Dota

In brief

The Chiliz Group has acquired a controlling stake in OG Esports, a prominent competitive gaming organization.
OG Esports unveiled its own fan token on Chiliz’s Socios.com platform back in 2020. It recently hit an all-time high price.
Chiliz has teased various future team-related benefits for OG token holders, along with a new Web3-related project.

The Chiliz Group, which operates the Socios.com crypto fan token platform, announced Tuesday that it has acquired a 51% controlling stake in OG Esports, the competitive gaming organization founded in 2015 by Dota 2 legends Johan “nOtail” Sundstein and Sébastien “Ceb” Debs.

OG made history as the first team to win consecutive titles at The International—the annual, high-profile Dota 2 world championship tournament—in 2018 and 2019, and has since expanded into multiple games including Counter-Strike, Honor of Kings, and Marvel Rivals.

The team was also the first esports organization to join the Socios platform with the 2020 debut of its own fan token, which Chiliz said recently became the first esports team token to exceed a $100 million market capitalization.

OG was recently priced at $16.88, up nearly 9% on the day following the announcement. The token’s price peaked at a new all-time high of $24.78 last week ahead of The International 2025, where OG did not compete this year.

Following the acquisition, Xavier Oswald will assume the CEO role, while the co-founders will turn their attention to “a new strategic project consolidating the team’s competitive foundation [and] driving innovation at the intersection of esports and Web3,” per a press release.

No further details were provided regarding that project.

“Bringing OG into the Chiliz Group is a major step toward further strengthening fan experiences, one where the community doesn’t just watch from the sidelines but gets to shape the journey,” Chiliz CEO Alex Dreyfus told Decrypt. “With the team’s legacy, founders like Johan and Ceb still front and center, and a digitally native fanbase, we have the perfect foundation to explore a next-gen model for esports engagement.”

“Working with the OG founders, we will explore making the $OG shop a window [into] what fan tokens can bring to fan communities,” he added. “That could mean token-based governance, NFT ticketing, exclusive drops, or on-chain loyalty systems, and possibly even innovative ideas like tying buybacks to team revenue and tournament prizes.”

OG currently has the highest market cap of any fan token on the Socios.com platform, according to data from CoinGecko. Socios has also introduced official tokens tied to traditional sports giants like Juventus, FC Barcelona, and Paris Saint-Germain F.C., along with the UFC fighting league.

Socios.com will serve as the exclusive platform for OG fan tokens, positioning the token as an example of the evolving fan economy that integrates real-world assets, merchandise, and club revenues.

“We’re still early in this partnership, but the goal is clear: to align OG’s competitive success with real, on-chain value for their global fanbase,” said Dreyfus. “This is where esports and Web3 can truly come together.”

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I don’t play online games particularly often, mostly the only ones that I do enjoy are the kind of games I can play with just my friends. People are mean, you see, and I have a sensitive soul, and also I often find them deeply boring conceptually and in practice. Take of that what you will in relation to this story about Dota 2! Moving on swiftly to a topic that I promise connects to this intro, Gabe Newell! He is a co-founder of Valve, and a noted Dota 2 lover. He also, apparently, is someone who is often subjected to ridicule while playing the very same game his company makes.

The man himself made a pre-recorded experience at this year’s Dota 2 International, opening exactly how you’d expect him to: “Hi, I’m Gabe Newell.” After clearing that up, he waxes not quite poetically about how he fell in love with the MOBA quite deeply thanks to the first International. But, he says says, “It’s not just the game I love, but the community.

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“Sure, people talk s**t at me in chat, and about once a week people say, hey noob, uninstall the game and [censor blip]. But that’s really about their enthusiasm, and the energy that they bring, and that’s why, after all these years, I still play Dota every day.”

Now, I do feel I have to say that this is a pretty subtly horrendous way to endorse quite toxic behaviours that many people are often subjected to in online games. I don’t care if you’re enthusiastic! We’re all here to have fun, right? Try a friendly word of advice before you make your way to the arcade’s basketball machine for some easy dunks.

On the other hand, I find it quite an amusing, if brief, anecdote about the ways in which we don’t know who we’re playing with online. I fully believe that Newell regularly gets lambasted by strangers online, and it tickles me to imagine how they might change their behaviour if they had the relevant context.

Not to say that it’s good many of them would likely be kinder with said context, I just think there’s a lesson to be had here in how we encourage certain kinds of communication in game spaces. One that Valve, even now, still should probably learn how to do better.

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Fan Token Firm Chiliz Acquires 2-Time ‘Dota 2’ Champions, OG Esports

In brief

GG Newsletter

Still getting dunked on in Dota 2? Don’t worry, even Gabe Newell gets called a noob once a week, apparently