One of the leading eSports organizations, Virtus.pro, have posted a statement with which they threaten to boycott most of the events in the coming year.
The Virtus.pro CEO, Anton 'sneg' Cherepennikov states in an official blogpost "[...] that tournaments owe organizers huge amounts of money. Particularly, I am talking about six digit numbers in USD. I'm done with investing in trips to tournaments organized by scammers. In 2015 all rosters of Virtus.pro will ignore leagues or tournaments that owe us money until these debts are payed out. " Sneg does however point out that his team will not pull out of ongoing tournaments as it would be "[...] disrespectful towards the audience that bought tickets or just waits for our performance on streams."
Sneg also reacts to a recent debate sparked by Ukrainian caster Vitali 'v1lat' Volochai, who voiced his opinion about in-game tickets on twitter, saying that most people focused solely on cosmetic items. Sneg response reads: "[...] Virtus.Pro will probably not participate in any CIS league because their organizers are the biggest debtors and scammers. V1lat is not paying anything for a few month already and simultaneously has the insolence to cry in Twitter that people stopped buying his tickets." He apologizes later on after having talked to v1lat personally.
Sneg mentions a very interesting thing as well, something he already pointed out in a previous blogpost, a translation of which can be found here. According to him, Virtus.pro is "[...] going to ignore all tournaments that won't sign contracts with teams. The contract that I'm referring to should include all participation details, payment schedule and fines for breaking the contract." This is something that is not practiced by most organizers just yet, but may be a common thing to look out for.
The blogpost has been updated at this point and it lists actual tournaments that still owe Virtus.pro money. These organizations are StarLadder, ESEA, Excellent Moscow Cup, Techlabs, Copenhagen Games and i-League.
Source: Virtus.pro on Facebook
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