LG allegations to myself & ESL, 20 years of good and sad stories ;)

Hey there,



There are currently lots of stories and even outright lies floating around, around my or ESL involvement so I would like to clarify several points.



Probably not being too much community common knowledge these days but close to 20 years ago, before ESL existed, my brothers, a bunch of friends and myself founded SK as players.

After a few years I moved on to start ESL and left SK behind me. While I retained a minority share, I haven't been involved in any operational decisions of SK for over 10 years. This has never been treated as a secret (it’s even on Wikipedia) and the majority of the industry, such as Team Managers, have always been aware of the history. So while I did hold legacy shares from my first business venture with most of the industry being aware of it, I’ve always been extremely careful to avoid potential conflict of interest situations.



As such I was in no way involved or even knowledgeable of the negotiations between SK and LG's players when Steve Maida approached me to intervene on LG's behalf. I told him that I couldn't and wouldn't get involved on either side of the conflict since it’s important that both I and ESL remain neutral when it comes to team conflicts and to improve those uncertainty we where working with some of the teams on a separate body. Although I told him that out of plain principle I could not get directly involved and had already started the process required to sell my SK legacy shares in late 2015 to completely close that chapter, he insisted that he would drag myself, WESA and ESL into this conflict if I didn’t.



Since it is ultimately purely a conflict between LG and SK but offered that WESA could act as an intermediary. This offer still stands although SK and LG are not part of WESA and it wont be my decision but the decision of all WESA members.



Tl;dr:



- Although mine, ESL & WESA names have been dragged into this by Steven Maida, neither ESL, WESA nor myself had any involvement in the creation of this situation.

- ESL amd WESA are independent companies / bodies

- LG’s players were never threatened by ESL or with exclusion from ESL leagues. If SK threatened them with an injunction due to existing conflicts with the players, this would have affected all leagues including but not limited to ESL

- Conflicts like this have long been a part of esports and regulation of them is one of the reasons we created WESA. Despite all of the above we have actually offered to help arbitrate the situation despite neither team being a part of WESA and continue to extend that offer

- Hopefully this gets solved and after all the players can continue the legacy they are building

- This is still a young scene and its all of our jobs together to overcome these growth pains and make esport big



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