When if finally got official that elfitajja were leaving his former team hoorai behind, the drama extended.
The GosuGamers exclusive statement from D.Devil proved to fail on making sure every part of the elfitajja transfer would respect the contract. When elfitajja finally decided to still join Gravitas D.Devil and hoorai decided to give yet another press release.
- hoorai.XQ does have a legally binding player contract with Samuli Sihvonen, he says.
The situation is pretty clear: hoorai.XQ does have a legally binding player contract with Samuli Sihvonen. We neither broke the regulations stated in the contract nor made use of the player transfer provisions. This means that elfittaja has no right to dissolve his contract and become active for Gravitas Gaming.
Any claims about hoorai not having fulfilled its contractual obligations towards elfittaja do not have any fundament as we can easily prove. Furthermore, we did not provide him any reasons not to be satisfied with hoorai's support as we successfully put a lot of effort into giving him the opportunity to improve as a player.
Gravitas' transfer fee offer was not adequate at all, so we made clear that, under these conditions, we are not willing to let elfittaja go. Of course, it is really disappointing to see that Gravitas decided to present him despite knowing that he's still under contract with another esports organization, but let this be their business.
As a matter of fact, a clan like hoorai has to be able to rely on its players and the legal force of the contracts to be successful in the long run. Therefore, it is of utmost importance for us to make sure that our contracts are respected. As soon as elfittaja becomes active for Gravitas Gaming in any tournaments, we will draw the corresponding consequences which include barring the player from tournament play and more.
There is no reason why we should give in to Gravitas Gaming: We do not have any difficulties with fullfiling elfittaja's demands and, as an esports organization, are not inferior to them in any way.
As if this wouldn't be enough, the management of Gravitas decides to claim the opposit, and that hoorai did not fulfill their part of the contract.
Recently Gravitas Gaming proudly announced an addition to our organization in Samuli 'elfittaja' Sihvonen. In October of 2007 elfittaja signed a contract with Jerome Evans, the representative of hoorai (as hoorai are not a registered German entity). During this time we were seeking to sign a quality Undead player, and ended up speaking with Samuli about joining. Although the contract was not set to expire until June of 2008, Samuli informed us that he had been missing payments for salary, and had not yet been reimbursed for travel to an event.
We tried at first to settle a deal with Jerome to transfer Samuli. After some very abrupt and rude conversations we took his contract to a lawyer in Hamburg and informed him of the details. Very quickly we were told that both the illegally large fines in the contract, and a lack of salary payment invalidated the contract. Samuli then gave notice (a courtesy, not a legal requirement) that if they did not pay him the entire missing salary in full he would legally terminate his contract. This prompted hoorai to start a public misinformation campaign where they blamed Samuli and claimed to have done absolutely nothing wrong. To this day Samuli has yet to receive the entire payment entitled to him.
We've tried numerous times to deal with this issue privately with hoorai, but they continue to insist on bringing it to a public forum. After consulting with our legal council on a number of occasions before signing Samuli, we are more than confident that both Gravitas and Samuli stand on the correct side of this issue. We hope that hoorai will soon see this for what it really is, and won't continue to libel our team and player.
Yet again, D.Devil insists that what Gravitas has to say is not true.
Once again, we would like to stress that claims about elfi not receiving his money are not true. Also, it is not true that we wanted to take this into public as elfittaja simply left our team accounts making it necessary for us to vindicate ourselves towards the press.
