Ukrainian esports organization Windigo Gaming CEO Maxsym Badnarskyi announced that they have disbanded their Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team. The former CEO of fellow organization HellRaisers revealed that while the team had achieved a lot in the past year, his partners have decided to move away from CSGO. He has also accused World Electronic Sports Games (WESG) of withholding the organization’s prize pool earnings.
Windigo Gaming disbands CSGO roster
“We still didn’t get the prize money from WESG – deadline for transfer was on the 8th of October. They still didn’t reply, Alibaba representatives didn’t reply as well, [and] without such big cashflow money, we just can’t pay parts of prizes to players who are already part of other organizations,” Badnarskyi said in a Reddit post.
Windigo Gaming entered Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on October 31, 2017, and this announcement came exactly two years later. The Bulgarian roster was well known for its first-place finish at the most recent WESG event. However, Bednarskyi says that the organization hasn’t received the $500,000 in prize pool earnings from WESG, which is part of the reason for their exit.
He goes on to make a request of other organizations that competed at WESG, asking them to contact him on the status of their prize pool earnings. He claims this is to “solve the problem together” because players shouldn’t have to suffer, but it is likely the organization also has ownership over a percentage of that prize pool through player contracts.
Other missing prize pool earnings
Badnarskyi also claims that Windigo Gaming is missing prize pool earnings from Season 9 and 10 of the European ESL Pro League, along with Moche XL. The organization won $6,000 each during the two ESL Pro League seasons and $40,000 with their first-place finish at Moche XL Esports 2019.
Players Kamen “Bubble” Kostadinov, Yanko “blocker” Panov, Ali “hAdji” Haïnouss, Sabit “mirbit” Coktasar, and coach Aleksander “Shockwave” Netreba have become free agents. However, news about Valentin “poizon” Vasilev will be released next week, as an agreement has already been settled for him. It was rumored he would be joining North American esports organization Complexity Gaming after it benched Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan.
