial obligations and because I had received some negative dms about the org however, I had a talk with my teammates, staff, and owner and they assured me that they were hard working people that wanted to make this lineup work and that I would get paid. Although I would later find out that the owner is a terrible person and unreliable, I trusted my teammates and the staff. I want to point out that it is not their fault at all that we did not get paid and they were amazing teammates but I thought that players of this caliber wouldn’t join a scam org but ultimately none of us knew that our contracts would be broken and that we would not get paid.
Threatening to not pay my salary unless I made profitable content for him:
As stated earlier my contract stated that I would get paid on the first of every month. Despite this the owner still sent the payment late, which I was very lenient on and gave him time to come up with the salary. He sent half of the payment on the first of June and the second half he said he would pay at the end of the week of the first. He asked me if he could shift the second payment to the next month but I did not agree to this because I came in this team with expectations of getting paid on the 1st as stated in my contract (and I didn’t trust him). His response was that I would not get paid until I started making profitable videos for him in the form of “Master Classes” where I would make coaching videos that people could pay to view. We had talked about this master class project on the side but it was never in my contract that I had to do these classes to get paid. He said he would set up a separate contract for these Master Classes where I would get paid a certain amount per video which he never sent yet kept withholding my salary. He said that all of the players had it in their initial contracts to make these videos in order to get paid which is just a flat out obnoxious lie. Eventually I tried to get this project going for the sake of my salary but whenever I would ask him questions about how he wanted this project done he would pretty much ghost me, yet would constantly say later on that I showed no interest in helping him with these classes. He pretty much expected me to do all of the planning and organizing for this project just for him to do nothing but profit off of my work. I find it insane that I can’t even focus on scrimming, soloq, official games and getting to EUM because I have to plan, organize, film and upload this content for him. He wanted 3 classes 45-60 minutes each btw. He kept holding these classes over my salary until PGNATs started putting pressure on him to pay my salary only then did he send me the second half of my first month’s salary 20 days later. July comes around and of course I did not get paid again, while I sent him 5 paragraphs for what I had in mind for the structure of these coaching videos. He ghosted me about this project then continued to withhold my salary and call me lazy towards other players and that I didn’t show any interest or initiative for making these master classes.
Proof: Some of the recent screenshots Say “Stefano” he just adjusted his name and those screens are recent. Uncle spud / Stefano are the same.
https://imgur.com/lBQT931
https://imgur.com/b93indL
https://imgur.com/nT72NRW
https://imgur.com/a/XW5XK2u
https://imgur.com/oLJwP8p
https://imgur.com/mNVORdG
https://imgur.com/32IrPaM
https://imgur.com/yB5mRop
https://imgur.com/wyHIE1Y
https://imgur.com/5UTj3bu
https://imgur.com/C3zFWxU
https://imgur.com/3W2WBot
Firing staff and flexing his wealth: https://imgur.com/kTh24Wc
During the course of our split Stefano pretty much fired any and all staff that was asking for their compensation this included our head coach, assistant coach, analyst, social media manager, and two player managers. Mind you staff were getting paid much less than us, working overtime, and doing jobs they weren’t hired for to make up for the constant firing of other staff members. Stefano took to twitter to post his €100,000 paypal account and flexing that there were no money issues in Gaia all while firing staff and not paying players.
PGNATS:
Although PGNATS put pressure on Stefano to pay me my second payment, not much else has been done regarding this situation. I have sent many emails and I don’t know what else I can do. They say they are conducting an investigation and I believe they are working with one of my teammates agents. I had hopes that they would be able to put more pressure on Stefano to pay the team and uphold his contract in their league but I don’t know how Italian laws go or what power they have. If anyone knows a riot representative or anyone that could potentially help in regards to this situation please let me know. I know riot was able to help NIP players during their similar scandal and I hope something can be done here.
Lastly I just wanted to say thank you to my teammates and the staff that continued to help us despite how Stefano treated them. My teammates are amazing players and people and despite all of this I’m glad I met them and got to play with them, they are all incredibly talented and I hope they get paid somehow. Lastly, thank you to anyone that supported our run, it means a lot and thank you for believing in us. I believe if the circumstances were better we could have had a real chance at making EUM and representing Italy