Ukrainian Caster v1lat Threatens Organizations For Playing in a Russian Tournament
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Ukrainian Dota 2 caster, Vitalii Mykolayovych "v1lat" Volochai recently took to X (formerly Twitter) and threatened LGD Gaming, G2.iG, beastcoast, nouns, and Thunder Awaken for participating at the Games of the Future 2024 tournament, which v1lat claims is a government-funded Russian esports tournament. The LAN tournament boasts an impressive $1 Million prize pool and will be held at the Kazan Expo in Kazan, Russia from 19th February to 25th February. 16 teams will be participating out of which 10 teams have confirmed their place in the tournament. The remaining six teams are yet to be disclosed.
v1lat’s Issues Threats Against Teams Participating at the Games of the Future 2024
“Hey @LGDgaming @invgaming @beastcoast @nounsesports @ThunderAwaken_I will personally do whatever it takes to mail to all EU countries the personal data of your players and staff after you visit the Government funded Russian tournament, so your players will have visa issues in the future.” v1lat tweeted, issuing threats against any teams playing at the Games of the Future 2024 tournament.
He further added, “So good luck and have fun in Kazan. And even more good luck with getting EU and UK visas after that. Because those few thousand bucks you'll get from the Russian government will not help you obtain a UK or EU visa,” and sarcastically remarked, “Have fun boys.”
v1lat further added, “You guys will go through hell, every time one of your players applies for a VISA. I will do everything possible to enlist your player in a monthly update of the list of sportspersons who actively support terrorism. That works with sports and will work with esports too. Just a warning.”
At the time of writing, no organizations or players have spoken against this open threat from v1lat and there has been no announcement from any organization withdrawing from the tournament for any reason. v1lat is a Ukrainian caster and the motivation behind this tweet is due to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
The ongoing conflict has had an adverse effect on the Dota 2 landscape and several notable incidents have occurred due to it.
In 2022, Outsiders' Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko drew a letter Z in the mini-map and was disqualified from the DPC EEU Tour II. The letter Z, while not found in Russia's Cyrillic alphabet, is used in Russia as the symbol celebrating their army in its aggression toward Ukraine.
In 2022, Russian esports organization, Team Spirit relocated its base from Moscow, Russia to Belgrade, Serbia due to the ongoing conflict. Russian Commentator, Dmitrii “finargot” Pliusnin was excluded from the list of Russian talents due to his pro-war tweets. Now it remains to be seen what the organization under threat from v1lat will do next.
Stay tuned for further updates regarding this matter.
