League of Legends veteran Danil ’Diamondprox’ Reshetnikov has lambasted Bifrost, saying that he was “scammed” for six months by the Norwegian organization.
In a Twitlonger post, the Russian player reveals that Bifrost did not pay his salary during the time he spent competing for the organization.
As one of the longest-tenured players in League of Legends, with four Worlds appearances between 2012 and 2018, Diamondprox joined Bifrost in May amid much fanfare. He was one of the headline players of the Summer split of the NLC, the UK and Nordic league that was part of the ERL circuit.
The Russian jungler says that he agreed to join Bifrost for the salary that he “clearly stated was the bare minimum needed to support my family.”
The move happened a few months into the war in Ukraine, which made international wire transfers difficult for Russian citizens. Despite this, he says Bifrost made “zero effort” during the first two months of his contract to figure out how to pay him.
Diamondprox says that he initially provided details of a bank account that was “fully connected” to the SWIFT global payments system. According to him, Bifrost said that they could not wire the money to that account, even though fellow Russian players who played for Vanir, another Norwegian organization, were “receiving their salaries” by using the same bank.
The Russian player provided Bifrost with payment alternatives, including receiving his salary in cryptocurrency, but his suggestions kept being turned down.
“The organization did not provide assistance to me in any way, even though [by then] I had been working for them for four months without pay and I had some very important bills stacked,” he writes.
Diamondprox left Bifrost after the Summer split, in which the team placed sixth. On October 3, Bifrost announced three changes to their roster for NLC Aurora Open, the pro-amateur tournament organized by the NLC at the end of each year.
Diamondprox adds that on November 30 he received a message from the Bifrost CEO, who said that he was leaving the company and that the new management’s point of contact would be provided shortly. A week later, he received another message, this time from one of Bifrost’s owners and board members, about the company’s financial problems, which might lead to bankruptcy.
“They basically f***ed with me for months, wasting my time, making me go into debt with bills stacking instead of looking for some other income, to just scam me like that in the end, while knowing that they didn’t have the money to pay,” Diamondprox writers.
Roman ‘D2K’ Lanskoy, who coached Bifrost for a year, says the organization owes €45,000 to players and staff members and that repeated promises that the overdue fees would be paid have been unfulfilled.
A struggling league
The news of Bifrost’s financial issues further raises questions about the future of the NLC, the highest tier of competitive League of Legends in the UK and the Nordic countries. In November, the NLC announced that it had no option but to downscale and become a non-accredited ERL after failing to hit its partnership goals, blaming the “current market situation”.
On December 14, British organization X7 Esports, who also have a team in the NLC, announced that it would be closing its doors due to the current economic climate and NLC’s downgrade to a non-accredited ERL.
Diamondprox says that he is afraid to commit to a team, especially after watching his former Gambit teammate Edward ‘Edward’ Abgaryan deal with the same issues while playing for Greek side Olympiacos Alimou. On December 13, the team was banned from competing in the GLL for failure to meet contractual obligations following an investigation by the league and Riot Games.
“I truly hope that karma exists in this world and it will hurt badly when it strikes,” Diamondprox writes.
“As for myself, I still love to work on LoL and I don’t want to let the knowledge I have accumulated over ten years of pro play go to waste, but I will not join another org without taking many precautions now. And if organizations do not want to respect those, I will probably keep streaming or find another job.”
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