Canadian esports organization Gaimin Gladiators is suing four out of the five members of its Dota 2 roster, with the court records themselves appearing on the official database of the Ontario court system. Quinn “Quinn” Callahan, Marcus “Ace” Christensen, Erik “tOfu” Engel, and Alimzhan “watson” Islambekov have been charged by the organization itself for $7.5 million Canadian dollars in damages, with the case itself having been opened on September 26th.

Gaimin Gladiators files $7.5 million lawsuit against players over contract disputes

This follows the whole debacle where Gaimin Gladiators withdrew from The International 2025 (TI14) entirely, just before the tournament began. Quinn himself stated prior to their withdrawal that the roster was willing to represent the Gaimin Gladiators organization at TI14, but were barred from doing so — presumably due to contract disputes between the roster and president Nick Cuccovillo.

According to tweets posted by Cuccovillo, the players in question wanted to play at TI14 as an independent squad, but could not reach a settlement in time for the world championship event that would effectively release them from their contracts with Gaimin Gladiators. The issue simply ended with the entire team skipping out on the event instead, eventually being replaced by Chinese team Yakult Brothers (known as Yakutou Brothers at TI14).

Sponsorship woes

The filing of the lawsuit was reported on today by esports journalist Richard Lewis, whose sources claim that there were breaches of contract that the organization wished to resolve before acquiescing to the players’ requests to release them from their obligations as such. Apparently, the players were to take a salary cut as punishment for “missing several sponsor deliverables”.

For Quinn in particular, an incident where he made comments about a player he encountered in ranked matchmaking back in October 2024 supposedly cost the organization a renewal opportunity with a major sponsor which purportedly was worth as much as $3 million. The comments in question were discriminatory in nature, particularly against Russian people.

Quinn has a well-documented track record of poor behavior in Dota 2, sometimes while livestreaming matches such as in the case of the incident mentioned above. Naturally, the comments he made were unacceptable for a player officially representing an esports organization, so the punishment that was apparently forthcoming would have been justified.

Waiting for reply

He eventually apologized for his actions, saying “sorry to anyone that was offended or hurt”. However, Gaimin’s former sponsor Winline just happens to be a Russian bookmaker, so their supposed refusal to continue sponsoring Gaimin would definitely track in this case. Furthermore, according to Richard Lewis’ sources, the rest of the players involved in the lawsuit supposedly “failed to meet multiple social media deliverables”, of which there were “several dozen” instances.

Lewis reached out to Gaimin Gladiators’ management for comment regarding this, to which they responded that Quinn’s comments “resulted in the loss of a sponsorship in the mid-seven figures”. They went on to say that they also noted five instances of similar behavior from him in the past, as well as the aforementioned unfulfilled social media obligations from the rest of the players.

The players themselves have yet to respond in kind, though Lewis has since contacted them to get their thoughts as well. As this is a developing story, we will be updating this article as more details surface.