Well, I guess it’s the “official” end of an era, although this feels almost a year too late.
Yomi was, without a doubt, the first “pro team” that existed in this wing of the community. Sure, there had been a lot of people with a few letters in front of their names, but this was the first to actually go all the way and house the players as well as associate a business plan around their own brand. Remember that, because I’m gonna get back to it. This was not the same old bowl of fruits and nuts where a money mark comes in and shoves free sponsorships onto players; this was the real deal with a real guy in Reno, who was good for it.
And for a while, we saw them doing their best to establish that brand. There were official team photos, merchandise, a live stream/tourney almost every week showcasing their talents, and most importantly, their players were winning. A lot. Every inside joke and meme established by the Yomi guys was immediately repeated and doomed to haunt every stream chat ‘til the end of time. Aside from Sonic Fox, it genuinely seemed like these guys were going to take over the world. So what happened?
It definitely wasn’t the play; even as recently as the last Evo, players associated with Yomi tag were capable of placing amongst the best. But as I’m sure everyone is aware, winning is only half the battle. The other half (sadly, it’s not knowing) is building off the momentum of winning into a sustainable business that keeps itself alive. Looking at the title of this thread, clearly something went awry there.
So, what was the business plan of Yomi? I honestly have no idea. It wasn’t for lack of trying to ask; for some reason, threads that were seen as overtly negative to the Yomi brand, which included grilling about the financials of it all, seemed to vanish into the Netherrealm never to be seen again. I have an idea as to why that happened, but I digress.
From what I know, it seemed to be part LAN center and part Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Gamers could expect to come in and expect to see a high end gaming facility loaded to the gills with consoles and PC’s, available to them for only the price of a membership fee. Not only that, they had the potential to be coached by the pros on the official team who had experience in competitive settings.
At least, that’s what I think. Their FB, Twitter, and other social media pages had plenty of photos, re-tweets, and general cheerleading, but very little description of what they actually did. We knew that the players had a van and traveled a lot, and we knew they stayed in a house provided for them, but their day to day activities regarding this business seemed to be suspiciously absent.
All we had to go off of was the statements from the people who actually were there. On Twitter, we’d see some of the members openly talk about their “professional” goals and starting their “careers” with Yomi Gaming. At the same time, one could find tweets of players who had been to the location in Atlanta and had their cars broken into or otherwise damaged. ForeverKing would openly talk about an incident where he was held up at gunpoint in the area. Reno, himself, was arrested on charges and disappeared from the public eye.These and other rumors persisted, painting a pretty rough sketch of the area in which the business was located.
Before long, players were gone too. Only a few of the real diehards remained, but even they too broke away after too long. We never again heard of the actual business side, and now here we are two years later with the official announcement coming a year after we already knew the truth.
I’m hesitant to call Reno a money mark, because he seemed like he knew what he was doing when it came to other businesses, but really, what was this? Far be it from me to tell a successful guy how to spend his money, but he wasn’t just spending his money at a certain point. Some of his players were very young, guys that probably could have been in school or doing something that would have helped given them skills if they were to become the “professionals” that they were told they would be. Bla bla bla “the dream,” but luring kids in from home with promises of jobs and careers without having a plan to make money to pay these guys and sticking them in a shack in a bad area? Well, I’d call that irresponsible.
I could go on about what looting relatively small scenes of their best players did for the competitive aspect of the game, but that’s a whole other can of worms and I’m not here to piss on a grave. As contemptible as I may have found some of their practices, Reno is no Triforce, and Yomi isn’t EMP, or any of the other top abusers in the E-sports realm.
My hope, now that Yomi is officially in the books, is for future proprietors of gaming teams or businesses to look at what Yomi tried to do and take some of the good and watch out for all of the bad. Look at the caliber of players they acquired, their initial streaming schedules, and merchandising, but leave out the poor business practices and poor living conditions. Gaming teams can and do work, but they never succeeded without a solid financial plan in place to sustain “the dream.”
