Team:Deadly Alliance

Empire Arcadia (EMP) is a professional fighting game team founded by Isiah "TriForce" Johnson. In 2005, Super Smash Bros. crew Deadly Alliance leader Wes met with TriForce, at Neutral Grounds in Manhattan. Wes agreed to allow DA to join forces with Empire Arcadia and become the official Smash Bros. competitive gaming division for Empire Arcadia. Deadly Alliance, abbreviated as DA, was a crew of Super Smash Bros. Melee players organized in either 2002 or 2003. The initial group consisted of Wes, HellFire, Kamaal (aka Rock Man), and KillaOR. Initially, the members of DA dedicated themselves to solo maining a single character, that way they would not require training against other people. Centered primarily in New York, the group was known for pioneering the meta games of certain characters such as Link, Samus, Luigi, Mr. Game & Watch, Falco, and Peach. This helped establish certain techniques like Samus's super wavedash and pivoting, also known as the DA Dash. Under EMP, Deadly Alliance has won a number of competitions which were eventually documented and certified by Guinness World Record via Twitter and Facebook, naming Empire Arcadia as the most documented tournament winning team in competitive gaming. Several members of DA/EMP created a non-profit community service organization called SOS Gamers.

Members

Active

•  Wes  (Leader)
•  NinjaLink
•  DireVulcan
•  Jtails
• Comp
• Crash02
• HellFox
• Kubuu
• Raffy

Former

•  Armada 
•  Bum 
•  DaftFlip 
•  Mew2King  (2009-2015)
•  Mike G 
•  PC Chris 
•  Philly Billy 
•  KillaOR 
•  D1
• Blaine
• Blu Chu
• Hein
• Jack
• Kamaal

Controversy

Despite being among the most successful sponsors in the FGC, the founder and self-proclaimed CEO of EMP, Isaiah "TriForce" Johnson, is known for dealing with contracts with successful EMP-sponsored players in extremely shady ways. For example, he claims that players in EMP receive a regular salary, but several of them report that the managers of EMP do not pay them anything. Due to this, Sanford Kelly, one of EMP's top players, was initially unable to afford attending EVO 2014, and the managers could not afford to cover his payment. TriForce is also known for his tendency to manipulate other representatives of companies, or even other professional players, in order to raise money. When he had to find a way to raise money for Sanford's trip to EVO, he attempted to "bait" a third party into giving him money for free, an action that was accidentally streamed and revealed on Empire Arcadia's Twitch channel. Some of EMP's top players, such as Tampa Bison (now known as Booker), have dropped the sponsor after these poor experiences in the group.

Mew2King, one of EMP's top professional Smash players, claims that the managers of EMP take a 20% cut out of all of his earnings and repeatedly delay debt repayments to him, or refuses to acknowledge them altogether. Even though Mew2King himself has loaned his own money to managers TriForce and Gregory in order to cover travel fees for other top EMP-sponsored players, he reports that they seldom repay him and still owe him more than $6,000 combined. He also claims that EMP offered to fly Armada to Apex 2014 for free, but forced Armada to pay some of the cost and join the team in return, which many view as an unfavorable compromise. In addition, TriForce is known to turn away and even harass alternate sponsors for EMP-sponsored players in an unconventional way. When Evil Geniuses recruited several former EMP members, for example, he threatened to sue them and the former players for violating EMP contracts. Mew2King was once offered with a sponsorship from Team Razer, the professional eSports group that also sponsored Axe, but TriForce ended up using Mew2King's Twitter account to remove mentions of the Razer promotion on his wall, causing people to believe that it was Mew2King himself who was turning away the Razer offer, which is untrue.

External links

• MySpace profile