Play2Live laid off staff, still owes salaries for 2 months

A blockchain streaming platform called Play2Live withheld salaries for 2 months and recently laid off most of its staff. The founder of the project Alexey Burdyko is looking for additional funding to keep the project afloat.

In 2017 Mr. Burdyko announced his departure from the Game Show esports channel he had created and owned to develop a new project. In February he raised about $30 million through ICO for his new company Play2Live which was supposed to be a Twitch competitor. Unfortunately, it took less than a year to deplete the company bank account and now the owner is struggling to pay out the salaries.

Throughout 2018 the company managed to hold an online Dota 2 tournament and a CS:GO LAN. It also launched beta-version of its platform which gave the viewers and streamers ways to earn crypto tokens.

Multiple Play2Live employees are sharing their experience working and leaving the company (an example). A common feature of those posts is that friends warned them that startups are a dangerous and volatile territory. Most people are glad they worked at Play2Live and sad that it’s closing so abruptly.

The explosion of cryptocurrencies and ICOs that took place a year before accumulated a lot of capital for lucrative entrepreneurs. Alas, not every business idea works out even if it were well-funded.