,fit(cover),quality(100)/https%3a%2f%2ftrackercdn.com%2flegacycdn%2farticles%2fC2C3Untitled-20000.png/image.png)
Gaming and tournament organization Stride Supremacy failed to pay out their contracted players and tournament winners
Stride is a run-of-the-mill garbage tier 3 organization, with no path to profitability or success. When these stories unfold, I can’t exactly say that I am surprised. But given how this affects the broader pro community, and the extent of the exit scam, I would be doing a disservice by not covering it
To provide a clearer picture, let’s create rough timeline on all of the events that unfolded
Early 2019
The year is 2019, a whole decade ago. Stride Supremacy is a tiny bean when compared to the entire Esports landscape (note: it stays like this throughout the story). How does one grow an Esports team? Signing top talent is a good start. That’s exactly what Kizy, founder and owner of Stride, did. One standout recruit was Kura1x, but we’ll get to that later
Mid 2019
The org is booming! The Twitter account is getting dozens of new followers every day and their newest montage just got 5,000 views! Good job, Kizy! But there’s one problem looming over like a grey cloud: finances. You see, starting up an org isn’t as simple as “I want one! I want one!” The amount of capital needed is nothing to be scoffed at; if you don’t have millions in investment - there’s about a 99% chance your team will eventually fail
The most blunt way to put it - Kizy is a fraud. He’s been embellishing his wealth to the entire community, a bad actor if you will. Don’t take this from me, as he would later admit it himself. “I started stride thinking it could be a great thing, yes I over exaggerated the amount [of money] I had,” wrote a seemingly unremorseful glob of flesh
It is at this time where Kura1x comes back into the picture. Kura is an incredibly talented young man, who was attending college while working his way up the Fortnite ranks. Kizy, despite being aware the sham he was pulling, convinced Kura’s mother to allow him to drop out of school. A deadbeat org, which he knew was going to collapse at some point, just conned an innocent family and jeopardize a bright young man’s future
For anyone that didn’t know Kizy my manager helped me drop out of college persuaded my mum and everything he then closed stride but said to me because I dropped out of college that he would setup a direct debit for 6 months for me which he ain’t now gonna do ——->
— Kura???? (@Kura1x) January 3, 2020
Late 2019
Everything looks fine to the naked eye, but everything would begin to collapse behind the scenes. At this time, Stride began to host a European “Stride Cup” tournament, which would invite the top European players from around the world to compete in a set of custom lobbies. Household names such as Ghost Issa would participate - and stream the event
When a tournament organizer hosts an event, they front the prize pool in exchange for the players to promote the event. When some of the best Fortnite players put “Stride Cup” in their stream titles, that’s a form of advertising that gets compensated by the prize pool. Players did their part, and as you can probably imagine - the winners of the Stride Cup saw zero money
Today, 3 January 2020
Kizy deactivated his Twitter account for a short period of time, proving the notion that he was exit scamming. After a few hours, he would rejoin the platform to plead his case. And when I say “plead his case,” I mean that he made himself look like an even bigger clown to the community
He went on a Twitlonger shpiel and we caught this beautiful gem “I had always planned on doing this just never to the extent I did, nothing about stride had actually been legalised. All that we done was wasted players time at stride. We never took a penny from them,” said Kizy, in a frantic frenzy of typing. That one was particularly stupid - and the community knew
"I had always planned on doing this just never to the extent I did"... just yikes.
— Upsilon (@UPSlLON) January 3, 2020
Our friend Kristian at FortniteBRLive summed things up pretty nicely with this list of allegations towards Kizy. I say allegations to protect myself of legal headache; do a few searches and you can confirm the claims independantly
— Kristian - Fortnite esports (@FortniteBRLive) January 3, 2020
Faking giveaways for followers
Contract with strategy to terminate before paying any salary
Convincing players to quit education to represent the org
Not paying out for a cup with top players streaming the org name to thousands
Deactivating minutes before paying players
Using mental health as an excuse for not paying monthly salary
Manipulating young players’ clout and skill to promote yourself
Needless to say, Kizy is not a good person. I sincerely hope that the people negatively affected by this malignant tumor find swift and appropriate resolve. Additionally, I advise any of you young entrepreneurs to look for other opportunities when it comes to money making schemes. The Esports industry is not profitable - and won’t be for a long time. We are in the investment stage, where most companies you see right now are cash flow negative. Yes, most huge organizations such as Liquid and Cloud9 are losing money by being in operation. Over time, they will make a path to profitability… but this won’t come until millions of losses were realized beforehand. I don’t think many (if any) of you reading this have that much capital to weather
To anyone stuck in a similarly unideal situation, please hold yourself to higher standards. Don’t sign contracts you don’t fully understand, and get a lawyer while you’re at it. We hate to cover stories like these. Unfortunately, they happen all too often. Don’t get caught in the crossfire
Follow us on Twitter to keep up to date on all things Fortnite
Note: No legal advice is being offered in this post. This article is for entertainment purposes only
