Heroic terminates Hunden’s contract. Heroic has terminated the contract of head coach Nicolai “Hunden” Petersen and is taking legal action against the coach. The 30-year-old Dane was already in the headlines recently because he was involved in the coaching bug scandal. Now he has allegedly leaked the team’s strategy book to a competitor, breaking the confidentiality clause in his contract.
Meanwhile, Hunden has tweeted that his time at Heroic is over while denying leaking any important information to opponents. He said he only passed on things that could not harm Heroic. The Danish coach said that he has “the utmost respect for Heroic” and that he “never wants to harm the team or influence it negatively in any way.” In response, Heroic also released its own statement.
Heroics statement regarding Hunden
– Prior to IEM Cologne 2021 in early July, the Heroic team unanimously decided that Mr. Petersen would not participate in the tournament due to severe trust issues.
– Mr. Petersen then blocked team members from accessing the team’s strategy folder.
– The investigation revealed that Mr. Petersen had shared confidential and sensitive information from Heroic’s strategy folder with a key person at a major competitor prior to the tournament.
– This was done without the knowledge of anyone at Heroic and obviously would not have been authorized.
– Heroic considers this a clear violation of Mr. Petersen’s contract.
– Denmark has a court case underway. Two courts have independently found sufficient grounds for an evidentiary hearing, which has been held.
– The matter has been reported to ESL and ESIC.
– Heroic has terminated the contract of Hunden.
Statement from Heroic regarding Nicolai "Hunden" Petersen
Website article: https://t.co/VFZ1Rlcffd pic.twitter.com/egYfpIlOOo
— HEROIC (@heroicgg) July 29, 2021
Now ESIC is going after Hunden again. Hunden already knows the ESIC from the coaching bug. The coach had just served an 8-month suspension after his involvement in the coaching bug scandal last year. Nevertheless, Heroic retained Hunden as an analyst during the 8 months. Hunden subsequently returned to the coaching position on April 30, but did not participate with the team in IEM Cologne.
According to ESIC, the current findings indicate that while HUNDEN engaged in conduct that could constitute a violation of ESIC’s integrity program, the consequences of his conduct did not impact the tournament integrity of IEM Cologne because, according to the tournament organizer, the contents of the folder released by Hunden “were not viewed by the recipient.”