MPKBK on Natus Vincere: “It’s gotten to the point where players aren’t even considering NAVI anymore.”

You know, sometimes all it takes is standing behind a team for just 20 minutes to realize they’re done for. I won’t go into details, but you walk up to the team between games and just know it’s over for them. Management can do something, try to do something, but it’s a lost cause. That’s how it goes. It happens that people get pushed out by replacements. It’s just that some people didn’t click; they couldn’t get along. <...>

To put it broadly, under the current VRS system, there will be a lot of stories like this—organizations closing down and new ones opening up. Everything depends too much on results—for example, quarterly results. If you’re spending as much money as Shoke does—even considering that Shoke has that kind of money—it’s simply not profitable to keep a team going for a year without results. You’ll fall off the map too quickly. In that regard, the partner leagues had an advantage: you can get in, and even if your team is struggling, you still get your viewership, you still get your tournaments, and you’ll most likely make it to a Major. There was stability for the business. Now, there’s no stability at all for the business.

We should have made these changes six months ago. Andryukha [Andrey “B1ad3” Gorodensky, head coach of Natus Vincere. — Ed.] is a pawn in this whole situation. As far as I understand, what’s the philosophy here? There are always two options when a tournament goes wrong. Either we make substitutions, or we sit down, agree on how we’re going to work things out now, guys, <...>. As I understand it, Andryukha has already given his team two chances to get their act together. And the problem is that they’re now hostages to their own decision—they don’t really have any players. From what I understand, they were very close to reaching an agreement with frozen midway through, when FaZe was having problems, but frozen himself didn’t want to. And now it’s gotten to the point where players aren’t even considering NAVI. They completely missed their chance to capitalize on the team’s title-winning reputation by bringing in substitutes. And now it really seems like no one wants to join them at all. We might even see a completely new NAVI, rebuilt from a group of very young players. The current roster clearly isn’t working.

There’s clearly some favoritism—I think I’m right about that. Probably, yes. Teams like ESL and BLAST because of the level of competition those two organizations provide. I mean, it’s just that sometimes people come to me who’ve already been spoiled by BLAST and ESL. They’re just shocked that, damn it, there are unregulated tables here, this isn’t here, that isn’t here—it’s just awful, absolutely awful. Like, “How did I end up here? What did I do to deserve this?” I mean, they’re so used to being pampered that I think that’s the main reason they’ll turn down even a million-dollar tournament—because the level of organization will be just a little worse. ...> PGL belongs in the same category as this trio in terms of how much people fawn over the teams. Plus, it’s risky. If you lose a tournament like this on the road to a Major, you could miss out on, say, the third stage—which is something you really don’t want to do. ...> It’s clear that it’s not just Tier 3 and Tier 2 that are suffering from this VRS system. Tier 1 is also at risk. ...> I think this is because of the schedule and, above all, because they’ve been spoiled by other events. They’re more interested in preparing for Bucharest, which will have a large audience. After all, they all love playing in front of a live crowd.