The Esports Winter claims another victim: Beyond the Summit lays off all its employees

Last Night, Beyond the Summit’s LD, Tweeted about the company’s critical economic condition and possible future restructuring. As a result, Beyond the Summit has decided to lay off all its employees. This is the second esports-affiliated company in the last two weeks to let go of all its employees.

What is Beyond the Summit?

Beyond the Summit is a crowdfunded Esports production company that started as a casting company for DOTA. The company has been actively organizing tournaments dubbed Summit. They have been especially active in organizing DOTA 2 tournaments. The BTS has organized more than 50 DOTA 2 tournaments.

They also branched into multiple other esports with CS:GO, Smash, and FGC(Fighting Games Community). Smash Summit is one of the most prestigious Smash tournaments around. The summit tournaments divert from the traditional way making it more like an old-school LAN club and get-together than a conventional corporate way. It was a breath of fresh air for the community.

Recently, BTS hosted a Valorant tournament in Ludwig X Tarik Invitational along with DOTA, Smash, and Rocket league tournaments.

BTS’s fall and layoffs:

As LD writes on Twitter,

“BTS never took the VC approach. We had plenty of offers over the years, but as an organization born from the community, we valued remaining grassroots and independent.”

BTS started with Crowdfunding and has continued to operate independently since. But with the ongoing recession and falling Esports market, BTS has been in a bad place.

“Over the last year, as economic conditions have worsened across the industry, we have been working hard to build a pipeline of business to weather the storm.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, things haven’t broken our way.

Throughout this time, our number one priority has been to ensure that our team doesn’t get hung out to dry. We’ve been closely monitoring our financial situation, and over the last few weeks, we reached an impasse.”

In light of the situation, the BTS management was running at risk of running the company to the ground and risking employees’ pay.

Thus they decided to lay off all the employees before conditions worsened, so that the employees get proper notices and severance pays while they explore new opportunities. BTS also notified all the employees yesterday and will cover the healthcare until the end of April.

After the Guard layoffs and multiple others, the BTS one hit the hardest as the tournaments were fun for the community and the participants. Moreover, contrary to the Guard’s Billion dollar parent, BTS was an independent venture and still tried its best to give its employees proper notice and a send-off.

BTS does plan to return to organizing tournaments in the future, but as of now, they will complete the current contracts and restructure to stay operational. The company is open to offers and has released a list of employees for reference. They wish to continue to run but need help with the current situation. You can read the complete statement from David “LD” Gorman here.

Credits: Beyond the Summit

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