Robin “Fifflaren” Johannson’s recent appearance on the Richard Lewis Show has resurrected many of the old rumors about the problematic past business practices of Ninjas in Pyjamas, and it seems quite possible that many of these infractions will finally be brought to light. The overall impact of his explosive allegations is still up in the air – at least as far as NiP is concerned – as many of his former teammates and other community members have also spoken up in one way or another, with the promise of more to come. Regardless of how it all pans out in this particular case, it’s worth asking whether all this was the exception or the rule in the infancy period of modern esports, and how likely is it that similarly scandalous stories will follow in the future.

Withholding payments, taking the sticker money, pushing out players from the core team: this is just the beginning of the accusations levelled at NiP by their ex-player, a fateful decision which may very well turn out to be the opening of the floodgates going forward. While it’s certainly a juicy story and it will be very interesting to watch how this will impact this org specifically, there are wider implications to this all than the mere fact that karma is a bitch.

There must have been countless stories buried by the sands of time in the dog-eat-dog world of esports business, many of which we’ll likely never hear of because the employees and the organizations responsible for the trickery simply didn’t quite make it. We’d all like to believe that shady business practices don’t lead to success, and therefore it’s logical to assume that teams and orgs based on bad faith failed before they could have done much harm. Arguably, the NiP story proves that this isn’t necessarily true, even if only a fraction of the accusations would turn out to be accurate.