Vince Clarke, the man who has been managing UK eSports organisation Choke Gaming since 2014, says he may form a new eSports org if he loses the Choke brand.
Vince has told eSports News UK his side of the story after eSports Interactive announced it had sacked him from managing Choke.
The company said it had parted ways with him “due to numerous complaints from our sponsors resulting from a serious conflict of interest and failures in properly planning and completing organisational tasks”.
“Effective as of 2pm on the 16th of January 2016, Vincent is no longer the manager in charge of our brand, Choke Gaming,” it said in a statement.
However, Vince has claimed to eSports News UK that he still owns the Choke Gaming brand.
“I was preparing a rebrand and pursuing it myself – Choke is something that’s part of me,” he said.
“They’ve just removed me as a director of eSports Interactive. They don’t own the brand. They copyrighted the Choke shark logo to eSports Interactive. If anyone owns Choke, it’s Dennis – the guy who started it in the beginning.
“Even if I’m removed as director of eSports Interactive, I’m still a shareholder of it, I still own 25 per cent – so I guess they’d have to buy me out.”
In terms of the holding page which is currently live on the Choke website, Vince said: “I run the Choke Facebook page, the Twitter page and the website, but I didn’t own the domain name.”
Yesterday evening, the name of Choke’s Facebook page was changed from Choke Gaming to Choke.GG.
Earlier today, the Choke Twitter page posted the following update: “What defines us is how well we rise after falling #Choke2016 #TeamVince”
When asked what Vince will do next if he’s unable to work with Choke going forwards, he said: “I’ve left eSports Interactive to pursue my own thing – it could be a new team.
“It’s my blood, sweat and tears that have gone into this. It’s crazy. They will be left with nothing – no management team, no players, no sponsors. They only thing they could get is the name.
“If they get the Choke name, I’ll form my own team. But I shouldn’t have to do that, I was a member of Choke Gaming as a player for two to three years, ten years ago.
“For me, there’s no argument as to who runs Choke.
“No doubt there will be more to this over the coming week or so.”
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
