Cover image source: GESC
3 days after accusing his former employers Entity Gaming, GESC and Mineski of mistreatment, non-payment of dues and unprofessionalism, Anthony ‘Scantzor’ Hodgson came out with a second blog post after all 3 parties had a chance to respond. While things turned ugly between Scantzor and Entity manager, Sid Joshi on reddit, Mineski’s official statement did not explicitly deny any of the allegations, rather provided the circumstances or reasoning behind them.
In his second post, Scantzor responds to all 3 parties. Here’s what he had to say.
Scantzor was most critical of ETG’s response alleging that Sid’s posts and further responses were “full of lies, some of which are easily disputable”. He also claims to have received news via a third party that ETG were planning to sue him but and to this his response was “good luck suing somebody for breaching a contract that you’re already in breach of yourself.”
He also went on to claim that the manager was acting or trying to show that he was more influential than he actually was within the org.
Third, I feel obliged to point out that Sid is also misleading the audience into believing him to be a lot more important than he is in the context of Entity. He speaks as though he was the one making decisions, saying he decided to let me go. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Sid was in no way my superior in Entity — in fact, for most of the time I was there, I was practically doing his job for him while doing my own as well.
Apart from this, Scantzor also mentioned an incident that he was particularly displeased with, that occured when he was about to leave. For example, on the day I was departing India, I was robbed of $1400 that they’d insisted on paying me in cash — by Entity’s housekeeper. When I brought it to their attention, their first response was to insist that it was not their responsibility. Subsequently, they had me strip down all my belongings three times in a row in front of them to be “totally sure” it wasn’t my fault. I’m not someone who easily accuses, but in this case there had been nobody in the house during the time the money was in my bag except for myself, players, management, and the housekeeper. Ultimately, the housekeeper was called in and questioned. He confessed, and most of my money was recovered. But their initial reactions were extremely telling.
The GESC incident actually had bigger implications with Cyborgmatt writing an open letter to Valve addressing the concerns of a group of people including teams, talent and agencies that worked at the two GESC events who were yet to be paid. An amount of over 750,000$ was still owed by GESC. To put matters into perspective, this amount exceeds even the combined total prize pool of both the events that GESC conducted.
Scantzor had previously stated he always had a good working relationship with GESC CEO, Oskar Feng and mentions that he has been in touch with him since his initial post.
He still intends to take responsibility for his mistakes, and is still adamant that he will continue trying to raise the money that he owes. I believe him.
Of course, my belief in his intentions doesn’t make it any more likely that any of us will actually see the money. But I guess we can live in hope.
Scantzor was definitely not happy with Mineski's official statement as he went onto say
He seemed to be particularly irked about Mineski's comment about the living conditions they provided.To me, the most important thing about their statement is that they don’t explicitly deny anything that I’ve said. Based on this, and the fact that they took a few days drafting it, I assume they got some professional advice before reacting. Their statement essentially tries to come off as ‘reasonable’ or ‘moderate’, despite not denying any of the allegations. I hope that anyone reading it will see it for what it is: a smokescreen.
Of course they could afford flushing toilets, drinkable water, basic kitchenware, and pest control. And this isn’t a standard above what any Filipino would expect. I resent the implication that I was being a ‘demanding foreigner’, as they previously told me, because at the time I was told that, I was far too generous with them about it — I tried pretty hard to convince myself that it might be true, that maybe the problem was me, that maybe I wasn’t being culturally sensitive.This just isn’t true, and that Mineski want to dig in their heels about it is frankly fucking offensive to both myself, and to any ordinary Filipino whose identity they are using as a cheap tool to try discredit my experience.
It’s clear that Scantzor wasn’t too happy about Mineski’s statements but he did react more positively when Orrin Xu, the COO of Mineski tweeted out a more personal and apologetic note.
Thanks, Orrin. This doesn't fix everything, but it's as good a place as any to start.
— Anthony Hodgson (@scantzor) November 1, 2018
If Mineski doesn't treat other people better, though, then it means nothing. Talk is cheap, I hope the company can show some real improvements.
For the most part, this seems to be the end to this chapter and it seems unlikely that this escalates any further. Let’s hope that all parties can come together and sort it out among themselves amicably and try and work towards the upliftment of the SEA esports scene.
