I try to take people at face value and assume they are honestly providing their perspective. I think a concerning part of the article is that the team (Rally) and the individual had not heard from the organizer about the payout. If there was an expectation of payout taking this long on the organizer’s side it did not seem to have been effectively communicated to the team and individuals involved. If drug testing and other things push out the timeline for the payout I don’t think it should be difficult to communicate approximate timeframes and set expectations.
I’m not up on the twitter stuff, but I don’t see what the event winner has to apologize for. At least from what I saw in the article. She hasn’t been paid, she hasn’t been told when she’d be paid, and she just said that. Its not like she called them a bunch of shady scumbags (caveat - at least from what I have seen.).
I would guess that there is a fair amount of social media backlash just due to L39ion’s huge social media presence and advertisement of the event: live by the sword, die by the sword.