Rainbow Six Siege’s North American scene has alighted once again with controversy over the alleged non-payment of players from Mirage, with many players taking a direct shot at Ubisoft over their inaction on the matter.
Mirage is a Canadian esports org owned by the tournament organizer Northern Arena. The org currently holds just a single lineup in Siege’s North American League as a Ubisoft-partnered team, receiving in-game revenue-shared skins.
Despite qualifying for the Rainbow Six Jönköping Major last November and being represented by several massive names in the NA scene, Mirage is best known in Rainbow Six for years of reports from players of lack of payment. Multiple iterations of the Mirage lineup have tweeted complaints about wages and R6 Share skin money being owed to them with seemingly no remedy.
Now this topic was brought to the limelight once again when ex-Mirage player Paul “Hyper” Kontopanagiotis shared a series of Discord messages between himself and Mirage’s owner and CEO, Carl-Edwin Michel, asking for owed money.
This led to a flood of similar Tweets from other ex-Mirage members, with ex-coach from Mirage’s 2020 lineup, Tanner “Forceful” McHattie, sharing his own Discord messages with the CEO on Twitter that painted a very similar picture.
Another ex-player, Robert “Melted” Kormylo, claimed that each member of his team is owed over $10k while management and staff are owed upwards of $15k. Ex-tier three professional player, Dylan “Whiskerzz” Simoneau, meanwhile, claimed that non-payment issues dated back to Northern Arena’s running of the Canadian Nationals before Mirage’s entrance into the NA League.
Accusations against Northern Arena’s CEO have also involved the NA women’s tournament, Project Eris. The tournament’s founder, Astraea, shared further Discord messages with Carl-Edwin on Twitter, where she claims he attempted to sneakily remove all of Northern Arena’s financial obligations to the tournament they were sponsoring without prior negotiation.
Mirage and Northern Arena’s apparent financial misdeeds have been an ongoing talking point within the NA scene for over a year, with complaints bubbling to the surface every few months. Now, however, conversations have shifted to focus on Ubisoft’s role in the matter.
Questions have been raised by current and ex-players about why Mirage has been allowed to field a North American League team and receive direct support from Ubisoft via the revenue-shared skins when these allegations have been very publicly known.
Seth “supr” Hoffman, the current general manager of the Soniqs and one of the best-known personalities in NA, was one of the most prominent voices in this call, tweeting “Truthfully I don’t know how Ubisoft can continue to turn a blind eye toward this sort of treatment from an organization within the R6 Share program.”
Ex-world champion and Rainbow Six streamer George “KingGeorge” Kassa echoed this sentiment, tweeting “It is honestly disgusting that Ubisoft let’s dogshit orgs keep their PL spot and not pay their players repeatedly… KICK THEM OUT!”.
As well as receiving half of all proceeds from the sale of the Mirage’s three in-game skins and two operator backgrounds, 20 percent of proceeds from the sale of the gold-colored R6 SHARE Esports Sets are split across all the partnered teams, meaning money is going to Mirage that would have otherwise gone to other teams.
Previously, Ubisoft did take action against the Japanese organisation Nora Rengo after players claimed that the team’s owner and CEO, Yasuhiro “kizoku” Nishi, had been embezzling the team’s R6 Share money and not paying the players what was owed. Ubisoft initially barred kizoku from involvement in the Rainbow Six team’s operations before outright banning the org from all competitions seven months later.
While very similar accusations have arisen about Mirage and its owner, no response of any kind has been seen from Ubisoft so far. In contrast, Mirage’s current coach Adam “Drip” Kolodkin, claimed in two separate tweets that Ubisoft had reassured him that Mirage’s prior player commitments had been paid, a claim which seems to be very inaccurate. Dot Esports has reached out to Ubisoft for comment but didn’t receive any at the time of publishing.
For Northern Arena, these accusations are not uncommon, with League of Legends broadcasters also complaining about lack of payment from last Nov., while two staff members from Mirage’s League of Legends team sued the organization in March due to late payments. One staff member alleged they received just 20 percent of their total salary while another claimed that they have not been paid for six months.
For Rainbow Six, meanwhile, this controversy comes just one week after fellow Canadian organization Parabellum Esports laid off its entire staff, leaving the future of its own partnered NA League team in doubt. Furthermore, the league has also seen TSM, Astralis, and XSET all leave within the last six months, while just M80 joined the scene.
Related: Rainbow Six faces ’embarrassing’ 7-team NA League as Parabellum’s fate looks secured
If Mirage is removed from the league and no replacement can be found, stage two of the NA League could be run with just six teams, four of which would qualify for the subsequent Rainbow Six Major in the USA—a far cry from the planned 10-team league.
Rainbow Six esports is currently in an extended off-season, with Mirage not set to play until September, while no top-tier teams will be in action until the Gamers8 tournament on July 13. Until then, fans just have to wait for further announcements from Ubisoft as the NA scene continues to teeter on the edge.
