Interview with MasterRamen: The Truth Behind Jaren Gan

Hi Firdaus, how are you today?

I'm doing great, slightly busy with work.

I had originally contacted you to talk about the Arrow 322 incident, but since this incident revolves around the instability of the SEA scene, shall we look at this problem chronologically?

Sure, where should I begin?

Let's start with DotaTalk, where everything began. When did you join DotaTalk?

I joined DotaTalk in March 2013 and the first tournament I ever organised for them was the Litany League Season 3.

Did you know Jaren Gan, the owner of DotaTalk before then?

Nope, he contacted me via a friend. Jaren told me he was interested to hire me on his team. Then, DotaTalk had about a 100k likes on Facebook, and Jaren Gan (the owner of DotaTalk) was offering to pay me in sponsor peripherals (e.g. Steelseries gear).

So what did you do for DotaTalk in the 16 months you were working there?

I was just a tournament admin at first, but slowly Jaren made me his right-hand man. I handled the personnel, public relations, Facebook page, tournament planning, and the casters we hired.

You were a part of DotaTalk when they had a lot of attention from posting content without giving credit – did you ever attempt to address this?

I did advice Jaren to give proper credit for the content, especially the funny posts. He would do it when DotaTalk would receive complaints on Reddit, but then forget to do it again later. It was a simple act of taking content from others' and post it on our Facebook page. Many pages do that too, but yes, he still does the same today.

Do you have any idea on the income that DotaTalk is able to generate from its work?

In 2013, the main sources of income were mainly from sponsors and also from the running of tournaments – that is, through the DotaTV tickets. The main issue was that Jaren always struggled to pay his staff on time, and that is why many of them left him.

Does Jaren still owe you any money or peripherals then?

No, not anymore. He has paid out everything he owes to me and all my previous staff, albeit with some long delays. But he did prioritise paying me over the other staff. Paying out got better in 2014 when DotaTalk got a sponsorship from DatBet, allowing Jaren to pay us in cash rather than with sponsored gear. In the past we would be paid 1 item (mouse, keyboard, headset) every two months.

The original Lowyat.Net team before they transitioned into Arrow Gaming.

So how did DotaTalk transition into Arrow Gaming? Whose idea was it?

Arrow actually started with Lowyat.net eSports, a Malaysian website. It was my own project together with the owner of lowyat.net, and we were in talks to get a professional team under their banner when Jaren stepped in and offered us a new sponsorship. We decided to go with Jaren's sponsors and created Arrow Gaming.

In the early stages our main sponsor was AVF, and Jaren also used some of his own money to cover the team's expenses. I chipped in as well to ensure that the team had enough furniture, but the team's owner was Jaren. The captain then, badslowgame, paid for the deposit for the gaming house. He was the captain of a team called Refreshing, and I had noticed them when I organised my first tournament, the Litany League Season 1.

The team was created in January 2014, and we realised they had a lot of potential when they beat Titan in the Grand Finals of the Asian Gaming League 3.

So who wrote the contract for this new team then?

The first contract was written by me, and after TI4 Jaren altered the contracts, and they signed a new agreement. I cannot divulge the details of the contract because they are confidential, but the monthly salary was about RM400 (~120 USD) per player then. The contracts would last a year. Jaren gave the players a raise to RM600 after some good performances, which was in March and two months later.

Did you expect the players to be able to survive on RM400?

Well, RM400 is very little. It is very hard to survive on that amount, but they were provided with a gaming house and utilities in addition to their salary.

Arrow won the TI4 SEA Qualifiers, but then you resigned from your position as Arrow Gaming manager just before TI4. Why?

The first time I quit, I did so because of my family. When I was attending the visa interview to get to TI4, my maid ran away and left my kids outside the house. I was lucky my neighbour saw it happen and took care of them. So with my full time job commitments, DotaTalk commitments and family to care for, I let go of Arrow Gaming over the others.

I wanted to leave DotaTalk as well, but Jaren gave me the leeway to give me lesser work, and schedule the DotaTalk tournaments in my convenience, because he did not want me to leave.

So why did you eventually leave DotaTalk then?

During my time in there, I witnessed a lot of things – be it good or bad. Jaren promised me many times he would change and be a better person, but in the end I gave up on him and left DotaTalk since I did not want to support him any further. I left the organisation on 12 September 2014.

DotaTalk was the only organisation driving the SEA region forward, and you are quite committed to developing the SEA scene. What did he do that made you even forgo trying to improve the SEA scene?

I had given him too many last chances before this, but the final straw was when he fought with one of the community personnel in Malaysia, in spite of my advice to ignore the matter. He lied to me and went to start some drama with the guy, and I just had enough of all the drama and bad things he had done for the community.

Can you give me some examples of the drama he had been causing previously?

He owns a Facebook group called Dota 2 Malaysia. He had bought the group from its previous owner, and started to make it a business place. It is the largest group for Dota 2 in Malaysia with 34,000 members. He fought with many people, and there are two incidents that stick out.

The first case was with Chucky San, who is one of the top traders in Malaysia. Jaren asked him to promote Jaren's Dota 2 Malaysia Facebook group, but Chucky refused to. Jaren went on to humiliate Chucky, posting his address, threatening him, and finally banned him from the Dota 2 Malaysia group. When Jaren realised what he did was wrong, he tried to offer many things to cover his wrongdoings. He had used the fake Invictus Gaming page to humiliate Chucky, and also pinned the humiliating posts within the Dota 2 Malaysia group.

What about the other case?

The second case is with Midvalley KL. Midvalley is a trader and he has helped a lot of scammed victims to get their items back, and has also reported many scammers to others. In short, he has done a lot of things for the community, but he gave up on Jaren. There were many scams happening in the Dota 2 Malaysia group, because there were no other group admins managing the group other than Jaren.

Midvalley created his own group, and Jaren felt some unease and decided to fight with him. At some point he tried to offer Midvalley with many items and a salary so that he would give Jaren the new group, and Midvalley would work for him.

Is the Dota 2 Malaysia group very profitable?

Yes, the group is very good for trading and selling Dota merchandise. After Jaren bought the group, he made rules banning giveaways and the promotion of other groups or pages. He even wanted to institute 20% profit share for those who wanted to sell merchandise within the group, but it caused an uproar so he removed it.

While Jaren has tried to profit from all these groups, has he ever attempted to provide a better salary for the Arrow Gaming players?

Just before TI4, Jaren increased their salary to RM1,000. However, as per their contract, the team should have received a one-time allowance of RM3,000 after qualifying for TI4, which I believe has not been paid out yet.

When you left, did the Arrow Gaming players look likely to participate in match fixing then?

After I left Arrow, they were in kind of a mess. No one took care of the players like I did. Isabell tried to do much as she could, but they did not stay in the gaming house and instead played in different places with no communication in game. That affected their play a lot in the weeks leading up to TI4. Jaren asked me to return and manage them, and I agreed since the family matters I had were resolved.

Is that why you flew to TI4 only for the main event?

At that point, I had already given my slot to Jaren for TI4, but Valve said that they could support an additional person to attend. Jaren signed me up for just the main event, since I couldn't take 3 weeks of leave from work. But he also made it like I owe him for it – he started telling me that his girlfriend was angry and that he should bring her, instead of me.

Was he an effective manager for Arrow at TI4? 

Well, during the group stages he actually did something that I am really angry with. TI4 was the first time the players and Jaren actually stayed together and worked together. This was actually a disaster. On the night of 7th July, Jaren secretly read Johnny's handphone messages.

Johnny left his phone in the room to charge, and Jaren snooped into the phone. He found Johnny's conversation with his big rival, Kenchi from Mineski. They had been chatting about rosters and so on. Jaren told AVF and I that Johnny was going to leave the team after TI4, and that he would poach DDZ and Mozun to create a Mineski Malaysia team.

I found out the truth was that the discussion between Johnny and Kenchi was merely about the team – if Arrow was going to improve they needed better players with no commitment issues. So I'm not sure what Jaren actually read, I only know what he told us.

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Is this why Johnny was removed from Arrow after TI4?

This was the start. Jaren felt uneasy, and he threatened the players the night before the group stage: if they intended to leave Arrow after TI4, they would be sued by AVF's lawyer. Before the group stage started he also went out with the players alone, and manipulated the other four to hate Johnny.

The decision to kick Johnny was made during the group stage at TI4. Jaren even managed to convince AVF to do it. He manipulated the information – none of the players knew that Jaren had read the messages on Johnny's phone, and they only know what Jaren told them. They told Johnny that if Arrow failed at TI4, he would need to take responsibility as captain and so on.

What was your reaction to all of this?

I left Arrow again in July, after TI4 because I did not want to be there when he carried out his plan against Johnny. After Johnny was kicked I tried helping him as much as I could, while I watched Arrow's performance go downhill. That was when I thought that they were probably throwing the games to mess with the management for not fulfilling promises. Their gaming house was never completed, and had no internet, forcing them to go to an internet cafe to play their matches.

What did you do when you believed that they were throwing, then?

Then, I was no longer with Arrow and so I did not want to interfere much. I adviced Jaren to take care of them more, and to watch for any signs of match fixing. Jaren confidently told me that he lived with them and was very sure that they would not throw matches.

Did Jaren know about the match-fixing before it happened?

I don't think so – I don't believe that anyone knew until Dota 2 Lounge found out about it. What I can add to Ren's report was that Jaren lied to me that he did not write the original Arrow Gaming denial of match-fixing on Reddit. He made the decision to kick DDZ and Lance, implicating only those two players instead of the entire team. This was done to preserve the Arrow Gaming team integrity and their slot at the MSI Beat It! LAN finals in Taiwan.

This caused the players to ignore him and confess their involvement in the match-fixing together as a team, because they had all agreed but the management decided to scapegoat DDZ and Lance only.

As their former manager, what are your thoughts about the whole match-fixing incident?

I am quite sad, because I had raised them to this level, and everything went down the drain with that one mistake. The team's ownership had also changed after I left, shared between AVF and Jaren. I did not want to get involved with Jaren's management – before TI4, Jaren had only handled sponsorships and money, while I handled the team management. After TI4, he took over the reins of management, because he wanted me to focus on DotaTalk instead of Arrow.

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Are there other things that we should know about the Dota scene in Malaysia?

Yes, especially about Jaren. After the match-fixing report by Ren, you would remember that Tiffani 'Oling' Lim, ex-Titan manager also did her own investigation. I have some screenshots of her chats with Jaren, which highlighted that he had done "ghost giveaways", offered her a car if she would put in a good word for him in her report, tried to bribe her with RM20,000, and even admitted to lying to his sponsors with fake page statistics.

He stopped doing fake giveaways after I warned him to not be greedy – it was wrong. Jaren also decided to make very unfair rules about his giveaways – Winners have to contact DotaTalk with their information within 3 days to claim their prizes, or they would forfeit their prizes. This rule arose from a giveaway that Jaren had conducted with the full Na`Vi set of items - headset, mouse, and mousepad. A winner, Yuidis Huang, did not receive his mouse and mousepad from the giveaway. Jaren decided to add a rule to the terms on his giveaways, so as to ensure that Yudis would not be able to complain further. 

Because of this, many of the prizes would be unclaimed, and Jaren would use the unclaimed prizes to pay his staff. There was a post on Reddit the other day where one of his fake giveaways was found. His method is typically to post a giveaway to get likes, then he usually deletes it afterwards, and he probably forgot this time. I believe that most of the sponsors did not know that he ended up giving the peripherals to his staff, rather than to the fans. 

That is rather shady. Do you have any other stories?

Yes, perhaps another thing was what he did regarding the Blindbox Microplushies from TI3. Jaren would sell the microplushies to the Malaysia community, but he would first bring the red ball to a dark room and use a spotlight to see the figure in the ball. This allowed him to know which ones were the Shitty Wizards, and he took close to 90% of the Shitty Wizards and sold them separately to customers. His customers then mostly received normal plushies, without the chance of getting the Shitty Wizards.

When the plushies were changed from the red balls to cardboard boxes, he bought a digital weighing scale and used it to measure the box weight, with the lightest being the Shitty Wizards. Again, he took out 80 to 90% of the plushies and sold mostly normal blindboxes to his customers.

Moving on from there, how do you plan to move forward in the Dota 2 community now?

I intend to focus more on the local scene in Malaysia – I want to rebuild the eSports scene after the big hit it took from the scandal. In this, I want to focus on the amateur and semi-pro scene so that we can produce more professional players from Malaysia. As for managing a team, I have no plans at the moment.

I hope that with my experience, I can give more advice and guidance to all the newer organisations and tournament organisers in Malaysia and build a stronger, healthier and more vibrant community.

I wish you all the best in these endeavours. Thank you for this long interview! Do you have any last shoutouts?

I am very sorry to all personnel who have been a victim or hurt by Jaren in these past few years. I was there, I saw it, I witnesssed it and yet I did not have the guts to stop him completely. I advised him to stop, but he never did. As his employee, I could not stop him on my own. I could have left him when he first did these horrible things but I did not. I am very sorry to each and every one of you. Please accept my sincere apologies. 

 

All screenshots and photos were provided by Firdaus 'MasterRamen' Hashim.