Vega Squadron Allegedly Failing to Pay Dota2 Roster
It looks like some teams didn’t take our advice on how to run an esports org. Vega Squadron is accused of failing to pay its former Dota 2 squadron almost $20,000 in tournament winnings they earned playing for the CIS team.
In a post on Twitlonger, former team manager Allen “Bonkers” Cook talked about how the Vega Squadron Dota 2 roster, formerly known as Team Lithium, was picked up by Vega Squadron after qualifying for the DreamLeague event last October.
Vega had promised not to take any of the prize pool earnings from the team for the event (teams generally take a 10% cut for themselves), instead only asking to handle the money for the team as it was received from DreamLeague.
The team agreed to the deal. According to Bonkers, has yet receive any of the $15,000 they won there.
These claims were further backed up by one of the former players, KheZu, who also claimed the team owed them an additional $5000 in online tournament winnings.
1/2 as Bonkers stated earlier in his statement, Vega owe us about 20k USD, 15k from LAST YEARS dreamleague minor, and 5k from online tournaments.
— Maurice Gutmann (@KheZu) September 7, 2019
The Minor was in November last year btw. They were a good Org to us while we were in the team and under contract. The other instance
Team Empire jumped in his comments to note that TO’s often take over a year to get prize pool payouts to teams. Bonkers has noted DreamLeague had already paid Vega.
Life in Tier 2
Withholding prize pool earnings from players in a pro team is already a major issue with many teams, but the situation is even worse for orgs in the second tier Dota.
According to Bonkers, a tier two team is estimated to make about $500-$1,000 a month per player, or about $6,000-$12,000 a year.
While teams that can make it into LAN events can make $2,000-$5,000 a month per player, or about $24,000-$60,000 a year, it’s not often teams can make it to that stage of an event, and barely scraping by with little money they can earn.
Given how much money is involved in The International each year, the absolute poverty lower-tier teams who don’t make the event have to live with has caused the community to question if the wealth needs to be spread out more.
Vega Squadron has yet to respond to the allegations against them at this time.
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