3DMAX players and coaches go public over late and unpaid salaries

Three members of 3DMAX, the French Counter-Strike 2 team, have said in public that salaries at the club were paid late. Player Maka, former head coach YouKnow and current coach wasiNk each posted a statement on X, and HLTV gathered them in a report published on the evening of Thursday, August 27.

The posts describe a problem that, by their account, goes back a long way and weighed on the team's matches. HLTV's report carries no statement from the organization's management.

None of the three gives an amount. What they give instead is a picture of how late pay was lived inside a team still competing: a coach who says each payment only caught up with an older debt, a player asking the public for help to keep traveling to tournaments, and a coach who links the money to the team's nerves on the server.

Statements posted on X as HLTV reported them on August 27, 2026, and ranking shown on the team box of the same report.

What the three statements say

The three posts do not say the same thing, and they come from people in different positions: a player still on the roster, a coach still with the team, and a coach who left it six months ago.

Maka's post is the most public of the three in its aim. He wrote that pressure has always been a privilege in competition, but that this was a different kind of pressure, one that not many can handle. He said the team kept performing under it. He did not comment on his own salary. He then turned to the community, asking for help to attend the coming LAN events and to pursue qualification for a Major, and wrote: "We need your support to compete in the upcoming LAN events."

A LAN event is a tournament played in person, with the teams in the same hall, as opposed to an online event played from each team's own base. In Counter-Strike, the larger tournaments are almost all played this way, which means travel, hotels and visas for five players and their staff.

YouKnow's account is the most precise on the mechanics of late pay. He said he did receive money during the period, but that each transfer only settled a month that was already overdue. The delay, in his words as HLTV relays them, simply shifted from month to month. He put the time he spent as head coach without being paid on time at eight months.

wasiNk's statement turns to the competitive side. He said the pressure that came with the pay problems affected the team's results. HLTV reports him as saying that when the team does not perform, players are not paid and cannot pay off their own debts.

What is not on the record

The statements are personal accounts. None of the three posted a contract, a figure owed or a payment schedule, and none named the people responsible for the club's finances.

The organization had not answered by the time HLTV published. Its report, which went online at 22:25 on August 27, includes no statement from 3DMAX's management.

There is also no ruling: the statements are not a decision of a league, a tournament organizer or a court. What exists on August 29 is a set of statements by people who work or worked for the club, and no published answer from the club itself.

That matters for how the case reads. A player saying he needs help to travel, and a former coach describing pay that was always a month behind, are public claims made by the people concerned. They are reported here as such.

A season of change at 3DMAX

3DMAX describes itself on its own site as a French organization founded in 2009 and as the top French team in Counter-Strike 2. Its 2026 has been turbulent on the roster side.

The first big reshuffle came in February. On February 24, HLTV reported that wasiNk was returning as head coach in place of YouKnow, who had held the job for about seven months. wasiNk already knew the team: he had coached 3DMAX from April 2024 to June 2025, leaving after the Austin Major, and had then spent five months coaching GenOne. NBK-, a player of more than 17 years with no coaching job behind him until then, joined as assistant coach.

The roster changed at the same time. misutaaa arrived from GenOne and bodyy left the starting five. The club said in its announcement that it was the right moment to bring a new dynamic to the team. The changes followed a run of six lost series, according to HLTV, including an exit from PGL Cluj-Napoca, a US$1.25 million tournament in Romania, without a single map won.

So YouKnow's statement covers a period that ended in February. By his own count it lasted eight months; HLTV's February report put his time in charge at about seven. The two figures are given as each source states them.

The Cologne Major is the year's first Major, the top tier of Counter-Strike tournaments, whose invitations Valve draws from its own standings, the Valve Regional Standings or VRS. In the VRS update of April 6 that HLTV published, 3DMAX were 24th in the world with 1,458 points. HLTV's list of the 32 invited teams, published the evening before, did not include them.

The lineup HLTV shows for 3DMAX on August 27 is Maka, Lucky, misutaaa, Kursy and Graviti, with wasiNk as coach. HLTV's world ranking of August 24 places the team 23rd, six places higher than on July 6.

The same week, two other teams

The 3DMAX posts did not come alone. HLTV's report notes that they appeared shortly after payment problems were raised at two other teams, Monte and Passion UA.

The Monte case went public the day before. On August 26, Bymas, who left Monte for Luminosity in early July after about a year with the team, wrote on X that Monte owes him tens of thousands of dollars in missed salary, prize money and bonuses, and a share of the team's sticker sales from the IEM Cologne Major. He added that, to his knowledge, several former players and the coach were also still owed substantial amounts.

Monte answered in a response that HLTV added to its report. The organization said that players who broke the terms of their contracts were fined, and called the claim of tens of thousands of dollars a complete lie. It accepted that payments had been delayed, but said the cause was outside its control, citing late transfer and sponsorship payments. On the stickers, it said the claim that it owes the players their share is not accurate either.

The Passion UA case is of another kind. HLTV reported on August 17 that the organization's whole Counter-Strike roster had been let go and that the club had been silent on social media since June 23. No player or staff member of Passion UA is quoted on pay in that report.

The three cases differ in their facts, and none of them rests on a published decision. At 3DMAX and Monte, the people who say they were paid late or not at all are speaking in public, in their own names.

The lines of a player's pay

The Monte dispute shows how many lines a professional's income in Counter-Strike can have. Bymas's claim lists four: the salary, prize money, bonuses and a share of the team's stickers from the Cologne Major.

A Major sticker is a digital item carrying a team's logo or a player's autograph, sold in the game around a Major. Part of that revenue is shared with the teams that play the event. Bymas's claim treats each of the four lines as money his former club owed him, which is why his dispute covers far more than a monthly salary.

The 3DMAX statements, by contrast, are about salaries and timing. YouKnow does not say he was never paid; he says that each payment only caught up with a month already overdue. Maka speaks of the strain it put on the team, and wasiNk of what it did to the players in matches.

wasiNk's remark gives the human side of that strain. In his account, a player who does not perform is not paid, and a player who is not paid cannot clear his own debts. That is the pressure he says the players carried.

What comes next for the team

The season does not stop for the dispute. The next Major, the PGL Singapore Major, is scheduled from November 24 to December 13, with 32 teams and US$1.25 million in prize money. PGL has set the cut-off date for the standings that decide its invitations at November 2.

That leaves a little over two months of tournaments before the cut-off, and it is the context of Maka's call: HLTV reports that he tied the support he asked for both to the coming LAN events and to the team's pursuit of a Major place.

HLTV's report does not say which events he had in mind, and the club has not published a schedule alongside the statements.

The next step in the pay question itself belongs to 3DMAX. The club has been asked in public, by a player of its current roster and by two of its coaches, past and present, and its side of the account has not yet been published.

The .esports registry publishes Esports Observer, so the whole scene can read its news for free.