2:47 - Recapping the Tainted Minds controversy and reaction to the ruling

8:49 - Fasffy on her own situation and "being thrown under the bus" by TM

13:03 - What if the Tainted Minds situation happened in another region?

20:29 - Fasffy on her responsibilities on TM and staff underpayment

30:22 - Being a female staffer in esports and helping players mature

39:49 - Does the Tainted Minds ruling incentivize organizations to treat employees worse because the deterrent is seen to be so poor?

45:47 - Fasffy on what she hopes to come from this situation and her future

The fallout of Riot's ruling on Tainted Minds has left a bitter taste in everyone's mouth, especially former manager Fasffy.

The ex-Tainted Minds and veteran OCE staffer joined The Nexus Podcast to discuss her reaction to the Riot ruling, the hardship and aftermath for all those involved, including her battle against the smearing of her reputation within the OCE region. As well, Fasffy, Lisa, Ryan and Gabe discuss what this ruling means for the future of the OCE League of Legends scene and the future of player-org relationships.

The ruling left Fasffy mostly disappointed, due to its lack of coverage of the sheer amount of things involved in the dispute with Tainted Minds.

"From the ruling, what I understand, they only really touched on two things that were breached I guess, one was them failing to make payment and the other one was them failing to provide computers to myself and the coach, which I think is missing so much of what else actually happened throughout the whole entire time," she said.

"And you know they said they investigated it all and I had a call with Rioter and I felt I really had a good chance to explain the way I felt about things, things that happened to me, through the whole time, and to see them just brushed away or brushed aside or not even addressed at all is really disappointing."

And it wasn't just concern over her own situation. In true managerial fashion, Fasffy expressed disappointment over the ruling and its treatment of the players and their time as being frivolous.

"Essentially everyone involved in the team has been set back almost at least half a year, and what? So their lives and every single one of those people’s lives, it’s six to seven people involved here, that’s worth five grand? It’s not just, like, I feel like it’s much more. You can easily put like it’s actually a year of their lives being affected," she said. "Two of the veterans from OCE scene have had to retire, essentially … It’s not fair, even to veterans of the [OCE] region who have sat there and have been the players that have helped this region grow for the past five years and they have been forced to retire."

On the subject of whether this ruling incentivizes organizations to do worse things to their players, as they no longer fear the consequences, the crew and Fasffy discussed player protection and rights available to them.

"Before I ended up trying to flying someone else to help me write the contracts for the players and everything, because Tainted Minds looked like they were gonna be missing deadlines, They were essentially going to be having a 20-year-old man write the contracts for the players and hand them to the players. And his knowledge of contracts is what he’s read in other contracts."

With organizations like Tainted Minds not securing legal professionals, the onus then becomes on other actors to ensure everything about the contract is in order, according to Fasffy.

"So the biggest amount of wisdom I can pass on is that it’s worth any amount of money you could pay to have a legal professional look over your contract before you sign. A lot of the people that come to play video games, and spend enough time playing video games to get to the level where they are to be seen as having really great potential and be picked up at a very young age are kids," Fasffy said.

"So they'll be getting contracts shoved under their faces by whoever that might not take into consideration into the fact that this guy just wants to play League, and he’ll sign anything you put under him just to play League. People need to make sure they’re signing stuff that they understand and that is actually legal.

"I think a lot of contracts within [the LoL scene in] Australia aren’t even legal, because they’re not getting paid enough to make it a full-time job, so a lot of the contracts aren’t even distinguished between whether they are an employee or a contractor, and [the distinction] needed to make it a valid contract."

Gabriel Zoltan-Johan is a News Editor at theScore esports and the head analyst for the University of Toronto League of Legends team. His (public) musings can be found on his Twitter.