Jimmy “DeMoN” Ho recently released a statement saying that the Team Admiral team manager threatened him and that his stay in the Philippines bootcamp was “horrible” and “unbearable”. In an exclusive interview, the Philippine-based Team Admiral responds to alleged horrible conditions, issues and threats suffered by Jimmy Ho in Manila bootcamp.

Jimmy Ho, known as DeMoN is a well-known professional competitive Dota 2 player. He has been in the Dota 2 scene for a long time, and has been in a number of Dota 2 teams since 2011. He announced his retirement during his Twitch stream, and during that viral announcement, he also talked about his horrible and unbearable living conditions in the Philippines with Team Admiral.

The video can be seen below:

The announcement drew flak not only to the team manager that was mentioned in the video but also to the Filipino culture in general. People were alarmed about the alleged horrible situation that he suffered under Team Admiral. Posts and articles were created about the video, and many were quick to defend the pro player.

Team Admiral’s management reached out to clarify some of the facts that Jimmy had said in the video, and to shed light on their side of the story. The summarized version of this post can be found on the Admiral Dota Facebook fan page.

Here are some of the reactions of Admiral’s management on his video:

1. The horrible and unbearable living condition (0:00-0:25, 6:00-6:10)

In the video, he starts by saying that his living condition in the Philippines was horrible, and on the 6th minute, he said that it was unbearable. He said “what am I doing here?” and “get me out of here” a couple of times in the video as well.

According to his description, it seemed like the bootcamp was such a bad place and that he was not having a good time. We, the management, find it hard to believe since the bootcamp was a 3-story house with 3 bedrooms and 1 maid’s quarters. Jimmy had the luxury of having one room all to himself, while staff/management got one room and the other four players shared one room. Everyone else, except for Jimmy, had to share a room with someone else. Aside from room privileges, Jimmy had access to the two household help (a cook and a helper who cleaned the house) that were provided for the comfort of all the players.

Occasionally, while going out, he would ask load from our team manager. Even though it was not part of the team’s function (neither team-related nor tournament-related), the manager obliged to his request. The management knew that he was just going out to see people or party but they still gave him the load he requested. Note that he only said “please” once in the two instances presented below.

Jimmy had requested for a free monthly gym membership. The management said that they can give him a gym membership but they should be taking it out of his salary; and since he was the highest paid member of the team, he could easily afford it.

Jimmy didn’t pay for meals, even when the team members were eating out. His teammates usually shouldered his expense when eating out. Whenever he got food delivered, someone else usually shouldered the bill for him out of Filipino hospitality and also out of respect for the delivery service. Aside from meals, he didn’t pay for basic service like laundry. The teammates were too shy to tell Jimmy that his behavior was unacceptable but the management have been saying in the group chat that they should be considerate and pay for their own expenses. However, he didn’t seem to mind because he wasn’t called out by name. Yes, we can blame it on the Filipino culture of being too considerate and hospitable to visitors and guests, and this would have been acceptable if it only happened a few times but it was too frequent.

He even asked for a “happy ending massage” with the expenses to be shouldered by the management if they won all of their practice matches; so you can imagine our shock at the statement that he couldn’t bear to stay at the bootcamp. The only depression he had shared was about his ex-girlfriend, but he had so many girls stay over in his room the management thought he got over it. His luxuries, inconsideration and rule-breaking was tolerated so we thought everything was just fine at his end.

The bootcamp may have not been up to his standards, and he might have called it a horrible and unbearable living condition but it was a place that most Filipino top players would want to play in. The Team Admiral bootcamp was a dream for a lot of Filipino top players, and there have been a lot of pros contacting the management about openings.

A video of their boot camp can be seen below:

A lot of pros want to play for the team since the management is known for being lenient like allowing players to leave the boot camp at night. The players even threw house parties when the management was out. This is beside the point, but it should be a glimpse of how lenient the management was despite the players breaking and abusing the house rules. And while he thought that his living conditions were unbearable, he was found to have been the one who broke the most house rules during his stay.

2. Threatened by manager (0:27-0:51, 1:45-2:30)

To clarify on this incident, the person who threatened him was named Martin. He was actually the owner and sponsor of the team, and not “just” the manager.

Jimmy had said that he had asked nicely but one of his teammates thought otherwise about the incident.

The statement wherein he said that he felt threatened was a surprise to us because Martin didn’t resort to actual violent physical behavior and actually went home immediately after the water was requested (no longer interested to finish the match). The team manager also prohibited (actually the word is “banned”) Martin from going to the boot camp, in order to resolve the issue without escalating it further. It was actually the last time that Martin and Jimmy ever saw each other in person. There was no violent altercation and no more threats after the chat messages, which ended with a resolution of just letting Martin avoid seeing Jimmy or avoid going to the bootcamp.

The threats he received were purely over the group chat, and Martin had already apologized for the incident. The entire water incident was true to an extent; however, he didn’t state in his video that the water issue was already resolved even before his trip from the Philippines.

In context, the water incident happened on the first week of March and it was resolved within that week. He left last March 23. There was an issue in between that wasn’t mentioned in his video but we will be discussing later for more clarity on the matter.

3. The lengthy message after they lost (2:35-3:45)

He didn’t only receive one lengthy message, he received two.

One was from the team owner, Martin, with whom he had conflict with; and the other was from the team manager, who explained that what he did was wrong. In the video he only talked about the one with the team owner, wherein he was “threatened” through chat, but he didn’t mention the other conversation they had with the team manager. Since he already mentioned the contents of the other message in the video, here are the contents of the team manager’s mild-mannered chat that wasn’t mentioned:

The team manager even told Jimmy that he can ask favors from him (since he’s the manager) but not from the other members since it’s not their job (apart from the household help). The manager didn’t want the incident to cause any more tension in the team, with the International qualifiers getting so close.

The management respected the members and players, discussing with them whenever there were problems and issues; since their main goal was for The International 8, they wanted to make sure that everyone got along well. Aside from that, they wanted the whole team to be in top shape by the time TI qualifiers came around.

But the management later found out it wasn’t possible since Jimmy had his own scheduled vacations that he said he couldn’t miss. One was during the middle of March and another was on June (which was the scheduled SEA qualifiers for The International). When they found out that they would also need to find a replacement for him in June, his teammates reached a consensus to just replace him and form an all-Filipino lineup. At this point you might be wondering, what about his contract? We will talk about that in further detail later.

4. Things not mentioned in the video

Before we end this statement, we would like to touch on a few subjects to provide more clarity on the behavior of the management regarding Jimmy.

Behavior towards his housemates and management

There was even an issue regarding how he asked a person (who was not a paid staff of Team Admiral but more of a support to the management) to get his laundry for him. Note his choice of words and absence of “please”.

Aside from asking one of the unpaid staff to claim his laundry for him, and he had also accused one of the maids.

He was out partying the night before and he sent an alarming message to the management about his lost watch the next morning. The mystery of the lost watch was solved two weeks ago when he found them in his jeans. The helper was almost removed from service because the management didn’t want their players to feel that their belongings weren’t safe. The conversation can be seen below:

As mentioned earlier, there were also instances when he brought girls into his room. The first few times it happened, we spoke to him and reprimanded him for it because it was against house rules and we didn’t want the other members to feel like things were unfair; however, he still kept doing it even until his last night at the boot camp when he brought a girl over.

Regardless of how bad the other members of the household felt about him, we continued to treat him with respect and consideration that we wasn’t used to our culture. So, again, imagine our shock when he said those things online when we haven’t even said anything regarding his behavior toward our organization.

The unsigned contract and involvement with Echo International

Admiral management tried their best to accommodate everything that DeMoN wanted from the organization, but apparently it wasn’t enough. The fact was that Jimmy Ho didn’t sign the contract after they flew him into the Philippines because he wanted to change the percentage of shares.

In the initial and informal talk, he had already agreed to a 70-30 split; however, he later changed his mind and stalled contract signing with the condition that the management receives less than 30% of the International tournament winnings (should they land a spot).

So without a contract to bind him, the management felt threatened when they found out he was talking to other professional players involved with Echo International. They had offered him double of how much he was currently earning from Admiral. In the conversation read by the management, it wasn’t just DeMoN on his own, but he was also taking Gabbi with him. It might be important to point out that this wasn’t the first time Jimmy has done this to an organization (leave and take a teammate with him) so our cause for alarm was not unfounded.

He later shrugged off the entire thing as a joke, but we implore you to look at how we saw it as an organization with a captain who wouldn’t sign the contract. Not to mention that we have invested so much on getting him to the Philippines and paying him his high salary, but in the end he won’t even be able to play during the International SEA qualifiers because he had an “unmovable” vacation that he had to attend to. Getting a substitute captain for the SEA qualifiers? He put us (and our entire investment, as well as our tolerance for his behavior) in an impossible position which later resulted in the decision to not let him return from his March vacation. We were hoping to salvage what was left of our wasted investment.

We initially only wanted Armel to play for us but since they were “package deal”, we took him in as well. After Armel left, we could have also parted ways with him, but out of respect (and since we had already invested so much in getting him here) we just let him play on. However, in hindsight, if he had been forward about his intended unmovable vacations from the very beginning, we would have looked for another captain who was available during the target dates (TI SEA qualifiers).

Actually, as a result of Jimmy’s contact with Echo International, the Chinese organization developed interest in taking one of our core players before the TI qualifiers. Here is a screenshot of Forev sending an offer to Gabbi via Steam:

Later, the team manager found out that it was not Echo International who approached Jimmy but it was the latter who contacted March and asked about his salary. When Jimmy found out that the salary was double what we have been supplying him, he wanted to take Gabii with him (he said “can I take my carry with me?”).

TLDR: The team owner, not the team manager, acted emotionally but the issue was supposedly resolved already

We didn’t want to air dirty laundry or drag anyone’s name through the mud, but we had to respond to the allegations that we were mistreating or manhandling our player. We released this statement to let you know that there was more to the story, from the rule-breaking to the actual unethical act of approaching rival organizations.

Another clarification we would like to add is that the team owner never said he was rich. He was but he didn’t say it during the alleged chat threat. He just said that all the people in the household treated him like a boss but Jimmy (alone) treated him like he was just household help. Jimmy could have asked anyone else to get water for him but he chose to send the team owner on that particular errand. He didn’t even know that Martin owned the team (and just thought he was a manager).

The situation could have been handled better, for sure; but the pressure of finding a replacement for him and knowing that we have wasted months practicing and yet we won’t be in top shape for the International SEA qualifiers was too much. All the small issues of not doing his part by paying for his own delivery and laundry, rule-breaking by bringing girls over to his room and not being serious during practice matches compiled into one giant annoyance for the team owner to deal with.

Regardless of whether they lost or won that day, the same thing would have happened. He had stated in the video that the team owner was only upset after they lost (another story would have happened if they had won), but Martin was already upset the moment he gave the water to Jimmy. Whether Admiral won or lost that day, it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference. And in retrospect, the water request was just a trigger but not even a quarter of the entire issue.

As mentioned earlier, we were already in the process of finding a replacement for him because of the way he had acted during practice. The members were complaining and the management decided to let him go and not let him come back after his March vacation. We found out about the whole Echo International negotiation later, which was believed to be the reason why he didn’t take practice seriously anymore since he already had a fallback plan (and he didn’t sign the contract that would bind him to us).

Even after knowing all this, Jimmy still released the statements which caught on and spread throughout the entire community. No management is perfect and we have admitted responsibility on our shortcomings but that doesn’t mean that we mishandled and threatened our player. Our organization was born out of the ambition of producing one of the best SEA teams this year. We have worked hard to provide all the needs and reasonable requests of the players in our team, and at the end of the day all we wanted was a little respect.

– Admiral Dota management

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