In case you were wondering what’s up with those weekly Neva Hon tournaments since this is another topic that gets vaporized instantly if you discuss it on the official Hon Forums, they are a scam.  While the qualifiers still take place, there is no Neva Live event with 10k cash prize.  Vievi, the organizer, is a well-known scammer.  General_Zeus explains it well here:

You have to understand how his scam works and how it ALWAYS worked, even with his previous endeavors (all the webhosting companies registered under Ryan *Surnamevaries* and Hazel *Surnamevaries* – Ryan Fletcher and Hazel Fletcher in Neva Digital’s case). Vievi leased a good server from SingleHop.net and set up a very basic site for a fictional (at that time) company pretending to be a worldwide hosting and streaming service. Vievi claimed that he didn’t ask for money and that he provided his services for free. That is only half the truth – he did INDEED provide his services for free initially citing his “innovative business model” and of course S2 and HoNCast.com went for it – it’s a killer deal and partnership!

However, the moment stuff got real Vievi started crying that he i.e. can’t sustain the bandwidth for HoNCast.com due to huge demand and needs to pay for additional traffic, set up additional servers or whatever. Now – it is most certainly true that the traffic was huge and so on BUT this is where the scam kicks in – you only have Vievi’s word for how much the traffic costs him, what his server(s) are truly capable of and easily falsifiable logs to show how stressed out his network is. This is speculation, but I assume Vievi told the guys that he just needs money to “cut his losses” and wouldn’t be making any profit or something along the lines, which was obviously lies. Hence he received around $3000 from E-Sports Media, the good “free” hosting provider that Vievi is – HoNCast had no choice since Vievi made them DEPENDENT on him – the whole streaming service was outsourced to Vievi, so if it didn’t work HoNCast would be screwed.

Then, a blessing in disguise, HunteR drama! This allows Vievi to sever any ties with HoNCast, make away with the money and start scamming some more with his newly acquired cash. I bet part of the payment was legitimately used to cover traffic, server costs, and leasing new machines, since Vievi obviously doesn’t have access to any global hosting/streaming company – he’s just a kid with a plan.
I don’t know how the deal with S2 went but I DO know that he received money too (around $1000 I’ve been told) – I don’t know if it was under similar circumstances, like, I give you everything for free and when shit hits the fan (after I made you dependent on me) you have to pay or suffer catastrophic failure in functionality.Vievi now uses the money he made to pose as an e-sports benefactor – sponsoring teams, tournaments, setting up a streaming site etc.
On the outside everything is fine – he does indeed provide SOME form of service – the problem is: EVERYTHING here is built on lies. He ISN’T the CEO or partner in any global webhosting company, he DOESN’T have dozens of nodes around the world, he DOESN’T have dozens of employees with technical know-how. You have seen what his “office” looks like in the map pictures – it doesn’t exist. You have seen where his servers are located, the US – I’ve been told he leases several now – however, the Neva Digital site claims to have servers all around the world.

I don’t know how long Vievi wants to keep this facade up – in previous scams the services collapsed within a few months and the “mysterious Ryan” disappeared for a while only to reappear with a different company in another part of the UK. However, if anything goes wrong, and it WILL, since Vievi does not have the technical infrastructure he claims to have, everybody relying on his services will be screwed big time, for a while at least. Who knows, perhaps this particular scheme will be working fine and he will be able to con his way into just enough money to keep the servers up. However, we should NOT support a guy CONNING his way into business relationships and lying at each and every step – especially to the community.

Here are some links with evidence and more details where you can follow the situation:

• Independent forum about Neva (best source): http://www.punbb-hosting.com/forums/nevadigital/viewforum.php?id=2
• Encyclopedia Dramatica page: http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Ryan_Gentle
• New Hon Forums topic: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=145348
• Hon Forums topic: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=125461 (taken down)
• “Ryan ‘Vievi’ is a Fraud” essay: http://pdfcast.org/pdf/ryan-vievi-is-a-fraud

Breakcpk on the scam (http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=145348&page=14):

Glad to see that it looks like this whole ordeal is finally over. I cannot tell you how much of a stress it has been having to deal with his obvious lies and manipulation of some great people in the process of spreading them.

I too was vulnerable to this however, and it is why I feel more sorry about those who were effected by him after myself or even still are. It is just so unfortunate that this guy ever stepped foot into the HoN scene both with Honcast and then with his own project, but I hope for the sake of everyone it all moves on.

As far as the Neva Tournament Series, I wouldn’t worry about that too much guys… sure it is disappointing that it wasn’t followed through but this was and is just the beginning of the competitive HoN scene. There are already much bigger prize pool tournaments happening on top of more consistant tournaments once again taking place (Gamereplays, ESL, Alienware and Honcast) who have a track record of actually paying out their winners.

Ultimately, I just really hope those who were effected by his lies are able to snap out of it and come back too reality as I was able to near the end of our Honcast terms with Neva. Trust me, when you are on the other side… it becomes so clear on to what his ultimate goal is/was of just boosting his ego for his e-fame benefit. Good luck to those who were/are currently involved with him in Neva and I look forward on seeing everyone recover from this (except Vievi of course ).

Tags: breakycpk, HoN, neva, neva digital, neva live, ryan, scam, vievi

This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 10:48 AM by daggius and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.