Monte’s CEO on the conflict with former CS players: “The guys signed contracts with Luminosity even before the Major.”
Monte CEO Dmitry Vovk discussed the conflict with former players from the Counter-Strike 2 roster—who moved to Luminosity Gaming—in a video on the organization’s YouTube channel.
On the situation with the players
I first sensed something was off two days after the final match at the Major. Denis [Referring to Monte’s head of esports, Denis Yashniev. — Ed.] called me and said they were trying to pull a major scam on us. Another half-hour or hour passed, and Denis called again to say they’d already scammed us. It turned out that the guys had signed contracts with Luminosity even before the Major. And this despite the fact that we’d been negotiating contract extensions for over a month. Let’s go over exactly which players these were. afro is the main rat. Next up are Bymas and AZUWU. Well, Rainwaker too, probably, but Rainwaker was under contract. The idea was to simply buy him as an addition to someone else so we’d have a core. To steal points.
On Monte’s Mistake
We were just too nice to them. We should’ve just told the guys: “Look, guys, either you sign the contract back in May, or you’re not going to the Major, or the CCT—you’re not going anywhere.” Well, that’s how it’s done; that’s how it should be done; that’s how big organizations do it. If you don’t want to, if you’re dragging your feet on the contract and signing it, well, something’s clearly wrong. So either you fail, or you sign. You can always find a replacement at a Major. That’s our main mistake. <...> Now it’ll be slavery, now it’ll be slavery. Now players won’t go to any major tournament without signing a new contract.
On the influence of agents
Some insiders who’re giving us tips are actually leaking info somewhere. Turns out these rats’ agents are rats too. They were sort of negotiating with us, but in reality there was no need to negotiate because everything had already been signed. They were just lying right to our faces. And the agents had a chat group. The three agents had a shared chat group. ...> The agents fed a bunch of nonsense to a fool like Bymas, who didn’t understand a thing. They told him, “Bro, three more weeks and you’re getting kicked out, or three weeks and the team shuts down. You get it—you gotta sign.” AZUWU just said, “Bro, you have to sign here, or you’ll be left without a computer.” He was like, “Bro, I want to play Counter-Strike.” So he signed. As for afro—he’s a real rat; he knew exactly what he was doing. He’s French.
Earlier, former Monte player Aurimas “Bymas” Pipiras accused the organization of failing to pay tens of thousands of dollars in salaries and prize money. Bymas’s former teammates, Oskar “AZUWU” Bell and Alex “Rainwaker” Petrov, confirmed his claims about delayed payments.
Photo by Dmitry Vovk.
