Mid laner Lee “GBM” Chang-seok claimed today that Turkish League of Legends team, Galatasaray Esports, has failed to pay him his salary in full and is ignoring any of his requests for payment.
The 25-year-old said that his former team had promised him on the first week of October that he would get paid but continued pushing back the date. It’s now December and GBM has claimed that the team is ignoring his requests.
Erol Özmandıracı, a board member of Galatasaray, responded to these accusations later in the day. He denied claims that he was ignoring GBM and said that the veteran mid laner was already paid 50 percent of his salary. The board member also stated GBM would be receiving the rest of his salary “very soon” but failed to provide an exact time frame.
GBM responded by saying that the team lied about having a meeting with the players and claimed the team hasn’t given any additional information on the situation.
GBM’s former teammate jungler Choi “BalKhan” Hyun-jin backed up the mid laner’s claims and said that they were both in debt because of the missing payments. BalKhan and former support Barış “Tolerant” Çepnioğlu have both made their own statements concerning Galatasaray and the missing payments.
All their accounts are similar in that players are not getting their money on time with little transparency from the organization. It will be interesting to see if Riot Games steps in and carries out an investigation to see if these claims are true. Meanwhile, the future of Galatasaray’s League team is up in the air. Several players left the roster this offseason, and with this news now surfacing, it’s unknown if other players will sign with the team for 2020.
