On February 5, 2025, it was announced that Pulse Star would replace Cincinnati Fear in the upcoming NACL season. Pulse was also set to announce their partnership with LTA North organization FlyQuest in the coming months. However, exactly 28 days later, the organization issued a statement about the sudden departure of their investors just under 2 weeks prior. As a result, all existing agreements between the organization and current team members were nullified.

At the time of writing, everyone is paid except for Tenacity and Spawn.

Over the last few months, team members dealt with multiple instances of lack of communication from upper management. Following initial verbal agreements, both players and staff went weeks without receiving official contracts. Despite multiple requests for updates, they were only provided with acknowledgement that the issue was still being worked on. Other issues included inconsistency in booking scrims, with multiple scheduling conflicts and other errors occurring. Over time, players and team staff grew increasingly confused and dissatisfied with the lack of communication from upper management for prolonged periods.

Pulse Star officially announced their roster on February 13th with contracts yet to be signed.

Pulse Star reached an agreement with LTA organization FlyQuest to share competitive resources such as coaches, analysts and priority scrims. However, according to sources, FlyQuest was largely kept in the dark throughout the process and, with the non-financial nature of the partnership, was kept unaware of the financial issues with their partnered organization. As of now the deal was terminated.

The players and staff were informed on February 28th that their verbal agreements made months earlier regarding pay could not be kept as a result of the organization’s loss of Investors. They were offered the option to continue under the Pulse Star banner without compensation. The team collectively agreed to do so under the condition that they could manage the team themselves without the involvement of Pulse’s upper management.
In response, Pulse denied the request and in turn, terminated head coach Ido while also threatening to “boom” the remainder of the team. According to sources, the organization likely acted in bad faith as they assumed Ido orchestrated the team’s request for autonomy, citing the ordeal as a breach of trust.

According to Pulse Star’s official statement, they received notice about their investors pulling out on February 21st, the same day the NACL Open Qualifier applications were set to close. With team members not being informed of their situation until February 28th, this leaves them with little to no other options besides staying with Pulse to compete in the NACL.

[To note this is simply just a really weird timing, and it seems the org held the information away from players so they wouldn't have anywhere to go other than pulse. This entire part is purely conjecture however the timing seems too good to line up not to include it in the article. ]

The LCSPA has been involved as well as Riot Games. Riot has ruled no wrongdoings if they pay out everyone by the 19th.

We reached out to pulse for comments. They declined to leave a comment.