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Link to the original newspost on SETT.fi (Finnish eSports site)
http://sett.fi/?q=uutinen/virus-gaming-velkaa-suomalaisille-pelaajille
Santeri "Naama" Lahtinen has revealed to sett.fi that his old organisation Virus Gaming has not paid his last salaries, even though he had a contract. The teams manager Kevin "Skyboot" besson has avoided talking about this matter with him. Naama was also given some intel components, which skyboot claims naama has stolen. In reality Naama just refused to return the components until he would have received his salaries. In the end though, he was directly approached by intel and he had to return the components. Naama also mentions other problems regarding the french organisation Virus Gaming.
Apparently there are huge intern communication problems, false promises as well. For example hotel fees in HomeStorycup and denmark Naama had to pay himself, even though the manager had promised that everything was okay.
There are also some controversial things about the sponsors going on. The managers tell that there is a private sponsor who pays for all fees, and then randomly a bit later there is a huge company (Louvre hotels, intel). Although nobody knows about the organisations background for sure.
According to Naama the poor organisation affected his motivation greatly (A reason to his poor performances lately?). He had to organize alot of things himself, and you could never be sure about the promises the organisation made. Also there were huge issues regarding salaries and other expenses. Naama also states, that he is training and improving his play in his new organisation Fightline, which he is happy in. Even though he gets no salary he says its better than Virus.
SETT.fi also states they didnt get a hold of the manager Kevin "Skyboot" Besson for any statements, and it's also common knowledge that Virus owes money to other finnish players as well.
Ps. Sorry for the english, I wrote this in a haste and its a rough translation only. There might be something that wasnt translated 100% correctly, and if there any huge errors some other finnish guys can correct, please post 
Discuss!
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Doesn't surprise me one bit. Always had a strange image of Virus. They owe some money to Satiini too.
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What is the sourcematerial like in credibility.
never seen the site before is it trustworthy?
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Looks like, if they don't fix this, the team might be finnish(ed)
I don't know much about Virus as a team, only that Satiini BM'ed goody like an asshole one time. Also that the guy that won the tournament drumheck or whatever in winter was on it, and that the deciding map of the drumheck series was on Delta Quadrant.
So yeah, i'll have to be enlightened before I can make any real comment.
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atleast most of these problems come from small teams and organisations, which i think indicates that theres not big problems in e-sports as a whole.. its a shame though that players and teams have to be so carefull and cant trust each other
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On September 20 2011 18:20 marttorn wrote:
Looks like, if they don't fix this, the team might be finnish(ed)
I don't know much about Virus as a team, only that Satiini BM'ed goody like an asshole one time. Also that the guy that won the tournament drumheck or whatever in winter was on it, and that the deciding map of the drumheck series was on Delta Quadrant.
So yeah, i'll have to be enlightened before I can make any real comment.
Haha i see what you did there...
as for the rest of the team & news, &c, i'm not terribly well filled in on the team and what exactly they've done, but this is sounding shady as hell.
It seems like we can't go a week without hearing how one team or another is on shakey terms and barely has sponsorship / isn't paying players &c &c. I'd just like to go a week without sc2 drama ;_;
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Yay, more drama! -.-
I hope Naama that the situation will be solved or that he switches to another team which gives him some motivation again and values his skill.
It sucks when teams don't stick to the contracts (and sucks when players don't stick to the contracts).
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On September 20 2011 18:20 Pigge wrote:
What is the sourcematerial like in credibility.
never seen the site before is it trustworthy?
yeah, its the mecca of finnish esports. They cover most live events in Finland etc. They are definititely trustworthy.
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On September 20 2011 18:20 Pigge wrote:
What is the sourcematerial like in credibility.
never seen the site before is it trustworthy?
Its one of those news sites for e-sports that actually exists in Finland. They are also doing stuff with Assembly LAN and covering most of the live events here afaik. Everything said so far are from Naama (and Satiini) only.
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i hope we dont start seeing a pattern of unprofessional behaviour coming from certain teams, it's potentially *cough* killing e-sports *cough*.
on a serious note, it ends up giving a poor impression of the industry that is e-sports and i sincerely hope that it's an isolated incident, but what with this and the whole stephano thing i feel like we are seeing some weird shiz.
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That sucks, I hope this gets sorted out soon.
Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought of the Code S Virus when reading the thread title.
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Looks like Naama should have stayed with mousesports, even tho he would have been kicked out by now. Still this decission looks even worse now, after this got released.
Now he gets no salary at all, tho most GM League players get at least something.
Well played, Naama.
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This is pretty standard for esports, there is no way to enforce things.
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On September 20 2011 18:20 Pigge wrote:
What is the sourcematerial like in credibility.
never seen the site before is it trustworthy?
The source itself is naama and site is finnish esport news site.
I heard virus offers extremely high salaries to many not so good players like ~700-800€/month who never wins anything
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I wonder if Elfi had problems with them as well or did Team Acer just do a better offer for him.. I've heard alot of shady things about this team but i'll leave them out of this discussion because I don't know whats true and what is not. But definitily, there is something wrong with this team
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On September 20 2011 18:27 FreshVegetables wrote:
I wonder if Elfi had problems with them as well or did Team Acer just do a better offer for him.. I've heard alot of shady things about this team but i'll leave them out of this discussion because I don't know whats true and what is not. But definitily, there is something wrong with this team
Elfi had communication problems at least. Who knows if they owe him some money too.
"Lack of communication was the biggest reason I decided to leave Virus. I couldn't get any info about their sponsors even after asking about them several times. The last straw was when I was booking flights to the IEM tournaments. I helped to book the flights myself, but no one from the organization did anything or confirmed that I could go. Right now I don't have any new org in mind, though I've had a few teams to contact me already. We'll see how it goes from here."
Source
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im definitely gonna withhold judgment until we get a statement from the team, better not blow anything out of proportion before both sides are represented.
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Naama has already said he regrets leaving mousesports but is certain that they won't take him back after he left "like that".
If I remember correctly, Darkforce mentioned in the German scenecast that Virus tried to contract him as a player while they were unaware they owed him money from a tournament they organized long before... (don't know if that's resolved yet)
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Lot's of trouble regarding french teams lately... <.<
Anyways, hope this get sorted out. Making it public is certainly a way to get the case rolling again after one of the parties stopped moving.
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France, ruining E-sports since 2011.
User was warned for this post
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Virus was all prepared to pick up a HoN team and then suddenly backed out. Something fishy going on there.
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we probably shouldnt put any weight on the fact that it's french, the thread will derail much like the other thread about the stephano ordeal.
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Excited to see how Virus will fund their CS:S team going to ESWC..
.. or maybe that's how they don't have any money to pay their other teams and players :o
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That really sucks for Naama. I was wondering what happened to him.  Hope he gets his salary
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Let this be a lesson to all new and unexperienced players pursuing to be a progamer. When an unknown or new organisation/team comes and offers you a deal that is almost good to be true, you can be almost certain that it's all bs.
I feel sorry for Naama though and all other players that were involved with Virus.
I don't think they'll be seeing their salaries etc ever.
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Absolutely every team i left in like 3-4 years - owed me some money, from pretty small sum with mouz-es which i even didn't request from them to return to me up to pretty big sum from ESC which me and W-Ra tried to return during like 1 year but without any success. That's cybersport Naama, so you better forget about this stuff and just move forward.
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Canada1637 Posts
On September 20 2011 19:28 Strelok wrote:
Absolutely every team i left in like 3-4 years - owed me some money, from pretty small sum with mouz-es which i even didn't request from them to return to me up to pretty big sum from ESC which me and W-Ra tried to return during like 1 year but without any success. That's cybersport Naama, so you better forget about this stuff and just move forward.
Not how it should be .
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Saw it coming really, Virus had like 15 players and no real sponsors. It was obvious they would run out of money.
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How French of them
User was warned for this post
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Might want to change the thread title to Virus gaming because I was thinking this had to do with ST_Virus somehow.
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so basically france cant into esports? (Mill. / Virus)
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Lets get all retarded and make another shitfest of a thread.
woops, started already
On September 20 2011 18:46 falafelnr1 wrote:
France, ruining E-sports since 2011.
On September 20 2011 19:38 gogogadgetflow wrote:
How French of them
User was warned for this post
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Virus was just simply a horrible team with an totally untrustworthy head manager, if you all just knew the things I do about the team. :D
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On September 20 2011 22:09 Satiini wrote:
Virus was just simply a horrible team with an totally untrustworthy head manager, if you all just knew the things I do about the team. :D
Why don't you tell us then ?
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
On September 20 2011 22:11 Sqq wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 22:09 Satiini wrote:
Virus was just simply a horrible team with an totally untrustworthy head manager, if you all just knew the things I do about the team. :D Why don't you tell us then ?
They'll probably deny everything and sue him for defamation. Why risk it?
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Too long to explain, no risk of a sue or anything like that. Because even my contract was only a A4 long one page piece of paper with no dates even.
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
On September 20 2011 22:14 Satiini wrote:
Too long to explain, no risk of a sue or anything like that. Because even my contract was only a A4 long one page piece of paper with no dates even.
LOL...... It would be nice if you could just sum up what disappointed you the most into some bullet points. It'll give more insight to how Virus runs things and whether Naama's complaints are valid.
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I never understood why Naama would leave mouz, one of the biggest, most trustworthy eSports organizations for a clan like Virus. At the time he switched over Virus had a homepage that looked like a 14 year old made it, they had a very very big rooster and not big sponsor behind them. All my common sense tells me that it is very likely that such an organization will not be able to fund such a team. So, if he was not forced out of mouz, which he wasn't if you trust the official statements, then it was a naive step to take.
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The saddest thing is that I'm not that surprised :<
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the virus contracts are in such poorly worded english they made more sense google translating the horrendous english into french then back to english....
surprised he lasted this long dealing with that skyboot guy who seems a fair bit.... special i guess i could say ;o
gl to the players tho
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On September 20 2011 22:18 Telcontar wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 22:14 Satiini wrote:
Too long to explain, no risk of a sue or anything like that. Because even my contract was only a A4 long one page piece of paper with no dates even. LOL...... It would be nice if you could just sum up what disappointed you the most into some bullet points. It'll give more insight to how Virus runs things and whether Naama's complaints are valid.
Everything naama said is valid, if I was going take a bet I would say that team will not last long, its only a matter of time.
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
On September 20 2011 22:26 Satiini wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 22:18 Telcontar wrote:On September 20 2011 22:14 Satiini wrote:
Too long to explain, no risk of a sue or anything like that. Because even my contract was only a A4 long one page piece of paper with no dates even. LOL...... It would be nice if you could just sum up what disappointed you the most into some bullet points. It'll give more insight to how Virus runs things and whether Naama's complaints are valid. Everything naama said is valid, if I was going take a bet I would say that team will not last long, its only a matter of time.
I guess that'll just have to do. Thanks. I hope Naama can at least get some of his money back though it might be next to impossible.
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FreshVegetables didnt translate one part where Manager was sometimes paying with his poker wins, maybe manager is having gambling problem and stealing some money from organisation. (just guessing based on finnish version of the article)
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Virus has some pretty solid talent but their managers seem to lack a lot when it comes to ethics.
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When I went to homestory cup #2 Virus said they had "booked and paid" a hotel but when I arrived there I found out that it was not paid :D It was nice to sleep on the floor of the room of Tod and Rotterdam when I had only 50e cash with me.
2-3 weeks after I left I said that I refuse to give the Intel hardwares back until I have received the salary that they owe me (it was already 1 month late, like every month) so the main manager raged and threatened me of Intel sueing me etc etc and said they will never pay it. I agreed to give the intel hardwares back when intel connected me via Email and sent an ups to get the stuff.
Every month they gave 20 different dates when salary is going to come :DDD "I go to bank tomorrow morning" "we send it on wednesday" "it comes in 5 days" "today bank close french holiday" .
When I joined virus I knew it would end pretty soon cos it was a horrible organisation, I just did it for the money. But it was pretty stupid since I basically lost all of my motivation to practice while I was in Virus but who cares its only life. I feel sorry for every player in Virus and even for some managers too, some of them were nice, dont get me wrong, e.g. shiba, illu, soonmaniac etc but the Main owner/main manager of the team was a scumbag.
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On September 21 2011 00:02 naama- wrote:
When I went to homestory cup #2 Virus said they had "booked and paid" a hotel but when I arrived there I found out that it was not paid :D It was nice to sleep on the floor of the room of Tod and Rotterdam when I had only 50e cash with me.
2-3 weeks after I left I said that I refuse to give the Intel hardwares back until I have received the salary that they owe me (it was already 1 month late, like every month) so the main manager raged and threatened me of Intel sueing me etc etc and said they will never pay it. I agreed to give the intel hardwares back when intel connected me via Email and sent an ups to get the stuff.
Every month they gave 20 different dates when salary is going to come :DDD "I go to bank tomorrow morning" "we send it on wednesday" "it comes in 5 days" "today bank close french holiday" .
When I joined virus I knew it would end pretty soon cos it was a horrible organisation, I just did it for the money. But it was pretty stupid since I basically lost all of my motivation to practice while I was in Virus but who cares its only life. I feel sorry for every player in Virus and even for some managers too, some of them were nice, dont get me wrong, e.g. shiba, illu, soonmaniac etc but the Main owner/main manager of the team was a scumbag.
Sorry to hear that bud .
Some organisations really take the piss
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First the huge Millenium failure and now all this is coming out. Seriously, these players need to stay away from French teams, there is no accountability and it seems they can just do whatever they want with no repercussions.
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France266 Posts
It's not a suprise for anyone who follow the French scene. Not only the sponsors doesn't give money to the team, but Virus used to display Red Bull as a sponsor, which was proven false. aAa even made an article which set a huge controversy among the French scene.
I'm happy that you guys (former Virus players) stepped forward though, it might prevent other players to make the mistake of signing with them.
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French scene provides so much drama, at least we're on top in one domain!
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On September 20 2011 18:25 chrisolo wrote:
Looks like Naama should have stayed with mousesports, even tho he would have been kicked out by now. Still this decission looks even worse now, after this got released.
Now he gets no salary at all, tho most GM League players get at least something.
Well played, Naama.
I agree he should have stayed with Mouz esports. However why would he have been kicked out by now?
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On September 21 2011 00:02 naama- wrote:
naama quote
Why did you leave Mouz in the first place dude? Was it to be with Satiini in virus?
EDIT: The reason I say this is because Mouz has a fairly solid team IMO right now.
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Atleast they brought this public so people know to avoid Virus :<
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I don't understand how managers and people can fall short of paying the basics of a contract ._.
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Man, hearing about this stuff really sucks. I'm just glad that only small teams seem to have these issue's (Usually, poor coL). Hopefully everything gets sorted out. Though I doubt that will happen. Most likely Virus will just melt away...
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On September 20 2011 19:28 Strelok wrote:
Absolutely every team i left in like 3-4 years - owed me some money, from pretty small sum with mouz-es which i even didn't request from them to return to me up to pretty big sum from ESC which me and W-Ra tried to return during like 1 year but without any success. That's cybersport Naama, so you better forget about this stuff and just move forward.
Well this is thoroughly depressing...
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On September 21 2011 00:56 AzurewinD wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 19:28 Strelok wrote:
Absolutely every team i left in like 3-4 years - owed me some money, from pretty small sum with mouz-es which i even didn't request from them to return to me up to pretty big sum from ESC which me and W-Ra tried to return during like 1 year but without any success. That's cybersport Naama, so you better forget about this stuff and just move forward. Well this is thoroughly depressing...
Even if they should just let it go, it should be made apparent that these things aren't entirely acceptable.
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On September 21 2011 00:42 Nizzy wrote:Why did you leave Mouz in the first place dude? Was it to be with Satiini in virus? EDIT: The reason I say this is because Mouz has a fairly solid team IMO right now.
As he said, it was because of the money they offered him.
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Haha, I thought this was in reference to the player Virus for a moment. Was like "Hm? Did he lose a bet or something?".
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Virus still owes me like 100 or 150€ for an invite tourney they held last year (which i won). i approached skyboot like 15-20 times on skype and he just ignored me after a while (at first i said he will look into it) so this is no surprise to me
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I don't want a western KeSPA or anything, but a player association/union would be really good to have..
It's sad that players get shit on like this
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I saw somewhere Moman joined virus ? I really hope it wasnt true, sucha nice guy deserves much better than Virus-Hell.
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Sigh, always questioned Naama's decision to leave MouseSports
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On September 21 2011 01:09 ELA wrote:
I don't want a western KeSPA or anything, but a player association/union would be really good to have..
It's sad that players get shit on like this
A player union might have a hard time to do stuff in the foreign scene because of the diversity in countries, laws and such. But it might be an idea to start a database with all the proven wrongdoings by teams to help players in making better decisions when they are approach by or looking for a team. For the long term of eSports it would be good to get rid of the bad apples.
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I hung out with Naama a little at MLG Dallas 2010, when he was still on Virus. They sent him to Dallas alone and he seemed miserable the whole time. It was pretty clear that it was not a good team for him.
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So a team that has no sponsor (and is lying) and only lives through one man's money didnt payed salaries.
Wow, that wasnt expected at all...
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I was really surprised that Naama left Mouz to join Virus in the first place.
Virus still has players like Moman in their ranks, wonder how this affects them...
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On September 21 2011 01:07 DarKFoRcE wrote:Virus still owes me like 100 or 150€ for an invite tourney they held last year (which i won). i approached skyboot like 15-20 times on skype and he just ignored me after a while (at first i said he will look into it) so this is no surprise to me
I waited for your statement already, I remember how you mentioned Virus owing you money in one of the SC2pro casts =)
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I never understood why Naama left mouz for virus in the first place tbh :/
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On September 21 2011 02:17 Aterons_toss wrote:
I never understood why Naama left mouz for virus in the first place tbh :/
I was said already several times, he left cuz of the money, in Finland living isnt so cheap and I can see Finns to choose the team wich is paying most, with salary from the team and finnish support from goverment could reach about same ammount of the money what you get from minum salary job at some market.
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On September 21 2011 00:02 naama- wrote:
"who cares its only life."
Sigged.
I hope you find a place your content with and has people in it who can truly support you.
Good luck in the future
On September 21 2011 01:07 DarKFoRcE wrote:Virus still owes me like 100 or 150€ for an invite tourney they held last year (which i won). i approached skyboot like 15-20 times on skype and he just ignored me after a while (at first i said he will look into it) so this is no surprise to me
lol pathetic. invite players, dont pay winnings.
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On September 21 2011 03:04 Roynalf wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2011 02:17 Aterons_toss wrote:
I never understood why Naama left mouz for virus in the first place tbh :/ I was said already several times, he left cuz of the money, in Finland living isnt so cheap and I can see Finns to choose the team wich is paying most, with salary from the team and finnish support from goverment could reach about same ammount of the money what you get from minum salary job at some market.
I don't think it matters where you live - you're always most interested in deal that pays the best. HuK currently lives in Korea and I don't think he had almost any expenses while living in ogs-TL house, yet there was certain number that made it unevitable to switch teams. I believe almost all team switches have something to do with money or other benefits (trips to events and such).
It's pretty funny though how virus was able to pay better salary than mouz to begin with. I guess they REALLY couldn't though, seeing all the problems now. Specially since they never had any real superstars, the supposed salaries seemed too high for the market value of the players.
Unfortunately "too good to be true" seems accurate for Virus.
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Did anyone else read the title and think this thread was about ST_Virus? > _ >
With that said its really lame that they owe money. Hope the finish players get paid.
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Title is a little ambiguous, was wondering why StarTale Virus would owe money to Finnish players.
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Well you won't see anyone from France defending Virus, for the simple reason that everyone in France that follow e sports know about Virus and theur fake sponsor, fake money, fake everything. Players really need to be careful with teams like that
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virus is and will be never trustable...thats nothing new
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when you are in a team and not getting paid and that is preferred over a team that do pay their players, although not regularly, you know it's bad. Virus is a bad team.
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thank god sGty didnt sign the contract from virus gaming...
well that clearly sucks for Naama, but i think his perfomance wasnt (or not only) bad because of this drama, i heard he lacked training after his dreamhack win...
well since he was and still is a great player i only whish him the best!
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Did anyone think he was talking about ST_Virus? I sure did
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Just fyi everyone in France knows Virus is a joke team. We all knew how it was going to end when they recruted all those top players from Finland. Skyboot (the main admin) is extremely weird and has lied many many times about how Virus gets their money. They claim they are sponsored by companies but nobody knows which and if it is even true. They also claimed that the majority of the money was coming from poker players (?). Finally Naama, Satiini, Elfi left the team because they realized how much of a joke this team is. Their manager (Zoultx who is also finish) left way before them when he discovered the whole thing.
Other interesting information : Virus also has a lot of french players like ten or more, nobody knows how they can handle/sponsor them.
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french laws are fucked up. period.
edit: old eswc, virus, and M all take advantage of these fucked up laws to try and detract from this new and up-and-coming industry we all cherish. they would be 'killing ESPORTS' except we're still rocking the scene pretty hard
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There was a lot of Drama in HoN Competitive Forums about sGty tagging up as Virus and discarded it later with massive Drama towards Virus eSports involved.
Not surprised at all that they dont step up!
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On September 21 2011 07:44 nath wrote:french laws are fucked up. period. edit: old eswc, virus, and M all take advantage of these fucked up laws to try and detract from this new and up-and-coming industry we all cherish. they would be 'killing ESPORTS' except we're still rocking the scene pretty hard
what does millenium and french laws have anything do with this situation ?
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Wow, this really sucks for Naama. He never should have left Mouz though.
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I was thinking the Korean player for a sec.. haha interesting stuff though.
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On September 21 2011 07:55 hrvoje07 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2011 07:44 nath wrote:french laws are fucked up. period. edit: old eswc, virus, and M all take advantage of these fucked up laws to try and detract from this new and up-and-coming industry we all cherish. they would be 'killing ESPORTS' except we're still rocking the scene pretty hard what does millenium and french laws have anything do with this situation ?
He's not talking about this situation. He's talking about the French-involved situations.
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About naama leaving mouz: Naama got sick salary from virus and most of it got paid so i think it was worth it and there are some players in Virus at who gets 10 times the salary they should get, tho dunno if they are getting paid anymore.
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Virus may be a joke, and i think they are, but there's simple not enough money in "e-sports". Every player in the Top 100 in Europe (it's probably the same thing in America) feels entitled to get paid to play. Sadly, all the clans and structures decided to jump into the e-sport "hype" bandwagon, because they were too scared of losing all their players to more ambitious (read: delusional) investors. Wages augmented a lot, while the sponsors money augmented just a little.
Think about this, Stephano got offered a CDD official contract, that means he's getting at least 1100 euros. For Millenium, with the charges of a real contact, he costs them 2000 euros. An old manager from Virus said that the better finnish player (Naama, Satiini maybe?) had a 1000 euros/month agreement. So, being super-conservative, a TOP20 EU player must win, in average, something like 1000 euros; A TOP50 to Top20 something like 500 and the TOP 100 to Top50 like 200 euros, + goodies for all of them. That's at least 45.000 euros per month in salaries. Probably, it's way more than that. Do you really believe there's so much money, now, in SC2?
There's a lot to blame to Virus, but Kévin (lol, how could you trust someone called Kévin) is not a bad guy, he's just a delusional speculator trying to hit it big thanks to SC2. It seems he's paying the salaries of his team with Poker gains, waiting for a huge sponsoring contract... instead, he's getting ruined.
The bubble just needs to burst.
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Sad story. All the best to Naama, would love to see more of him.
Hey Naama, maybe start streaming again and gain some money from the ads. We'd love to help you out.
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french e-sports gaining some bad rep recently...
first millenium/stephano situation now this.
hope it all gets sorted out, else it'll seem like the entire e-sports scene is not as credible as before.
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EPT
