How did we get here? The controversy over the rules set by the Professional eSports Association has officially exploded, and Sean Gares' recent firing has spun-off into its own mini-controversy.
Team Solo Mids Founder Andy Dinh game an official response regading his decision to fire Sean Gares, stating that Gares both tarnished his team's reputation and manipulated the other players on TSM into joining in.
That certainly is a compelling narrative, but it has one fatal problem: Gares' former teammates on TSM responded to Dinh with "A Unified Reply," stating in no uncertain terms "This isn't true."
I don't know if there's an egg-on-his-face or crow-eating metaphor sufficient enough to truly encapsulate the public sand-bagging TSM players just gave their owner, with a letter signed by all four remaining TSM players, Skyler "Relyks" Weave, Shahzeb "ShahZaM" Khan, Russel "Twistzz" VanDulken and Hunter "SicK" Mims.
For anyone left in the dark, the players of five professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams signed off on a letter to the Professional eSports Association and its member teams. This letter outlined a list of grievances with the PEA's decisions and power over the players to make those decisions unilaterally without regard to player concerns. Specifically, this letter took issue with the PEA's decision to prevent its member teams from participating in the ESL Pro League over a revenue dispute.
Oddly enough, this has now become an entirely separate issue from Andy Dinh's decision to fire Sean Gares over his support for the letter. Dinh has now shown a desire to scapegoat one person, saying Gares is "damaging the team," but without saying exactly how that is, throwing whatever concerns Gares may have regarding the PEA under the rug entirely, and apparently didn't even think to get the rest of his team on board before doing so.
Gares also gave his own response to Dinh, stating "The way I see it, if the community finding out what really happened is damaging to you, then you only have yourself to blame."
