Gaimin Gladiators withdrew from The International 2025

Valve officially released a statement about the withdrawal of Gaimin Gladiators from The International 2025 two weeks before the tournament:

«On Sunday, the Gaimin Gladiators organization informed us that they are withdrawing their team from The International. After speaking directly with the invited players, we learned that they were unable to reach an agreement with their organization that would allow them to participate in the tournament. We are currently in the process of finding a suitable replacement team».

Indeed, recently everything in the team was not so smooth: first, there were rumors about the departure of Cy- and Ace from the team, then Gaimin Gladiators players suffered a tilt defeat in 13 minutes at FISSURE Universe: Episode 6, after which Malady decided to skip the next games allegedly due to illness, the team bundle was not loaded into the game on time, and now Gaimin Gladiators are withdrawing from The International 2025 — everything was leading to this.

The achievements of Gaimin Gladiators this year are presented below:

Over the year, the organization went from top-2 at The International 2024 to such a desperate step as withdrawing from the main tournament of the year.

The former manager of Gaimin Gladiators — Jak2oO Porotnikov commented on the possible reasons for what happened:

«What exactly happened I don't know, but there is confidence in a certain sequence of events, namely: - Some time ago there was an insider that coach Cy- was being shaved, but knowing that he is a close friend of Ace and tOfu + very warm relations with Quinn, I conclude that this thesis came from the org (they have already done this with me and Anton). - Most likely, the friction between the team and the org reached a limit on the basis of dubious results and maintaining rich conditions for the team. - The org comes to the coach and persistently asks to stand on their side to suppress the growing discontent of the team - The coach tells the team about this - The team asks questions to the org - The org does not bend and stands firm - The players, fed up with such treatment, stand in a counter stance - Finita».

The manager of Team Spirit — Korb3n also did not stay aside:

So, I am deciphering the official comment from Valve. The players had irreconcilable disagreements with the Gaimin Gladiators organization, probably in the form of an ultimatum. Gaimin Gladiators withdrew their roster from The International 2025. The players scheduled a meeting with Valve and tried to negotiate to play without the organization's tag, as Valve has always been on the players' side since the Fnatic and Era conflict. But apparently, Gaimin Gladiators have active contracts with the players, so Valve could not help them. Or they simply decided not to interfere, which creates a precedent. What kind of disagreements arose, I think we will find out today closer to the evening or tomorrow. The situation is still unclear, maybe the org forced the players to sign new contracts for 10 years, or maybe the players came and said: «we want a salary of 50 thousand dollars each, or we are not going to The International 2025»

The International 2025 will take place from September 4 to September 14 in Hamburg. At the moment, the prize pool is slightly less than two million dollars.