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Vertical Gaming’s Rainbow Six Siege roster led by former world champion George ‘KingGeorge’ Kassa, has departed the organisation after payment disputes and accusations “non-stop lying” on the part of the organisations co-owner, Marvin Renkas.
In a video on Youtube, Kassa revealed that Renkas stopped paying the team after they challenged him over claims he’d gotten the team a gaming house, but had failed to deliver. The team had been looking at houses in Las Vegas, and had decided on a 5000 square foot house to house the team, and was promised that everything was taken care of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPzceoOLR-I
Due to correspondence Esports Pro has been shown this went back and forth with Renkas delaying repeatedly, before he asked the team to book tickets and come out to Las Vegas. With three team members having already bought tickets. This left the team struggling for practice, as the promised gaming house had left one of the players, known as Eclipse, without a home and forced him to move back to his parents.
The organisation has now been disbanded, with its only asset being the Rainbow Six Siege roster and a twitter account. The final sting comes from the end of Kassa’s video, when he reveals that Renkas was trying to sell the team’s roster slot, providing at least some motive for the financial shenanigans.
Speaking exclusively to Esports Pro, Kassa revealed that the first clue that something was up was when payments were late last month, but that the problem had already cost the team around $4000, in the run up to the LAN event at Gamescom, where he says the team is looking for a new organisation to bring them onboard, mentioning that he only wants to sign with an established outfit, or to get all of the money up front after the disaster they’ve had.
The team are currently not representing anyone, but will still be competing at the Gamescom LAN final, where they hope to find new representation.
This is yet another example of an organisation getting burnt by a bad contract, showing again the need for league owners to protect the players playing for them, or at least ensuring a minimum level of compliance to ensure the young athletes playing in their leagues can help them out.
To Ubisoft and ESL’s credit, Kassa says that they’ve been very good about supporting the team through the transition, but this is unfortunately becoming a common problem in esports, and it’s one that I’d like to see league and tournament operators take more steps to combat.
