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The recent controversy between Team SouL and GodLike’s Esports’ Suraj “Neyoo” Majumdar in Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) has taken the Indian gaming community by storm. After a specific incident in the Big Brother Esports Pro Invitational Season 1, Neyoo alleged Team SouL of teaming up and made some derogatory remarks about Team SouL’s Sohail “Hector” Shaikh and TSM India’s Shubham “NinjaJOD” Ranjan Sahoo and Hamza “Blaze” Khozema Hyderabadwala.
Team SouL’s manager Siddhant “Sid” Joshi and NinjaJOD responded to this situation. NinjaJOD responded with trash talk, whereas Sid took the “higher road” to avoid making a fuss about it.
Team SouL’s alleged team-up incident
In the recent Big Brother Esports Pro Invitational Season 1, two teams, namely Team SouL, composed of Dhruv “MadMan” Gaur, Naman “Neyo,” Sohail “Hector” Shaikh, and Harsh “Goblin” Paudwal, and another team, comprising 8bitBeast, WSFocTaviuS, MightyFFS, and NF Esports’ Aryan “Ravan” Choudhary, participated. During the second match of Day 7 of the competition, both teams landed in the same location on Miramar, i.e., Pecado, and engaged in a fight. Beast knocked down Goblin, while WSFocTaviuS knocked and finished Neyo. Subsequently, Goblin turned on his All-Mic and requested the opponents to retreat and not team up, and Hector followed by urging them to retreat. Despite being in each other’s clear view, neither team fired shots while Hector and MADMAN rushed to revive Goblin. Eventually, Hector succeeded in reviving his teammate, and the opponent team retreated from the scene.
Neyoo addresses the situation
Following this, GodLike’s Esports’ Suraj “Neyoo” Majumdar went live on his Instagram handle to address this situation and alleged Team SouL of teaming up. While addressing, he made some derogatory remarks about Team SouL and Hector. Among a lot of things he said, he also stated that Hector “does not have much value.”
Furthermore, he also spoke about previous comments made by TSM India’s NinjaJOD and Blaze, where they called GodLike Esports “free kills” and made derogatory remarks about them as well. He also highlighted that players from TSM India had finished GodLike Esports’ players in-game with a Pan on multiple occasions.
Sid addresses the situation and responds to Neyoo
Sid addressed this situation via Instagram stories on his handle. He stated that if the teams genuinely wanted to team up, they would not have done it in front of everyone on the livestream and appealed to others to stop trash-talking. “It was a small misunderstanding. The players believed they were playing fun scrims, and Goblin messed up,” he added. “Next time, think twice before threatening my players on livestreams. I know the value of my player. Me and his organization know what value he has created. You don’t decide the value of yourself and my player.”
Sid added that he did want to start any controversy, so he was ignoring everything. However, if Neyoo has to do it for relevance, even after ignoring such things, he will stop ignoring them. “If you want to create relevance, create relevance in the game. Don’t create relevance by doing such things. And don’t talk about my player in public from now on,” he added.
However, Sid soon deleted this story. In the following story, Sid explained that he deleted the story because he recorded the story when he was “pumped-up” due to working out. “You guys know when it comes to players, I get aggressive. But, I just want to say that one again, I am choosing to take a higher road and keep quiet. I don’t know how long I will be able to do this, but I am doing it once again.” He added, “But, I think, as an audience, with everything happening in front of you, you should get the idea of who’s focusing on what.”
NinjaJOD’s response to Neyoo
In response to Neyoo, NinjaJOD uploaded an Instagram story. He stated that he had surpassed him despite joining BGMI esports later than Neyoo, whereas Neyoo is still trash-talking on livestreams. NinjaJOD also added that Neyoo’s TSM jersey is his biggest achievement.
Sid apologizes for Team SouL’s actions and punishes Goblin
Sid addressed this situation on his livestream, where he apologized on behalf of the team. He acknowledged responsibility for the players’ actions and emphasized that no excuses can be made. “If you feel that it was unjust or some massive blunder, like it was a PMGC (PUBG Mobile Global Championship) or PMPL (PUBG Mobile Pro League) slot, if you are a SouL fan and felt whatever happened was wrong, I apologize on their behalf. Even for that, for whatever happened yesterday, Goblin has again been punished,” he added.
Lastly, Sid revealed that Goblin has been punished for his actions. “We have removed the “SouL” tag from him for the next 15 days as a warning. We have also told him that if he does something similar again, we will permanently remove the “SouL” tag,” he said.
