OG fails to pay prize pool money to their Dota 2 players

Sources close to OG informed rdy.gg that the organisation is due to pay prize pool money for some of its former players for more than a year now.

Under the condition of anonymity, we’ve been able to speak and confirm with multiple sources close to OG that there are several issues within the organisation, including failure to pay the prize pool money from two of the biggest Dota 2 tournaments of 2024 and nepotism practices.

ESL One Birmingham and Esports World Cup 2024 payments on hold by OG

OG earned $85,000 by placing fourth at ESL Birmingham 2024 and $100,000 on the back of a 9th/12th place finish at Esports World Cup (Riyadh Masters) 2024. The money went straight to the company bank account and never reached the players, several sources told us.

Moreover, we’ve confirmed that a couple of players have done their due diligence and repeatedly requested their prize pools via official channels within the organisation throughout 2024 and 2025. Their inquiries into what happened to the money had either never been answered, mostly during 2024, or when the new OG CEO, Daniel Sanders, started to reply, the answers varied and were never what anyone in the given situation would like to hear.

According to our sources, the people who are owed the money were told on one occasion that OG is in a full process of investment, and once that will be finalised, the prize pools will be paid, but there was no ETA for when that would happen. While nobody could certainly confirm it with us, the supposition is that the players’ prize pool share was invested by OG in their own business.

On another occasion, some of the people owned were told that the company is having cashflow problems and that the revenue is used for running the business. However, Sanders promised them that the payments would be made when it would be possible. While that never happened, the same CEO went more recently from promising that the situation would be solved in 60 to 90 days to saying that the payments will be on hold until the last trimester of 2025.

Nepotism and the ivory tower

We tried to understand how the two-time The International Champions and co-owners of OG, Johan "N0tail" Sundstein and Sébastien "Ceb" Debs would tolerate a situation like this, especially that through their careers they’ve been victims of the same practice. We’ve been told by numerous people formerly affiliated with OG that it’s very likely that they are not even fully aware of what is going on.

Additionally, we learned through the conversations we had with our sources that throughout this period, it’s been impossible to get a hold of N0tail and even Ceb, despite the players living at times in the OG Sunflower House from Lisbon. The absurdity deepened when more sources told us that N0tail hasn’t even accepted Discord friend requests from some of OG’s former players and has never shown up in person, except for the initial welcoming at his house of a new roster coming to bootcamp or film some content for OG.

While it turns out that N0tail and Ceb are impossible to get a hold of, “the company itself has gone down a disgusting route of nepotism and ripping off young people,” one of our sources confessed to us.

A quick search into the Danish company records shows that OG is currently co-owned by N0tail, while his sister, Silja Sundstein, was promoted this year from Head of Finance to Chief Operating Officer (COO) at OG. At the same time, OG has also appointed Eivind Sundstein, Johan’s and Silja's father, as Chairman of the Board. More so, Daniel Sanders, who became OG’s CEO in January this year, is also Silja’s boyfriend.

“It’s just a joke, people are leaving as quickly as they can,” another source close to OG told us when trying to understand the ropes of how the organisation is run these days.

We tried to reach out to N0tail and Ceb, OG co-owners, and to Daniel Sander, OG CEO, to ask for a comment on the delayed prize pools and the accusations of nepotism. We contacted all three of them on July 10, 2025, but our emails haven’t been answered by the time we published this article.