Cyber X Games cancels tournament

DUE TO TECHNICAL problems, which we covered earlier, here, the Cyber X Games staff in Las Vegas cancelled the Counter-Strike tournament late Saturday. Instead, the admins offered 14 of the 36 teams that had travelled to Lost Wages the chance to play seven "exhibition matches" plus one Allstar-match. These matches were announced with a prize money of $10,000 US dollars each. Which raises the interesting question of where the rest of the pre-announced $160,000 for the Counter-Strike tournament should go to now.

The Cyber X Games, sponsored by AMD, ATI and Microsoft, were preconsidered to be the biggest event in gaming history with total cash prizes of $600,000 dollars.

On Sunday, seven of the scheduled exhibtion matches were played, when all of a sudden the cXg staff cancelled the show alltogether. The Allstar-match, plus one additional game by European clans not originally scheduled for the demonstration events, were also called off.

Many of the European teams protested over the weekend, claiming to have their travel expenses payed by cXg, as they did not have a chance to win any prize money. Even place 10 in the Counter-Strike tournament would have earned the teams $3000, making the trip to Nevada a less catastrophic undertaking for the European clans.

At press time, Cyber X Games would not comment on the total prize money or on a possible refund for the international teams. Talking to the german clan "a-Losers.MSI" here) Chris Hill, Director of Operations, in Las Vegas told the team to safely store all their receipts and wait for an upcoming press release. This at least leaves a little hope that there will be some solution offered by cXg. If the money put out in the end totals to the legendary $600,000 is another question, however. Maybe cXg will end up donating it to general charity as there is no "senior gamers home" fund yet. µ

(Disclaimer: The author is part of the management team of the clan "a-Losers.MSI")

L'INQ
CyberX Games