Where is money, the story about PGS

Conflict between former PGSPokerstrategy.com Counter-Strike players and team management was observed by whole gaming world. The case became really popular after famous “holidays” in a Los Angeles. Neo, LUq, TaZ, kuben and Lord after not so good performance at WCG went to LA to take part in Extreme Masters. But when they arrived it appeared that they have no place to sleep and train for an upcoming tournament. Lord paid for the hotel and daily expanses from his own pocket. Later money was returned. Even if players had nice holidays under palms in LA it was next tourney where they performed under expectations. A week break in training cycle seems to be important reason.

There is no doubt, that champions shouldn’t be treated like that. Then the interesting offer from MeetYourMakers came. Because of these and many other circumstances players marked some interest about this proposition. But finally transfer wasn’t achieved. This is how Marcin “Darky” Sieczkowski sees this conflict: Players made something which no one expected here – they never wanted to meet to work on new contracts and salaries. I wanted to take care of it and make it good for them despite defiance. To work on contract through internet players had to sign deals about privacy and send them to us. But they never did it. So it was a situation where employer wanted to make rise for his employee who don’t want to accept it and in public talk about lack of money.

But players of Counter-Strike division have other point of view. They were waiting for over two months for deal appendix and promised rise. However management wanted to sign deals for whole new season, which caused no agreement between sides. Despite assures, nothing changed. For sure everyone knows how this story ends. MeetYourMakers is happy to have one of the best CS teams in the world, and PGS management have only associations left.

It’s interesting how Darky comments this situation now in interview for SK-Gaming. He’s underestimating involvement of Neo and his teammates in success of team. - We simply stopped seeing any benefit from having a CS team that would not cooperate with us. This is why the team and the management mutually agreed to terminate the contracts. It’s really controversial ascertainment. Beside CS team, only Krzysztof „Chris” Sojka has achieved important trophies on international scene. Rest of PGSPokerstrategy.com players are in top, but only in Poland. CS team since always was moving whole organisation and other projects under different names forward. The rhetorical question is: would such sponsors as PGS now has wanted to cooperate with team without achievements of CS team? I’ve decided to count gains and losses of having this team from past two years.

International events in 2006 and 2007

After summing up prizes from ZoneRank (over $32,000) and prizes at local (PGA, HLC) and international events, we have some big amount of money. In 2006 and 2007 PGS Gaming earned around 650,000 zlotys. Management was taking agreed 15% from all of the prizes. From easy calculations it seems like players had to give away around 100,000 zlotys for management. But they haven’t received much for this. From 16 international events only 7 of them were fully paid by organisation. Travel to Berlin or London is not so expensive. For CPL tournament probably WSVG tickets were re-booked. One of few expensive journeys – EM in a Los Angeles was unsuccessful. To compare, in the same period of time, Swedish team – fnatic travelled to 8 events. But the difference is that, they have visited China, Singapore, South Korea and USA. What’s with the rest of invested money? As we know, player’s salary was not raised; long promised new website still looks the same. For sure these and the other questions could be easily answered by Phillip Kasprowicz and Andrzej karasinski, who are both in management of PGS Gaming sp. z.o.o.

From persons who are in close contact with players, who would like to stay anonymous I’ve managed to know what is the budget of team. Title sponsor, Pokerstrategy.com is giving 100-150 thousands of Euro per year. Second biggest partner, SteelSeries is supporting team with an amount of 50,000 Euro. Gaming equipment for players is also counted here. Rest of the sponsors give to the team 20,000 Euro. To sum up, we can guess that budget of team reaches around 150-200 thousands of Euro.

In second part of 2007 basic salary of PGS Counter-Strike player was approximately 2000 Polish Zlotys. It gives about 100,000 Zlotys per year. If we will found that other divisions have the same salary (which is nearly impossible), then about 300,000 zlotys will still be in budget. Now let’s look back at the amount of international events and 15 % from every win. It seems like further cooperation between team and management would not be profitable.

As janusz “hayabusa” kubski said to me, situation in team wasn’t good since long time. Problems with main sponsor Multimedia Vision and Andrzej karasinski started at the end of 2005. Partner was not keeping words; there were problems with salaries or even equipment for players. There were no contracts until August/September of 2006. Players were supposed to earn 500 zlotys per month. From promised 5000zl MMV gave only 16,000 for a whole year. All travel expenses were covered by money of people in managment back then. Returning this money started to be harder and harder. Players were not receiving promised graphic cards. This was one of the reasons why former WC3 division left the team then. Supposedly packages with equipment were ready to send that time, but players never got their stuff. When hayabusa left the team, for next half of the year, he did not receive his money. Finally his expanses were covered in gaming equipment and there was no possibility to receive money. Players and other persons connected with team haven’t received documents to fill in tax papers.

It’s hardly surprising why players were so angry. Unofficially, MMV earned around 1mln zlotys from selling equipment for gamers. Remember that MMV is Polish distributor of such companies as Razer, SteelSeries or Speed-Link. Team and achievements had great impact of company success. As I found MMV company is rendering pressure and blackmailing players. In interviews CS team is not talking about sensitive problems because they’re afraid about their prizes. Money from tournament winnings are still transferred to PGS gaming account. Moreover deal about privacy is still active.

Finally CS team and organisations have parted ways. Five CS players will now collecting achievements for Meet YourMakers. For sure it was controversial transfer. A big part of community has regret to this team because of patriotism. I’ve decided to give you some answers why they’ve decided to leave. I think that it will be easier now to understand them. Information collected for this article was taken from different sources to make the most Objective as it was possible.

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1$ ~ 2,40 zloty

Article translated by Michał "lab" Bal.

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