I recently did an interview with the president of the Howling eSports association. Viktor Bušić used this chance to explain his team’s situation behind the scenes during the seventh season of EBL. But, it looks like he forgot something..

My interview with Viktor received a lot of backlashes. There were all kinds of comments, and the former Howling eSports coach stated that the organization owes money to the players. It seems that Howling eSports owes over €4.000 to their former squad. So me and Jonas “Hidon” Vraa, the ex-head coach, decided to do an interview in order to reveal the other side of the story. Hidon revealed details about the organization’s behavior towards the players and showed me proof that further confirmed his claims.

Before the beginning of the season, Hidon was approached by Dejan “KUX” Kukolj, the General Manager of the organization. After a couple of days of negotiating, they formed a team that looked amazing on paper. The former Howling coach said that he was looking forward to coaching those five players much more than actually playing in the biggest regional League of Legends league. The first problems arose at the very beginning:

“The ADC of the team, Rolandas “Optimas” Vincalovičius, notified me that the contracts that Howling made were terrible and very scam. I did not get to read the contracts yet, but after Optimas notified me about the contracts I took a look at them, and they looked horrible. They were by far the worst contracts i have ever seen. After legit 3-4 days of making them change the contracts, I decided to sign, because of the players. I really wanted to work with them.”

A recording that was sent to me by Hidon contains a conversation between the players and a member of the staff going by HES Bioshan. On the recording, I could hear Optimas say that the organization wasn’t replying to the messages of the players for over two weeks in order to force them to sign the contracts when there wouldn’t be another choice. A couple of days after signing the contracts, the owner of the organization had told Optimas that he was worthless and didn’t deserve the money because he tried to change the contracts, Hidon told me.

In my recent interview, Viktor stated that the atmosphere in the team was really bad after the team suffered a couple of losses in a row. Hidon disagreed with the owner, saying that the players weren’t disappointed at all after their loss against CR4ZY because CR4ZY were the clear favorites for winning the whole league. Hidon said that the atmosphere in the team was good and that the players only needed to spend more time playing with each other in order to improve. However, after this loss, Viktor demanded a change in the team. After a short meeting, the organization gave three choices to the players:

(A direct quote from the interview)

“1. We get a new Top.
(Darkness had already said in the beginning of the season that he just wanted to play for fun this split, but he saw potential in the roster and decided to tryhard. He was getting more and more tilted that we could not build better Mid / Jungle synergy. I blame myself on not being able to coach them well enough, but after all, it was my first split as a coach, and I am experiencing these issues for the first time.

2. We sub myself in as a jungler, since we knew that we needed a shotcaller who is decisive, and thats what I am known for as a player. We decided to go with this option, even though I never really played the game recently and was kinda washed up at the time.

3. We disband the team.”

Viktor also stated that at the beginning of the season, one of the players started drifting away from the rest of the team and that it made the team’s situation even worse. Hidon told me that that player could be Viktor “Fallen” Kordanovski or even Rok “Darkness” Tekavec, judging by the fact that he was starting to get more and more tilted by the day.

After a period of bad results, the organization decided to terminate the contracts with the players before even warning the team. As stated in the contracts, the organization is not allowed to terminate the contracts if the players don’t break any of the rules listed in the actual contract. The players know that they haven’t broken a single rule and that this decision by Howling is illegal and that it doesn’t fit the conditions stated in the contracts. This basically means that Howling broke the law and the players are able to sue them if they choose to.

One of the interesting things during this conversation was the fact that HES Bioshan stated that Viktor Bušić was no longer a part of the organization and that the players signed their contracts with him, and not with Howling eSports. Shortly after this, Viktor changed his Discord name to HES Crolaf (previously HES Pappi) in a pitiful attempt to hide that he is still a part of the organization, according to the players.

However, the following picture shows that Viktor is still the president of the association at the time of the termination of Hidon’s contract:

How was the communication between the members of the team and the organization during the season? Are you in contact with them still concerning the unpaid money?

“After we finished making the contracts, they offered me €700 as a coach, not a player since i never signed the players’ contract. They can never hold me accountable for everything that I did as a player.

The members on the team could talk well with each other about everything that was not game-related, in game-related, we had a lot of issues in terms of communication. But I was never able to fix that as a coach, so I hold myself accountable on that, and I will learn from it.

The organization has not responded to mine or Optimas’ messages. Allegedly the owner was kicked from Howling, but I can see that that is not the case.”

Except for the illegal termination of contracts, the owner of the organization, Viktor Bušić threatened the assistant coach of the team, Nias Vanwalleghem. Nias was the assistant, and later on, the head coach of the team. He stated that the organization had a huge impact in the disbandment of the team and that the players would have had played the rest of the league if there wasn’t so much pressure being put on them. As you can read in the screenshot below, Viktor threatens that he will make sure that the legal action significantly impacts Nias’ personal life. Fortuna is also currently doing an investigation for the current situation, and there is a chance that the police may get involved, depending on how the whole situation develops.

Hidon believes that with the starting five the team would have had a great result in the league. He also believes that with time, the roster could contest CR4ZY and reach the playoffs, but he doesn’t want to state anything as that kind of scenario isn’t possible anymore. The former Howling coach told me that after 7-8 rounds of playing under big pressure, the players completely lost their will to play but were ready to respect the contracts and play out the rest of the season to the best of their abilities. The starting Howling roster had a great atmosphere and all the players were ready to improve their game, states the Danish Head Coach.

Hidon had only good things to say about CR4ZY. He said that they punish enemy drafts well, that they understand how to play the map 10 times better than the other teams in the league, and he wishes them good luck in the EU masters tournament.

We ended the interview with a short statement from the coach, who had something to say about his team and the Howling eSports organization:

“Life lesson is learned, and I am sure every player/coach grows from this. It is of course sad that this happened, but it is only about how you look at it. We just have to grow as people/players from this experience and I am sure that the players can reach the goals they want if they really wanna go all-in on it.

And also, don’t sign with the Howling Esports people, they are a bunch of scammers, and I wish no players to go through what we did since it was insanely stressful.”

The recording shows a conversation between HES Bioshan and the ex-Howling players where Bioshan is telling the players that Viktor Bušić was kicked from the organization, and they try manipulating and scaring the players in order to not pay them their hard-earned salaries. The recording was sent to us by Hidon and is also leaked online for those of you who want to hear it.