India’s MOBA Legends scene has hit one of its biggest flashpoints in years. Evil Esports, one of the oldest names in Indian Mobile Legends, pulled out of a showmatch event run by caster Kronos on November 3, after a row over the schedule spiralled into public accusations of favouritism.
The showmatches were meant to help decide which team would be put forward for India’s eighth slot at the upcoming Google Play event that the community refers to as MLMS. The name goes back to the Moba Legends: 5v5! Master Series, whose first season earlier this year sent champions True Rippers to the Esports World Cup.
Instead of settling anything, Evil’s exit has turned a one-day event into a wider argument about how slots are handed out in Moba Legends: 5v5!, the version of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang played in India.
Evil’s place in that story runs deeper than most. The team was already billed as one of India’s top Mobile Legends squads before the game was banned in the country in June 2020. It was also still active when the title returned as Moba Legends: 5v5! under Vizta Games in April 2024.
How a schedule mix-up turned into Evil Esports’ walkout
Kronos, who runs the MOBA Masala Cup and whose channel also covers international events such as the North American Premier Series, put the showmatches together at short notice. Four teams were lined up, namely Yama Esports, Noctura, Daku Sena and Evil Esports, with Daku Sena widely seen as the frontrunners for the slot before Evil asked for a shot at it.
The trouble started with a clash between two versions of the schedule. A text version showed Evil playing two back-to-back best-of-three series, whereas the tournament graphic had them playing three in a row, and Kronos could not clear it up straight away because he was busy casting.
When he returned to the chat, the exchange quickly turned sour. Kronos asked whether the team had a problem with him and told Evil it could play if it wanted to, or skip it if it did not. Evil, led by Berserker, decided that playing offered no guarantee of the slot anyway, so the team withdrew and said it no longer wanted to be considered.
That point about guarantees sits at the heart of the dispute. Kronos was only in a position to forward the results to the point of contact handling the eighth slot. The final decision rested with the event’s organisers, which meant that even a clean sweep would not have sealed Evil’s place.
Berserker’s favouritism claims and Kronos’s blunt reply
Berserker took the dispute straight to his fanbase that evening, going live on Evil’s YouTube channel with a stream titled “UNFAIRNESS in the Indian MLBB Community?”. Evil pointed to its long history in the Indian scene and raised concerns about how teams from the Northeast are treated, which struck a chord with a fanbase concentrated in Manipur and the surrounding states. One supporter replying to early reports went further, claiming the fixture graphic was only changed after Evil went live, although Kronos has put the mismatch down to a graphic error.
Kronos, however, hit back hard in a statement shared by Esports360 on November 4. He called the event “a showmatch” with “no compulsion” to take part, and told Evil that if it “expected VIP treatment” after years of streaming, it should join the creator program instead.
He also claimed that the rest of the Evil roster had wanted to play and had messaged him asking him to talk to Berserker. On top of that, he rejected suggestions that he was close to Mahi Clutchers, the MS Dhoni-backed club competing in Google Play’s new Google Play Arena, saying he does not know the organisation. Google launched that championship with NODWIN Gaming on October 23, and Moba Legends: 5v5! is one of its six titles, alongside BGMI and Free Fire MAX, with the grand finale set for December.
Neither side has backed down since, and the numbers show how closely the community is following it. Berserker’s stream had passed 12,000 views within a day, while Kronos’s showmatch broadcast had drawn around 10,000, and no team has yet been publicly confirmed for India’s eighth slot.
