SriLankan Rainbow Six Siege stack Live2Kill has come under the scanner of the South Asian community over a controversial decision to not pay out part of their RainbowSixSiege Qualifiers and Major prize money to one of their former players Bhavya ‘Coffee Addict’ Devgan.
Coffee Addict was part of the active roster for a brief period and played the entire Six Siege Major Open Qualifiers for L2K, with the team qualifying for the Closed Qualifiers. Once the Closed Qualifiers dawned, Coffee was replaced by fellow Indian player Uday Raj ‘Skipper’ Jain, a former ESL India R6 Series Champion. Skipper has since retired from competitive play.
Despite being benched, Coffee took up the role of helping the team build strategies, acting as the coach-cum-analyst-cum-sixth player in the absence of Kumar ‘!onz’ Tathagat, who has since taken up a similar role for Bangladeshi roster Deimos Force.
The team ended up third in the South Asia Closed Qualifiers and raked in a total of 3000 USD in prize money, half of which was received directly as a result of being one of the top two teams in Open Qualifiers. Coffee was soon kicked, with L2K citing an inability to gel in well with the team as the major reason behind their decision to cut him from the squad.
Coffee demanded just 1/5th of what L2K had earned through the Open Qualifier result, but was told that they had already distributed the prize money among the current players of the active roster and that he was not owed anything by L2K.
Sri Lankan player and former Union Gaming star Dulshan ‘Fatalz’ Lakvidu, who seems to be the vocal head at L2K, ended up in a verbal altercation with Coffee, undermining not only his ability but his contribution to the ‘brand’ that is L2K.
The Twitlonger issued by L2K stated that the issue with Coffee was resolved. However, Coffee responded with his own take, along with proofs, in his own Twitlonger, which made the picture pretty clear. Coffee was denied the right to his share of the prize money earned directly as a result of the Open Qualifiers, which amounted to 300 USD, while he should have been at least compensated somewhat, although Coffee has never asked for it, for his contribution to the team as a coach/analyst in !onz’s absence.
A similar incident was observed in the case of Vanquished Paradox Gaming, which has since been resolved. However, since L2K is not an organization but a group of players, ethically, only the 300 USD part can be denounced as an amount that was wrongly distributed among the players, instead of being handed to Coffee, the rightful recipient.
Honestly, the chats are proof enough of how badly Fatalz handled the situation when all he could have done is apologize to Coffee and promised him to hand over the rightful amount soon. In the South Asian Six Siege scene that has finally gotten some deserved attention courtesy of the South Asia Major and other circuit events like The Esports Club and more, such egos will prove to be harmful to the scene.
We are not aware of how L2K thought distributing the prize money among the current roster was fine and how Fatalz thought it fit to not only deprive Coffee of his rightful part of prize money but also humiliate him by iterating he did not even ‘live up to the name of L2K’.
Perhaps, for a team actively looking for an organization to support them, they should have thought of how this entire scenario will portray them in poor light and dampen their own chances of getting the attention of some organizations. In this thriving Six Siege scene, let this L2K incident be a living example that being money-hungry should never be the way to go about things.
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