On the evening of 7 November, GodLike Esports co-owner Chetan “Kronten” Chandgude went live on YouTube under a “Let’s Talk” banner and spoke for 101 minutes. He described a long-planned exit from his organisation, a close friend he said had worked “as a spy” since 2024, a one-third stake he tied to that exit, a recorded call with former GodLike figure Hades, and a police complaint.
He never said Jonathan’s name. The bench at BGIS 2026 and the timing of the exit he described match Jonathan Amaral’s departure, and viewers in the live chat discussed it on that basis. Within hours, clips with red arrows and “EXPOSED” thumbnails were on every BGMI channel, and the comment sections had reached their verdicts.
Nobody delivering those verdicts had seen a contract, the FIR, or the recording.
This editorial takes no side on what happened inside GodLike. We do not know, and neither does anyone whose only evidence is the stream. We do know how the dispute reached the public, because Indian esports has handled its fights this way for years. A grievance builds in private, then breaks open on a stream, then gets argued by fans, clip channels and anonymous X accounts until the next one replaces it. Nothing is resolved, and almost everyone involved comes out worse.
The GodLike case is the clearest example yet of a scene with no referee. It should also be the last one handled like this.
Most of the serious claims rest on evidence the audience has not seen
Start with what the stream put on the table, and what it showed. We set out the full account in our breakdown of Kronten’s full stream, so this is the short version.
About 16 minutes in, Kronten said he had investigated what Hades told him and had “even filed an FIR”. He did not give an FIR number, a police station or a date, and he did not show a copy. He said he was “legally bound” not to show more, and promised the material would become “public data” within about 20 days. As of Sunday, no complaint, notice or FIR has been publicly confirmed with a document by either side.
The “spy” was described as one of Kronten’s two closest friends and as a manager who had passed on details of GodLike’s plans and of Kronten’s personal life since 2024. He was not named. That leaves thousands of viewers guessing, and guessing in public is how the wrong people get targeted.
The account of the exit itself came, by Kronten’s telling, from Hades. Kronten said Hades reached GodLike co-owner Amar while rumours about Jonathan’s bench were spreading, that Amar pulled Kronten into the call, and that Hades asked for the conversation to be recorded. Kronten said Hades described a plan linked to a trip to Goa, which Hades had been due to join but skipped. Kronten also said Hades was ready to return to India and back his account in public.
Hades is not a neutral witness. On 5 November, two days before the stream, he wrote on X that he was “guilty” over money he had borrowed from people in the Indian gaming community and not repaid, an allegation that first surfaced in December 2025. In the same exchange he denied being formally part of Jonathan’s Team Apex Gaming (TAG) but confirmed he had worked on a few projects with it. On the afternoon of 7 November, hours before Kronten went live, Hades posted a longer public apology to the people he said he had let down. We covered that admission in our report on Hades and the unpaid loans row. Kronten, to his credit, asked his viewers not to send Hades any hate.
Jonathan and TAG have not responded to the stream. His latest YouTube upload went live on Saturday evening and does not mention it. When he launched TAG in April, he presented the move as ambition and said he “had to grow more”.
So the most serious claims in this dispute come from an owner with a personal stake in the story, supported by a source who has admitted owing money to members of this community, backed by documents nobody outside has seen, about a player who has not been given a hearing. Any of those claims may turn out to be true. Right now they are unverified, and an unverified claim broadcast to a fanbase does its damage long before anyone checks it.
Indian esports has argued like this for years
The platforms and the people have changed over four years, while the method has stayed the same.
In June 2022, TSM India accused GodLike of poaching Arjun “Shadow” Mandhalkar, saying the player was still under contract when GodLike named him in its BGMI roster without contacting TSM. GodLike’s side said the player had already cut ties. The argument ran through tweets and statements, and Kronten answered on an Instagram live with allegations that TSM had withheld player salaries. No public ruling on the contract question ever followed.
In 2023, Kronten made a “dead player” remark on a stream that S8UL fans took as aimed at co-owner Naman “MortaL” Mathur. He clarified on a later stream that he had apologised to MortaL. S8UL co-founder 8Bit Goldy asked him to stop mentioning the organisation. We reported Kronten’s clarification after the MortaL remark at the time. The row ended when the attention moved on.
In March 2026, Jonathan sat out Day 1 of the BGIS 2026 Survival Stage in Hyderabad and left the venue before the final day. Co-owner Amar issued a statement on 17 March describing the bench as strategic and talking about lifting a trophy “alongside Jonathan”. This website read that statement and published a piece saying Jonathan was not leaving GodLike. Within weeks he confirmed his exit, and TAG launched on 12 April. We relied on a statement made under public pressure, and we got it wrong. Kronten now says GodLike’s senior figures knew about Jonathan’s plans around November 2025, which, if true, means the public was given a version of events that the people inside already knew was incomplete.
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The Hades loans story followed the same route. The allegations surfaced through an X account in December 2025, not through a complaint anyone could check. GodLike distanced itself, saying any personal loans made on promises of repayment through the organisation had not been authorised by it. Eleven months later, the “proof” in a separate dispute is being attributed to the same man.
Across four disputes and four years, the outcome was the same each time. Allegations were aired to fans, comment sections hardened positions, and no forum ever decided the underlying question.
No one in Indian esports has the job of deciding who is right
The reasons this keeps happening are structural, and most of them have nothing to do with GodLike.
No neutral forum exists. KRAFTON India introduced its first structured BGMI player transfer window in October 2025. It was a real step. Transfers now run through the KRAFTON India Esports dashboard, a second window opened on 1 April 2026, and rosters lock after each window closes. That system records who plays where. It does not decide whether a stake was promised, whether a player was poached, whether a salary was paid or whether a manager leaked plans. When those questions come up, there is no panel to file with, so people file with their audience instead.
Friendships stand in for contracts. Indian BGMI organisations grew out of friend groups, and many are still run that way. Kronten described the alleged “spy” as one of his closest friends. The one-third stake at the centre of this dispute is being discussed in public with no indication of what document, if any, governs it. When business partners are friends and the paperwork is thin, a breakdown feels like a betrayal, and betrayals get aired.
Streams reward conflict. Most owners in this scene are also creators, and a 101-minute stream about a feud will outperform a normal BGMI session. Clip channels earn from the fallout within hours. Nobody has to act in bad faith for the incentives to point at the camera.
Fans are treated as the jury. TAG’s identity is built around its founder, and GodLike’s has always been built around its players and its owner. When an organisation is a personality, a dispute becomes a referendum on that personality, and the fans who vote in it have the least information of anyone involved. Before Kronten went live, a TAG fan community warned supporters against posting anything that could lead to cyber complaints or legal action. When fan pages are issuing legal warnings, the scene has a problem.
The legal route is slow, and invoked more than used. An FIR starts a police inquiry into an alleged offence and says nothing yet about guilt. Disputes over stakes, salaries and contracts are usually civil matters that move through courts over years. Announcing an FIR on stream works as a signal to the audience. Until its details are public, it is not evidence of anything except that a complaint was made.
The players and staff caught in the middle pay the most
Every one of these rows lands hardest on people who did not start it.
Spower, who stayed with GodLike after Jonathan left, was praised on the stream for turning down an offer to leave, which is a compliment that also makes him a target in the opposite camp. Godz and Manya, who played the Day 1 match Jonathan sat out in March, have been pulled into fan arguments they had no part in creating. Many of the players in these lineups are young, and most are still early in their careers. Their social accounts take the abuse that the owners’ disputes generate.
An unnamed accusation is worse. When an owner says a close friend and manager has been spying since 2024 but does not name him, fans start working through every manager GodLike has had. If the person they settle on is the wrong one, there is no process to clear them, and no one who made the claim is accountable for the mistake.
Sponsors notice, too. Indian esports is still asking brands to treat it as a stable, professional sport. Every public feud between two of the biggest names in BGMI makes that pitch harder for every organisation, including the ones not involved.
There is also legal exposure for everyone repeating the claims. Allegations of spying, fraud or breach of contract, made in public about identifiable people, can bring defamation claims. That applies to the owner on the stream, the clip channel that re-uploads it, and the outlet that reports it carelessly.
Other esports scenes built a referee, and India now has the legal footing to do the same
None of this is unique to India. What is different is that other scenes have started building institutions to handle it.
In November 2024, Riot Games launched the Dispute Resolution for Riot Games’ Esports in EMEA, an independent arbitration court for League of Legends and VALORANT. Players, coaches and teams can bring cases over unpaid salaries, bonuses, prize money and transfer disagreements. The court is administered by Martens, the law firm behind basketball’s Basketball Arbitral Tribunal, and its arbitrators decide independently of Riot. Riot funded the start-up, and parties now pay handling fees. Disputes that would once have played out as public call-outs now have somewhere to go.
North America shows the other half. In 2023, the LCS Players Association negotiated with Riot on behalf of its players, and the dispute delayed the start of the LCS season by two weeks. It was public and messy, but the demands were on paper, the players had representation and the outcome was negotiated. That is very different from one owner, one stream and one fanbase.
India has a new opening. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act received presidential assent on 22 August 2025, and the Gazette notification of the Act recognises esports as a legitimate competitive sport and gives the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports the job of framing guidelines and standards for it. The rules under the Act came into force on 1 May 2026. As written, that framework deals with recognising titles and regulating events. It says little about the relationship between an organisation and its players, which is exactly where the GodLike dispute sits.
What KRAFTON India, organisations and players should do next
The fix does not need to be invented from scratch. It needs someone to pick it up.
KRAFTON India should attach a dispute process to the transfer window. It already controls which rosters are registered for official events. It could require that every registered player has a written contract lodged with it, with minimum terms on salary, notice and any equity, and fund an independent panel, along the lines of Riot’s EMEA model, to rule on contract and transfer disputes between registered parties. The timing works. In an exclusive interview with TalkEsport at BMIC 2026, KRAFTON India Esports associate director Karan Pathak said the next transfer window is expected to open on 15 November and run until 20 December 2026.
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Organisations should put stakes and promises in writing. Creator-players with equity, revenue shares or content rights need documents that say what happens when they leave. The GodLike dispute would look very different if the one-third stake could be checked against a signed agreement.
Owners should agree a cooling-off rule. A simple industry pledge would help. Owners would make no public allegations about former players or staff while a formal complaint is pending, and none without the evidence attached.
Players need representation. An Indian BGMI players’ body, even an informal one with shared legal counsel, would give players somewhere to take a problem other than their own stream.
The Ministry’s esports framework should include a grievance route for contract disputes in recognised titles, so that the legal recognition esports has won comes with a way to settle arguments.
Media outlets, including this one, have to slow down. At TalkEsport, that means labelling claims as claims, asking every named party for their side before publishing, describing documents only when we have seen them, and correcting our coverage when we get it wrong, as we did in March.
The next 20 days will show whether there is a case behind the stream
Kronten has set his own deadline. He said the material would become public in about 20 days, which puts it in late November. If an FIR has been filed, the number and police station can be shared now without revealing anything sensitive. If there is a recording, the parties can confirm it exists.
Jonathan and TAG are entitled to answer the Goa claim and the stake claim on the record, and to have that answer reported with the same prominence as the stream. Hades, if he does return to India to back his account, should do it with something more than his word. Our requests for comment are open to all three.
If the documents arrive, the case moves from a stream to a process, and that is where it belongs. If they do not, fans who spent the week convicting someone should remember that. Until then, everything said on 7 November is a set of claims, and that is how TalkEsport will report it.
