How Clutchain’s esports project came crashing down

“We’re not just building an app. We’re building a team.”

When Clutchain ventured into esports on April 2 with the signing of Pigeons, the women’s top team featuring the core of the former Imperial Valkyries squad, their commitment to the scene seemed genuine.

Six days later, that feeling was only reinforced as Clutchain unveiled a francophone men’s roster headlined by two-time HLTV Top 20 player Adil “⁠ScreaM⁠” Benrlitom and former Vitality pair Nabil “⁠Nivera⁠” Benrlitom and Jayson “⁠Kyojin⁠” Nguyen Van.

While the women’s roster announcement was met with overwhelming positivity, the reaction to the men’s lineup was the polar opposite, with many on social media branding Clutchain a “scam” project and slamming the players for their involvement.

The reason was a March 21 video posted on YouTube by Nyouz, a French content creator and owner of a skin website. Titled ‘Attention à ce nouveau projet CS (très suspect)’ [‘Beware of this new CS project (very suspicious)’], the video claimed there were a “few red flags” surrounding Clutchain — including its loose Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, its premium subscription offer, the €96 founders’ pack designed to support the development of the Clutchain Resort, and other projects tied to its founder that also featured gamified reward systems.

“The most plausible theory I have is that they will do what Caspian [Editor’s Note: This is a reference to Jeromy Walsh, the co-founder, CEO, and creative director of Chronices of Elyria, a planned MMORPG that has been in development since 2016] did,” Nyouz said.

“They’ll start to build or promote their gaming house, say they have huge problems with construction, or that the service providers have not delivered and there are delays, and that there’s no money left. The site will close, but they will have been earning a salary for half a year, a year, two years… and everyone who bought founders’ packs will never have access to anything.

“The descriptions are very vague. They don’t commit to anything and rid themselves of any liablity.”

In essence, Clutchain is a mobile app with a rewards system that tracks Counter-Strike performance by connecting to players’ FACEIT accounts. As players collect kills, complete quests, play mini-games, and climb leaderboards, they earn Greens, Clutchain’s own currency, which can be used to fund ecological projects, such as planting trees and clearing plastic from oceans.

Each real-world impact action generates a Clutch, a separate reward currency exchangeable for entries into bi-monthly lotteries with 60 prizes on offer, including a €2,500 gaming PC. A premium subscription tier also offers boosted rewards and other perks.

That, however, is only one part of Clutchain’s business model. The company also plans to build “luxury gaming capsules,” for two or five people, across several locations worldwide, bookable through the app. Manufactured in China by a local partner, the capsules are fully equipped with gaming computers and have RGB lights both inside and outside.

E-Blue Corporation is Clutchain’s Hong Kong-based partner responsible for manufacturing the gaming capsules. Promotional materials for the capsules were shared with HLTV by the players.

Clutchain says that the first gaming capsules will serve as a proof of concept, after which it plans to expand into a franchise model. Landowners will be able to host capsules on their property in exchange for a percentage of the revenue generated. The “Clutchain community,” as described in promotional materials, can fund capsules on different locations through a “digital block system,” with Clutchain promising a target annual return of up to 10 percent.

It was a different kind of project, with names popular enough to grab the community’s attention. But just five months on, the players are chasing the money they’re owed.

Talks between the men’s team and Clutchain began around six months before the announcement. The players were introduced to Clutchain founder David Sacha by head coach Amir, who had met Sacha on FACEIT a few years earlier. Sacha then flew the six of them to PGL Masters Bucharest so they could meet in person and discuss Clutchain and its plans. The team’s presence at the event also allowed Sacha to network with industry figures.

Several things struck the players as odd from the outset, a team source told HLTV. Chakib Bouda, Sacha’s business partner, didn’t seem interested in being publicly associated with Clutchain at the time, making no mention of the project on his LinkedIn. Details about how many bootcamp capsules they planned to build kept shifting drastically. And during the PGL event in Bucharest, Sacha told the players not to film him while recording videos.

The players knew it was a risk, but with no other offers on the table, they agreed to join Clutchain, who committed to a €30,000 monthly budget — split evenly between salaries for the six team members (players and coach) and expenses for LAN events and bootcamps.

At the HLTV Awards in Belgrade, ScreaM broke the news that he was about to return to action. “It’s definitely players that people know about,” he said. “It’s going to be a French team.”

The contracts came into effect on January 15. But because Clutchain’s app was still under development, the team’s official unveiling had to wait. Only in mid-March did the players start laying out breadcrumbs on social media.

“Excited to join a new CS2 project,” ScreaM wrote on X. “I didn’t come back just to play. I’m part of the team behind Clutchain. Nine pro players join as ambassadors.”

Around that same time, some of the players on Pigeons also announced they were joining Clutchain as ambassadors. Sacha had approached the team on X on February 11 after the players said they were still looking for an organization to represent. ScreaM’s involvement in Clutchain, the team told HLTV, assuaged their concerns about the project.

“Joined the Clutchain project as an ambassador together with ScreaM,” Alexandra “⁠twenty3⁠” Timonina wrote on X. “Can you guess the other eight ambassadors?”

The ambassador role suggested a deep connection between the two teams and Clutchain, though HLTV knows they all signed standard player contracts. Meanwhile, Sacha had asked ScreaM and Nivera to write “co-founder of Clutchain” on their X bios, promising they would be looked after post-retirement and receive a cut of the proceeds from the bootcamp capsule planned for Belgium, the source said.

The release of Nyouz’s video shook all the players, especially ScreaM and Nivera, who, as self-described “co-founders,” were the faces of the project and became the main targets of criticism.

“ScreaM and Nivera went crazy when they heard that,” the source said. “A lot of people were saying, ‘Oh, ScreaM and stuff. Really disappointing.’

“They went to David and asked, ‘What is this shit’?”

The relationship with Clutchain instantly soured. The players on both teams urged Sacha to go public and clear up any confusion about the project, the people behind it, and the role of the so-called ambassadors, but he refused. Instead, he asked ScreaM to fire up his stream and handle the explaining himself. The Belgian star declined.

The players stood their ground, refusing to promote Clutchain until their demands were met. ScreaM and Nivera also removed “co-founder” from their X bios. They were now, as per the contracts they signed, just players.

On April 9, one day after the men’s team was unveiled, Clutchain dropped a few posts on X with basic info about the app, the capsules and the esports teams. Four days later, Sacha broke his silence and showed his face, though many of the points raised in the video remained unaddressed.

Still, the relationship between the two parties continued to deteriorate. Only a few days after playing their first match covered on HLTV — a 13-7 win over MOUZ NXT in Tipsport Conquest of Prague —, the players received their March salary — the last payment they would ever get from Clutchain.

Meanwhile, the women’s team, Clutchain fe, qualified for Rainhas do Clutch, a LAN event in Brazil from June 23-26 offering roughly $30,000 in prize money and $20,000 in club share. It marked the biggest LAN tournament for women’s CS since the shuttering of ESL Impact, a blow that had prompted most organizations to abandon the scene.

Around that time, Victoria “⁠tory⁠” Kazieva and twenty3 were due to fly to China to shoot promotional material for Clutchain’s capsules, which were being manufactured there. Two days before the travel date, Sacha cancelled the plans, saying the capsules weren’t ready.

Before the trip to Brazil, the team was supposed to have a bootcamp to prepare for the event. Sacha insisted it take place in the Netherlands, but it wasn’t possible because there was not enough time for tory to apply for a Schengen visa.

He then agreed to send the team to Belgrade, only to cancel the bootcamp one week before.

“He was kind of playing with our emotions, saying, ‘Oh, the sponsors are not happy with you if you’re going to do a bootcamp in Serbia,” the team told HLTV in a group call.

“That was not even our fault because he didn’t give us enough info and time for tory to get a visa. We told him we weren’t going to do a bootcamp [in the Netherlands] without our IGL.”

Making matters worse, the team traveled to Brazil without having received their May salaries. Sacha, then in China overseeing capsule production, wrote to one of the players: “I will be back in Europe on July 2, then I can use personal money to make the transfer. At least you have my promise that I will pay.”

The missing payment and the suboptimal practice conditions didn’t stop him from telling the players how crucial it was to win Rainhas do Clutch to keep sponsors and investors happy, the team said.

Clutchain fe ended up falling to MIBR fe 0-2 in the first round of the single-elimination tournament before beating Atrix in the third-place decider.

“It had a really negative impact on us, you know?” the team said. “It was very demotivating. Imagine trying to deal with all the bullshit that is going on, and you’re not even getting paid, and you’re still representing this trash.

“We were very mad and frustrated. We were still trying to do our best and use this as motivation, but it was so bad.

“It was very stressful. We were always trying to get some answers from him about what was going on, but nothing.”

More bad news awaited the team on their return: because they had failed to win the tournament, funding allegedly had dried up.

In a WhatsApp message to the team, Sacha said: “I’m still looking for sponsors and waiting to hear back, but it’s turning out to be far from simple; my main investor wants to put their money into capsules rather than a CS team. I’ve tried my best to support the women’s scene, but the salaries are too high.”

Communication has been spotty ever since, with Sacha ignoring most of the players’ messages.

It’s yet another setback for a scene that’s already hanging by a thread.

“Honestly, this is just really sad, because we thought it was someone that really wanted to support the scene, which he even told us he wanted to do,” the team said.

Clutchain has been silent on X since June 26, when it shared FERJEE’s post about the women’s team placing third at Rainhas do Clutch. Its Discord server, meanwhile, is practically inactive, with only three messages posted in the general chat by users since the start of July.

Sacha told HLTV that he was clear from the start that the players were also marketing tools to help bring users to the app.

He also said that Clutchain’s investment in the two teams had resulted in “fewer than 30 monthly active users.”

“That number is the whole point,” he said. “We paid over €100,000 in salaries across both rosters, and the entire purpose of that spend was to drive visibility toward this product. It produced almost nothing, because the promotional work we were paying for never went beyond reposts.”

When asked about ScreaM and Nivera’s perceived co-founder roles, Sacha confirmed that “none of the players ever held equity in the company [or] held a management position.”

“On the term ‘co-founder’: that was a proposal we made to Adil [ScreaM], in the context of his return to Counter-Strike,” he said.

“The idea was to tie him more closely to the project long term. It was never formalized, neither contractually nor at the shareholder level. In hindsight, we should have been more careful in how we communicated that publicly, and I acknowledge it.”

While it’s true that the players refused to promote Clutchain following Nyouz’s video, they told HLTV they did so because they were the ones under scrutiny and because their requests to Sacha to address the claims and clear up any misconceptions about the project were turned down.

Moreover, the players HLTV spoke with rejected the claim that they didn’t want to be involved in marketing efforts. They said Clutchain had no one handling content strategy or coordinating with the players, leaving Sacha as the only point of contact. And the relationship between him and the players, especially the ones on the men’s team, was greatly damaged by Nyouz’s video.

HLTV reviewed two contracts from players on different rosters. One said “no mandatory streaming obligations” were imposed on the player, while the other mandated that the player had to stream a minimum of ten hours per month and “prominently display” the assets provided by Clutchain. Sources said that players’ requests for such assets were ignored.

In our conversations, Sacha repeatedly said he felt the players had taken advantage of his inexperience. That may be true to an extent, but it shouldn’t excuse how badly Clutchain mismanaged its esports division at every turn, or the lack of proper planning. “Everything hinged on ScreaM, and on him alone,” Sacha admitted.

Clutchain viewed ScreaM as an essential marketing asset

When asked why he didn’t want the players to film him in Bucharest, he said it was down to a “major lack of self-confidence regarding my physical appearance.” He also insisted that Bouda, his business partner, “never said” he didn’t want to be associated with Clutchain.

“What he chooses to display on his personal LinkedIn is his own decision, and a personal profile isn’t a measure of involvement in a company,” he said. “I have no doubt he’ll communicate publicly about it once our first capsules arrive in Europe.”

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the whole affair was how casually Clutchain handled its esports assets. Sacha, faced with what he viewed as a breach of the agreement, could have warned the players, fined them, or ultimately terminated their contracts. He didn’t do any of the three. He simply pulled the plug on the two teams, disregarding the fact that contracts had been signed.

The source said that Sacha told members of the men’s team that pursuing legal action against Clutchain wouldn’t lead anywhere, given that the company is based in the United Arab Emirates.

Sacha declined to respond when asked about this matter.

The women’s team told HLTV they’re owed approximately €28,000 in salaries, with most of the players, as well as head coach Kamen “⁠bubble⁠” Kostadinov, having handed in their termination notice.

They’re also still waiting on their $2,600 prize from Rainhas do Clutch. According to the team, tournament organizer FERJEE is waiting for them to go public about their dispute with Clutchain before consulting Valve on how to proceed with the prize.

“Right now, [everything] is just on hold, you know?” the team told HLTV. “Right now, there are no tournaments. There’s no point in practicing. It’s very demotivating.

“If something pops up, we will be playing it. But until then, everyone has to do something [else] to make a living, like streaming. That’s how it looks right now.”

According to the source on the men’s team, they’re owed approximately €40,000 in salaries, and Sacha has paid only one-fifth of the €5,000 he agreed to spend acquiring the ESEA Advanced spot held by OldBoys FR. Despite promising to pay the remainder in installments, he didn’t follow through, leaving the players to shoulder that debt themselves.

“It’s true that I paid €1,000 and then stopped,” Sacha said. “People with far more experience in the scene told me that asking for a sum that large was a scam, and I wasn’t willing to keep paying it.

“It also happened at a point where what had been promised on the other side never materialized.”

On September 4, Nivera became the first player on the men’s team to leave Clutchain. “I have terminated my contract today and I am now available as a free agent, taking the time to explore my options,” he wrote on X. More players are expected to announce their departures soon.

Because of the missing payments, the source said, one player has had to move back in with his parents, and another has stopped playing and found a full-time job.

And it appears ScreaM’s Counter-Strike return has been cut short as a result of how things unfolded. According to the source, this was always meant to be his final team.

All ten players are stuck in a waiting game, well aware that their odds of ever recovering the money they’re owed are next to nothing.

While Clutchain’s app side of the business has almost ground to a halt, work on the capsules continues.

“The capsules are the core of our business model, and always have been,” Sacha said. “The esports rosters were meant to be a marketing vehicle serving that product — not the other way around.”

He added that the company’s first capsule “is finished and operational at our manufacturer’s site in China,” though he did not state when it will be deployed in Europe. “A second unit is currently in production and will be installed at the end of November with a European partner whose identity remains confidential until we announce it jointly.”

Sacha admitted that Clutchain’s reputation might take a hit once the community learns that such high-profile players are owed considerable sums.

“We made real mistakes — leaving the terms of a ‘founders’ pack’ live on our site when it shouldn’t have been published at that stage, communicating a ‘co-founder’ status that was never formalised, and my committing to payment dates I didn’t meet,” he said.

“Those mistakes are ours. What I reject is the word ‘scam.’ A scam implies intent to deceive and an exit. We are identifiable, our companies are registered, our manufacturer is verifiable, and we are still building the product. My partner is a Dutch entrepreneur, close to 60, with 40 years in business, publicly identifiable, with no history of disputes. Neither do I.

“The reality is more mundane: an entrepreneur chased a personal dream — building a pro roster in the game he’s played since he was 10 — convinced his partner to back it, and the commercial arrangement behind it broke down. That’s a business dispute and a management failure. It isn’t fraud.”

But that framing does little for the players, who have seen their careers and lives disrupted in the process.

“Mentally, he broke us,” the source on the men’s team said of Sacha. “He really broke us mentally with this money thing.

“I don’t think any one of us will be on a team this year. We’re feeling really bad. It feels like he took all of our motivation.”