VALORANT: In VCL France, defections and disappointments
French and Original source :
Eclypsia.com (by. Corentin Phalip & Lucas Jacque)
Three teams — Sector One, Heet and beGenius — left the French Valorant league during the spring season, accumulating nearly €50,000 in unpaid bills to players. The league’s broadcaster, Freaks 4U, has also been hit by the late payments, to the point that the casters are threatening to suspend their activities.
After a gripping storyline leading up to the final between Mandatory, Adrien “ZeratoR” Nougaret’s team, and SBG’s mysterious Valorant Challengers France (VCL), Riot Games’ hexagonal FPS championship has been shaken up in recent weeks. Not only on the structural side, but also, as our investigation shows, on the production side, handled by the German company Freaks4U Gaming. The fuse was lit on 13th March by Quentin Delamarre, manager of the Valorant team at beGenius (BGN), who denounced his team in a statement published on Twitter.
After a few months together, late payments are frequent,” he said. […] In January, we’re talking about salaries paid on the 20th of the following month, with information given in dribs and drabs, with false excuses…”.
According to our various sources, a total of almost 11,300 euros was missing or overdue in mid-March.
In particular, Quentin Delamarre said in his message that, according to an external source, the Occitan club was “in judicial liquidation”. This means that BGN is leaving the VCL. The manager claimed that the management had lied about the club’s financial health, assuring that “beGenius’ lights are on and that there is no risk for the club”. The club even went so far as to organise salary negotiations with the players, despite the context.
“WE NEVER ENVISAGED A JUDICIAL LIQUIDATION”
Accusations that forced Nicolas “Tyxbo” Durrieu to react on Twitter the very next day to hastily confirm Valorant’s departure, admitting the structure’s errors regarding the delays in payment but denying the alleged economic difficulties.
“The reason for this departure is not financial, but can be explained by the reorientation of our activities,” the BGN operations director told Eclypsia, recalling that beGenius was also a consultancy, events and training agency named Flash.In.
“We have never considered liquidation,” he insists, noting that the club will announce its future in April and confirming that BGN will remain in Div2, the second tier of the French League of Legends, at least this summer. Our mistake was not being transparent,” Tyxbo admitted. We didn’t want to create doubts among the players and make them fear for the future of their team. We wanted to tell them when the decision was made.
However, Tyxbo insists that the decision had not been made at the time of the “revelations”. We were reluctant to leave,” he says. Internal discussions could still tip the balance in any direction, from immediate withdrawal from the VCL to an increase in Valorant’s budget. But these events accelerated our decision. The verdict was ratified “in haste”, the day after Quentin Delamarre’s message was published.
LACK OF SPONSORS
Despite BGN’s good financial health, Tyxbo admits that these financial issues remain a major factor in the final decision to leave the league. We don’t want to start a second division knowing how little profitability there is in the league,” he says. I contacted Arrost (Arthur Bandol, VCL project manager) to tell him how difficult it was to survive. We could have stayed if the league had been able to help us find sponsors, with financial retrocession… But his answer was quite different, telling us that there would be no retrocession for a long time.
These difficulties are the same ones that forced Sector One (S1) and then the Heet structure (the players kept the tag for the rest of the competition) to abandon ship in the middle of the segment a few weeks ago. The Spring 2022 champion even announced his departure from Valorant during the first week of the competition. The end of S1’s esport activities has left its former players orphaned to the tune of at least €11,000 and its former staff to the tune of almost the same amount. This figure was revealed by our colleagues at Dexerto last January, and we can confirm it. Two months later, our sources tell us that these sums have still not been received.
Damien Rapoye, CEO of Sector One — who did not respond to our requests for comment — claimed in January that these payment defaults followed the cancellation of a major contract with a cryptocurrency company that was supposed to cover Valorant’s costs. The company’s accounts were reportedly frozen back in November 2022, preventing it from paying its staff. Players of both Valorant and League of Legends (in the Benelux league) would have started their 2023 season in the dark.
WARNING SIGNS
The disappearance of the second Belgian team from the Valorant circuit (but also from Rocket League) is also due to a lack of sponsorship. As a result, Heet, like S1, has accumulated unpaid problems with a dozen people, players and former players, for a sum of around 25,000 euros. On the other hand, unlike Sector One, the structure has not collapsed and is still present, especially in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the game on which it took over from Double Poney in January 2022.
It was in the CS:GO scene that Heet first showed signs of fever. Sébastien “KRL” Perez, CEO and founder of GenOne, claimed in a stream at the beginning of January that his rival in the ECN (the French CS:GO championship) owed 100,000 euros to two players: Audric “JACKZ” Jug and Alexandre “bodyy” Pianaro. These scathing revelations damaged the reputation of Tim “WetDreaM” Buysse, founder of the short-lived Absolute Legends team in 2011 and now head of Heet. He had been criticised in the past for not paying his players.
With three structures pulling out of the VCL in the space of a few months for financial reasons, the situation inevitably raises questions about the selection process for participants, who were indeed invited on the basis of a dossier, in 2022 for Sector One and beGenius, and in 2023 for Heet. Teams are selected by the league, in consultation with Riot Games where appropriate,” Arrost said. For 2023, we have received complete dossiers with proof of funding, a development plan, a presentation of the teams, etc”.
“THE PROCESS CANNOT BE STRENGTHENED.”
Arrost also points out that a file “is validated by a contract with the league for one year and is renewed almost automatically if neither party feels it should be stopped”, but also that “if the league has doubts, it reserves the right to make a point with a team”.
The VCL did have “doubts” about Sector One: “We were even in the process of mediating between the players and the structure to find a solution to the problems that arose in 2022. But the Belgian club fell through the cracks thanks to “promises that were not kept”.
As for Heet, “the problems with CS:GO did not immediately affect Valorant, and we were assured that the two games were separate,” says Arrost. “Eventually, additional financial difficulties meant that they had to shut down Valorant,” he continues. But despite these repeated defections, he says, “the process cannot be strengthened, otherwise no team will join the league. “We are trying to find solutions, but it is difficult to find the right balance between the development of the scene and the economic security of everyone,” he confides.
A league that, in addition to losing its structures, is still struggling to keep the faces that embody it. It was indeed a feeling of despair and desperation that ran through the VCL commentary team in recent months. According to our various sources, by the middle of the week more than 30,000 euros had not been paid to the various commentators who were very active between the VCL and the Lock-In in Sao Paulo (Brazil) at the beginning of 2023.
THE ARM-WRESTLING OF THE CASTERS
Two of them were waiting for almost 10,000 euros each in unpaid bills. A situation that prevented them from living, from paying their bills and their rent. “They know I’m in trouble”; “I’m exhausted”; “I can’t live because of them”; “It’s the middle of the month and I have no money…”, said one of the casters concerned.
While these delays are nothing new — Freaks 4U broadcast the VRL, the forerunner of the VCL, in 2022 — they have increased this year. So much so, in fact, that the casters have engaged in an arm-wrestling match with the company, threatening not to return to the microphones on 27 March for the big debut of the VCT EMEA, the European league in which Karmine Corp and Vitality participate. According to them, thanks to this strike, the commentators would have received part of their pay from this Tuesday. However, they have not yet collectively decided whether or not to return to work.
Through Matthias Remmert, the company’s vice president of media production, Freaks 4U told Eclypsia that part of the reason for the problems is the “current state of the global economy” and its “impact on the esports industry”.
However, the company does not completely absolve itself, admitting that “the company’s billing process, terms and conditions were not clearly communicated both internally and externally, resulting in a mismatch of expectations with our partners”. The company says the situation has been “rectified” and is committed to “streamlining [its] billing process while providing greater transparency and better overall communication to [its] partners”.
“EVERYONE IS REPLACEABLE”
This is not reassuring to key stakeholders, who note that the situation is only unravelling after they have backed Freaks 4U against the wall. “You can see that it’s only the tweets that ‘break through’ that seem to work to get paid,” complains one source about a recent news story on Twitter. “I’m well aware that the problem is likely to reappear in a few months…” adds a second source.
A precarious situation in which places are expensive is not reassuring either.
“We have already heard from the locals: ‘Everyone is replaceable’,” says a commentator. “It’s the carrot or the stick: we’re not tied to them because we’re free agents, but if we leave we won’t have any other opportunities because it’s a very closed environment…”.
In the VCL, for both teams and casters, everything seems completely unclear. However, future announcements regarding the league should put a smile on the faces of the enthusiasts…
