North and Singularity apparently in contract dispute over player

Two Danish esports organizations have entered a war of words regarding the purchase of a player.

North, the esports branch of Danish soccer team F.C. Copenhagen, has allegedly failed to pay the buyout of its academy player Nicklas Gade from former team Singularity. While gade officially joined the North organization on April 12, Singularity owner Atle Stehouwer claims that gade’s contract with the organization lasts until July.

Speaking to Danish community site dust2.dk, Stehouwer claims that gade was made aware of his buyout ahead of being approached by North. Additionally, Stehouwer has not received any word from North in the past two weeks regarding the matter—which the owner considers to be in poor taste, judging by the following statement to dust2.dk: “This is about the principle that an agreement is an agreement and that, if the bigger teams treat the smaller ones like in this situation, they will have to account for their lack of willingness to dialogue.”

When reached by dust2.dk, North’s chief gaming officer Jakob “Maelk” Toft-Andersen stated that “I do not comment on staff and contractual matters and always comply with the applicable rules.”

Denmark is currently one of the top CS:GO nations in the world, with teams such as Astralis, North, and Heroic doing well in the international scene. Throughout 2017, however, it appears as if the smaller teams in the country have begun disagreeing with the recruitment practices of the more established organizations—with a contract dispute between Heroic and Tricked over star AWPer Jakob “JuGi” Hansen earlier this year.