Regarding the forced withdrawal of VP.Prodigy from WePlay Academy League

We learned today that the VP.Prodigy roster has been pulled out of the competition from the WePlay Academy League Season 4, where the squad was supposed to play under the tag Outlaws.  

There are two sides to this situation: legal and reputational.  

Legal-wise, WePlay is violating our contract as the tournament organizer doesn’t have the right for one-way termination of our agreement. The notification of the contract’s termination they sent us today was an example of legal illiteracy: it appeals to an inapplicable contractual clause (alleging that we can’t provide proof of not being a subject to sanctions) and suggests to consider February 26th to be the date of the contract’s termination.  

Only yesterday WePlay publicly stated that “none of the members of the roster are on the personal international or state sanctions lists for their activities.” The same is true for Virtus.pro legal entity, therefore WePlay doesn't have any legal grounds to terminate the contract and pull us out of the competition.    

Reputational-wise, we would like to point out the difference between this company’s public statements and their real motives.  

WePlay’ publicly stated: “Our company doesn’t have any contracts with Russian-based organizations, therefore we are pulling Outlaws out of the competition.” It’s not true and that’s why the company is appealing to some mythical sanctions in the notification of the contract’s termination.  

A brief look at the list of participating teams at WePlay Academy League Season 4 is enough to realize that WePlay is paying lip service to their commitments not to partner with Russian-based organizations. The key factors in their decision making are personal sympathies and antipathies. 

We urge the VP.Prodigy fans to cheer up as we have a packed schedule for the upcoming months anyway.