G2 Esports sues NFT platform Bondly for more than $5 million

19 April 2022

When Germany-based European esports organization G2 Esports announced their exciting partnership with end-to-end NFT platform Bondly back in June of last year, everything seemed like rainbows and sunshine for the two parties involved. The idea was for Bondly to create a series of NFTs based on G2 Esports in return for a total of $5,25 million plus full access to G22 intellectual property for a period of two years, the running time of the contract between the two companies. Things seem to have taken a very different turn of late though, as G2 Esports has now sued Bondly for breaking their contractual promises.

$5,2 million lawsuit

The news of the G2 Esports multi-million-dollar lawsuit became news when the official complaint was filed with the city of Los Angeles on the 16th of March. In the file, G2 explains that the agreement was for Bondly to get access to G2’s intellectual property in return for a G2 NFT series and a payment of $5,25 million in total. The payment was structured as following, with an annual payment of $2 million for the right over two years plus an advance of $1,25 million.

G2 Esports further explains that the issues with Bondly started arising soon after reception of the first invoice, as the partner indicated that it would not be able to fulfill all of the agreed upon conditions after all. The NFT platform told G2 that it wanted to find out who was responsible for the conditions in their contract, after which they tried to pause and even end the contract prematurely. At this point, G2 Esports decided to take them to court.

The esports organization accuses Bondly, among other things, of premeditation in her complaint. “Bondly and its agents knew that their representations were false when they made them, or made the representations recklessly and without regard to their truth”, writes G2 in their filing, “They knew that could not perform, but cunningly waited until G2 had publicly announced its partnership with Bondly to its millions of fans to reap the benefits of publicity through the highly valuable G2 brand”.

Certain sense of irony

From G2’s side, the lawsuit is not without irony, as it was the owner of the organization, Carlos “ocelote” Rodriguez Santiago, who announced the partnership with Bondly in no uncertain terms. “It’s easy to hate on NFTs due to previous catastrophic cash grab attempts from weasels”, the Spaniard tweeted in June of last year, “We are doing this for the right reasons and will be around for decades to come”. His Tweet has since been removed, though several publications online managed to find it when the news about the G2 Esports lawsuit came out. More news regarding the G2 Esports vs. Bondly lawsuit in LA will surely follow over the coming weeks and months.