A lot of CS:GO professionals were left without pay after some funding issues occurred during a recent tournament. The HCG Season 1 just started, and they promised their players a prize pool of €180,000. However, the event has left upwards of 40 players and organizers without any pay. On top of that, the tournament is moving to an online style event.
The company put out this tweet after some backlash, “Due to problems within the company, HCG Masters Season 1 will be completed online. Exact dates will only be available once required conditions have been met. We apologize to our freelancer staff, teams, partners and fans. There have been a number of problems caused by people outside the company that have led to this issue.”
They continued later on by talking about how one of their primary sponsors backed out randomly. They were then forced to request more money from one of their key investors. In return for the money, the investor asked to receive more equity, which HCG refused. Hence the funding issue came into play and got the tournament postponed.
CS:GO Tournament Getting New Investor
Since all of this has become public, their executive director Ferenc Kern said that a new investor will be joining soon, bringing €300,000 with them. This will allow all of these unpaid professionals to receive their money.
A lot of competitors have been voicing their frustrations with the company over being left in the dark. As some were forced to sign contracts after the event ended while others haven’t even been contacted. Plus, even the ones that did receive some sort of payment, didn’t end up getting their full collections costs that they were supposed to receive. It’s going to be interesting to see where this all goes from here.
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