CS-Nation

Covering the future of Counter-Strike
cxg fiasco
mailbag: cxg fiasco
When the Cyber X Games tournament was announced some time ago many people couldn't believe their ears: hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes, a massive BYOC, dozens of local qualifier tournaments with prizes in cash and top-of-the-line computers. It was almost too good to be true, and basically was. Leading up the tournament there were numerous policy changes starting with prize reductions and the location of the actual tournament.

Once the tournament started things went from bad to worse in a hurry as seen in this news post. So where did it all go wrong? Let's find out.
from: Splatula
CXG is definitely to blame. If you don't prepare for a tournament, how can you expect to pull it off when Murphy's law comes into play.

Mind you, Valve COULD have taken the time to realize that a large tourney was in progress before issuing an update, and taken the appropriate steps. CXG organizers say "Valve said they would be coming by" but this means nothing. I might stop by sometime too.. but that doesn't mean I'm going to run the tournament for them, or fix their problems. CXG should have taken the time, a month before the event at least, to contact Valve and work out a deal similar to what the CPL organizers did.

When CXG organizers became aware of the problem, they just allowed the participants to continue bogging down their networks in traffic, instead of limiting their access. If they had shut down net access, they could have downloaded the update on a couple of machines, then propagated the update internally via burnt CDs or network shares. Then the event that was cancelled would only have been delayed by an hour or two.

The other issues were people coming to the LAN unprepared. Vendors should get in on this LAN action... they should sell NICs, cables, games, and video cards at large events. I've seen people show up and five minutes later they're swearing because their cables are worn and crappy, or their video card has blown... capitalize on this!!!! How many people forget their game CDs?
I'm glad this response was first. I agree that the CXG organizers fouled up when they let everyone and their crippled giraffe download the update at the same time, bogging down the servers to a blazing .00002 bytes per second, but as far as I know, without contacting VALVe in advance and paying a small fee, you can't spread the update externally or internally over network shares or other means. So this takes us back back to their biggest mistake: organizing a large tournament without the aid from VALVe, who has a regular update schedule.

While it's standard for some idiot to forget a cable, or have a busted NIC, it's nothing that some smart vendors could have taken care of. There absolutely should have been a product vendor there, which was a horrible mistake.
from: naem
VALVe makes for a convenient scapegoat. CXG's lack of preperation is ultimately to blame, such as not getting a contract with VALVe for a LAN only version of Steam. I would like to see Joe Hill blame VALVe for the miserable outcome of certain non-Steam games.

There's plenty that can be done to make sure this never happens. Like never going to a CXG event again and instead attending the biannual CPL events, and watch how things get done when people plan appropriately. Sorry, Joe, but you messed up and ultimately your fruitless attempts to blame everybody but yourself for CXG's failure will come back and bite you in the ass.
Whoa now, one mistake shouldn't tell everyone to never go to any event they put on again. That's too extreme. So they messed up one time, big deal. They should have arranged the LAN contract, but they figured, "Hey, it's stable enough, let's go for it." They were probably trying to save money. So we shouldn't despise him for what happened, at least he tried to put on a successful event where people could have fun.
from: Gameshot911
CGX has some explaining to do not only to the community but to its sponsers. Very large companies put thousands of dollars into this event, and not only did people not see thier name, but they are "associated" with this oranization who had a huge foul up.
Sponsors are not hanging on such a thread that if one event turns to garbage they instantly lose all their credibility. While they did lose money, they should have done something to help them. It's not that they have explaining to do, since they just overlooked a few things that most of us also would have. Everyone has fouled up an event before, whether it was a LAN, or a birthday party for four year old children.
from: orphy
omghi2u ok heres what i think i think cxg sucks because i do ok and its just wrong ok but yea ok they should have given me all the money because im a poor canadian lolz
Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the comedy stylings of orphy!!!!
from: snake plissken
Well personally, i think its CXG's fault, for the reason, that they should've had the insight to realize valve would have something happen.

They should've made sure there were no patches, and stayed updated making sure everything was going to be alright.

CXG's lack of insight killed it, not valve, valve cant be worried about one tournament, they have a world's worth of gamers to attend to.
You can predict what week an update will be released, Nostradamus. Granted they overlooked contacting VALVe about it, but they assumed that everything would be roses and blue jays and there wouldn't be an update on Steam. Way to go.