Astralis Potentially Under Threat of Legal Action for Sixth Player

Astralis are in the midst of working on signing a sixth man to their roster - up and coming Danish player es3tag. The report initially came in from journalist neL, who discussed that despite FunPlus Phoenix purchasing the Heroic roster to play in the FLASHPOINT league, Astralis had managed to acquire Patrick "es3tag" Hansen.

Although the report alleges that FPX are yet to pay the franchise fee, this point was disputed in an official Flashpoint QnA session where the trio of Thorin, Dan Fiden, and MonteCristo said that there was no such thing as a ‘trial period’ for any team to sign on. As such, it is unknown as to whether or not FPX will be choosing to stay within FLASHPOINT (or even CS:GO for that matter.)

According to a comment given by the Heroic CEO to HLTV, they are making legal preparations to take action against Astralis. neL’s report says that the move from the Heroic brand to FPX hadn’t quite happened as far as the legal framework is concerned, and the implication is that Astralis has pinched a player out in transit so to say.

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With es3tag being one of the - if not the - star players of the current FPX lineup, this will be a blow hard to recover from. It seems a strange move for Astralis to make in an ecosystem where rulesets are not currently in place to allow 6 people to actually play, especially when you consider the Louvre Agreement released by ESL where § 4 states that teams are required to participate in events with their “best lineups.”

Short of rule changes coming through which make an exemption for teams who now want 6-man rosters, this implies that es3tag would consistently be a benched player who only plays during server time unless a player would want to drop out.

It’s yet unclear about the motivations of es3tag given that fact, and we’ll have to wait to see how Astralis, ESL, and Heroic react to this. There have been reports and implications of improper contract dealings in the past (most recently with rosters like Cr4zy having players with unfulfilled contractual obligations according to their CEO) but we have yet to see legal action materialize in CS:GO.

Heroic making a legal move would be a major milestone, and comes right at a point where Astralis could potentially be left reeling and struggling for capital amidst impending global economic crisis. If not contractually finalized, this deal still holds a chance of falling apart.

Image via Dreamhack Flickr