Former Galatasaray player, Lee “GBM” Chang-seok, made public about his issues with the team regarding payments. GBM publicly posted on Twitter to Galatasaray Esports and owner Erom Özmandıracı about the payment issues of him and jungler Choi “BalKhan” Hyeon-jin. Erom responded that they’ve paid 50% of the total salary and that the remaining will also be paid soon.

GBM and BalKhan said that they weren’t getting any answers from the management and that the team was continuously lying and procrastinating. GBM reached out to Inven Global to talk about his current situation.

You tweeted about the delay in payment. What exactly is the current situation?

I joined Galatasaray in May and I received a salary worth a month and a half in August. Afterward, I kept requesting for the unpaid salary, but the team kept responding, ‘we’ll give you next week, we’ll update you next week’. I had no choice but trust that and wait up to now.

Around mid-November, the team said, ‘we’ll end this salary problem within next week’. However, they continued to ignore my messages asking to get my remaining salary, so I decided to make this issue public through social media.

For me, as I said, this was an issue from August. The other player had problems from the beginning of this year.

You mentioned that they’re not keeping their word. What exactly did they promise you?

During mid-October, the team said that they will send all the salary that has been delayed. However, they ignored my messages for about a month and then sent a response that they’ll be solving the problem in mid-November. But now again, they’ve been ignoring all messages.

It’s odd that the owner writes well on social media but just ignores my messages.

Are other teammates in the same situation? Why did you stand up in the front?

Our jungler, BalKhan also didn’t receive anything since August. GOdbro and Tolerant said that they also haven’t been getting their payment for 8 months.

Is this an issue in the Turkish Champions League (TCL) with other teams as well?

According to a close Turkish player, the league didn’t think of this as much of an issue for the past 5 years. I heard that there have been similar problems in other leagues besides Turkey, like Brazil. Seeing what happened recently in the Southeast Asian League and the punishment, I think other leagues should be alert of this problem as well.

What do you think the reason is that it happens often?

First, the players are young and don’t have any references. They don’t know what to do, and even if they take it to court, there’s a high chance they wouldn’t benefit. As for me, since I might not join a TCL team, so I should take a risk from the player's side.

What other things are you planning to do?

I will keep requesting what I rightly earned until I do.

There are issues regarding this matter in other regions as well, even in the LCK, about the unfair contracts. Do you have anything to say?

Riot should strengthen rules regarding this problem. I wish they would protect the players so that there aren’t any more players suffering from such issues. There hasn’t been a single time that I felt that I was being protected during my 7-year-career.