Any time you’re hit with a delay, pause or — at worst — a restart in a tournament, it’s always a frustrating thing. Tensions are often running high and it’s annoying for everyone involved — players, spectators and admins.
But when the score reads 15-11 in a CSGO event — especially one that players have paid money for via a subscription service — it’s doubly aggravating. And when the admin decides that the round your team just won didn’t count, and you go on the lose the game … well, you can imagine the reaction.
The match was a qualifier for this year’s Intel Challenge Katowice, a female-only Counter-Strike: Global Offensive event for 30,000 euros. Eight teams will compete on the IEM Expo stage in Katowice, but only two slots were on offer through ESEA’s European online qualifiers.
During those qualifiers, Unikrn found themselves 15-11 up on de_cache against their opponents Revival before the server went down. Here’s a screenshot from Lalita, one of the Unikrn players.
? the true story pic.twitter.com/SBDp2602SZ
— Lalità (@Lalita_pro) February 8, 2016
Replicating the money situation would be tricky, but you’d think the situation would be fairly straightforward. It’s match point to Unikrn: just get one person in the server, change the start money to something reasonable, get all the players back in while the game is paused (or modify the start money for both teams if you have to) and carry on.
But that wasn’t the case, according to ESEA. After attention was drawn to the situation by Richard “shox” Papillion, a statement was issued by an admin through a Twitlonger message that was later deleted.
It didn’t do much to quell the outrage.
Earlier today during the Intel Challenge Katowice Women’s Qualifier, some servers crashed in the middle of matches that led us to begin the process to medic the matches. Due to the servers crashing in the middle of a round, we were only able to medic to the start of the previous round, as is standard for all matches. Since we cannot restart a round in the middle of it, it must be played from the start of the round.
We treat these qualifiers the same as the all other qualifiers, regardless of anyone’s gender. We hope to provide the most competitive matches played for any event that is hosting a qualifier through ESEA, with teams earning the chance to compete on a bigger stage should they win.
The problem seems to be one of timing: while at least one of the clients clearly recorded Kinguin winning, that clearly wasn’t recorded by the server logs due to the restart. There was enough time for the in-game bot to record the score as 15-11, however, as another Unikrn member pointed out.
@ESEA @fewowns team unikrn winning 15-11 pic.twitter.com/8ODCrqi31A
— Julia Strunkowski (@JuliaCSGO) February 8, 2016
According to the ESEA bracket at the time of writing, Revival were able to win their next match and move on to the next stage of the qualifiers (along with YouPorn’s female CSGO team).
It’s an astonishing state of affairs considering the available information, which isn’t helped after another Unikrn member posted a screenshot of a brief conversation with one of the admins.
Another statement hasn’t been issued at the time of writing, but it seems like the kind of scenario where — at the very least — the match should be replayed, if not from the original position. As someone who spent far too many weekends administrating matches myself, which included admitting fault and correcting issues whenever I’d made a mistake, the whole episode looks atrocious for ESEA.
Comments
29 responses to “Tournament Organisers Under Fire After Counter-Strike Game Is Restarted On Match Point”
LOL Female only, maybe if this is the road we are going down there should be age brackets. Otherwise this is just “We need a chance for girls to win” rather than “Exposure to different player groups”.
EDIT: LOLOLOLOL angry SJW proving that their weapon of choice is censorship, my posts bellow require moderation. Good effort being weak of heart and requiring the big bad down vote system to get comments silenced.
Which ever mod just thought that post bellow was inappropriate can I get some reasoning, I used the F word once and that is all and it wasn’t like I said “F- you”.
Bullshit. There are male and female sporting events, why should esports be any different? I don’t see anyone saying that Serena Williams should be forced to play against Nadal or Federer.
Because men and women are on equal intellectual grounds, hence no need for the split. Physically they’re not exactly equal in most cases, hence why physical sport events are still split to keep it more fair.
True, they’re equal in gaming, but culturally it’s still very difficult for them to get ahead as easily.
I agree but don’t see this as a good way to fix that. They should instead be promoting/supporting women in standard esports not segregated ones.
I get the idea behind these events but that seems more like a reason to fix the bullshit in traditional events, not have more of these.
Silly argument. Males have a physical advantage, hence the gender split in most sports. I dont see either gender having an advantage when it comes to esports.
Social and institutional advantages?
Males reaction times are on average in competitive scenarios 10% faster which for a twitchy game like CS:GO is the difference of who fires first and wins.
Coco and Allgravynolackin already summed it up, but basically comparing say Tennis (tennis is the closest physical sport in terms of control, stamina and tactics that I could think of) to the direct example of FPS is really ridiculous. While both require mental capability, the physical aspect of Tennis is what determines that women and men don’t play together (not being arrogant there are examples of the best female tennis player getting destroyed by a guy that was not seeded in top 100).
While there is some physicality in Video games (body training for general health and stamina) most of it is your ability to process problems and react to said problems, there is no reason why there should be gender specific leagues; if anything there should be age brackets so that some of the younger players can have a chance to have some fun and make a name for themselves.
Your post is that of a Sexist; “You can’t expect a woman to play against a man, there is no way they could win”.
Don’t straw man and call someone else a sexist in response to your own sexism.
Yes the defining limiting factor for female gamers isn’t actually ability and in theory they should be able to compete on a combined stage.
But most pro gaming is a sausage fest and events like these are designed to diversify the playing field and create a healthier sporting environment in the long term.
I am a sexist for saying that in terms of gaming that women and men can play on equal footing if the same level of practice is given? I am legitimately at a loss for how you can to that conclusion. I am going to go out on a limb and say you are one of those guys that believe in the wage gap yeah?
There are female gamers out there that are great and could be competitive, but the issue is that why would you do that when you can make a lot more money streaming. Look at the current trend on Twitch, I am sure with any level of general observation you would find that female gamers “earn” more than men, even with a smaller viewer base.
If you want to know why the top tier female teams don’t win, its purely because they are not good enough. Same reason why we (Australia) don’t have teams ripping up Katowice, we instead have a VERY luke warm team that just remind the international scene that there are still Australian players.
All this is is a handout, not a chance at more exposure. These teams don’t work as hard, they don’t train against teams that are top tier to better themselves (this is what the top NA teams are doing right now to get competitive against Eu).
If you want to have that argument then maybe you should look at the training regimes of the top gaming teams in all the popular games; the level of dedication is what makes them better; nothing to do with culture.
Do you mean believe in the wage gap as in it’s a real statistic? Or that I think it should exist?
Because one’s a fact and the other is you attacking me.
You’re a sexist because you’re attacking a program designed to increase the gender diversity of a sport as nothing more than a handout, if you encourage more players and markets to the sport it might be more profitable and you might see more gamers of all stripes there instead of just on twitch.
Smaller, limited competitions are more likely to bring in and foster new and different talent. Which may then go on to compete in other leagues. But you’re apparently so threatened by this you just want to attack it as charity and then pretend somehow that anyone who actually supports it is sexist.
Beyond any of the potential cultural and logistical benefits to the sport have you considered that they may just get different advertisers and spectators interested? Which brings in the money to not only pay for that event but can lead to more money into other events.
Don’t most sports also use age brackets?
Would an under 18 tournament really annoy you so much?
I am saying it wouldn’t, I actually think a junior age bracket would do well for bringing age diversity to a game that is dominated by a very different age group to most games. Cs players are considered a little older than most other pro scenes and the junior bracket would give a chance for both genders to bring in some fresh blood and show what they have to offer, while getting the confidence, skills and exposure needed to keep them pro into the main bracket.
So you’re happy to split it one way to diversify the sport but the other way is just “a chance for girls to win” then?
There’s reasons to split up the entry requirements for any tournament, stop suggesting this one is any less valid because of a single obtuse reasoning.
I am saying that a 20 year old female and a 20 year old male with the same amount of dedication to the scene (training, meta building, exercise and team work) have only one thing standing in their way, skill levels.
The age one for CS is simple, the better players do tend to be a little bit older (for an esport player) and thus the new kids on the scene should be given a shot; I never said those new kids couldn’t be female.
I think you are just being hyper sensitive as is the norm with SJW’s these days.
And we’re not saying that they can’t potentially compete on even ground.
We’re saying that competitions like this encourage more to join the sport, which we think is good. You just keep couching your sexism in a supposed need for absolute equality and then straw manning anyone who disagrees with you.
I think these things are a good idea for diversity, I think you’re being a sexist asshole, neither of these things make me a SJW so stop trying to take pock shots at me.
I agree age brackets are good, because they encourage lots of younger people who may not have the skills or training to compete on the absolute highest stage. Then again some of them might, and they might want to go pro before they’re 18.
Perhaps it’s the same with some of these female teams, they’re recent converts to the sport and don’t have the history or training yet and are trying to make a start?
Seriously if you replace any group other than women in the example is seems like you’d be fine with it. So stop trying to put your own issues on us.
If they all had microphones, yes it would definitely annoy me.
That isn’t fair, some women don’t use the cutesy voice to get what they want (thus undermining their group as a whole).
Nice work replying to a joke referencing underage kids on microphones and instead changing it to a condescending sexist remark.
It wasn’t an attempt at being condescending, I will admit that I don’t like hearing children under the age of 15 playing games like counter strike with an open microphone, but I am not the Internet, I don’t feel the need to be a dick the second a person of the opposite gender turns on their mic in game.
Opinions are always complicated things, maybe not assuming that I am essentially an MRA would be a healthy outlook to have. Just saying.
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His comment wasn’t even about girls voice sand you replied with a condescending sexist comment saying some women aren’t annoying and a discredit to their gender.
I never called you an MRA, I called you a sexist because that’s what your comments are showing you to be over and over.
Yeah I was kind of just referencing the absurd amount of 12 to 15 year old male CS:GO players that have slept with my mother.
Taking my comment to push your troll agenda on gaming stereotypes, I’ll leave you this quote from a CS:GO player.
“Dick move bro”
Nintendo already have age brackets for their regional/world Pokemon tourneys, I think it’s a good idea for kids or you probably wouldn’t get many happy to play against adults and vice-versa even though reaction times aren’t exactly crucial in Pokemon.
Don’t think there needs to be quite as many brackets as they have though (4 IIRC)
I think these are the reasons for eSports won’t take off as much as people want it to be.
Because physical sports never have any kind of controversies to do with refereeing/umpiring or admin decisions. Nope. Never happens.
These comments are exactly why esports is the cesspool it is.
Women’s Only brackets ensures a different audience might perhaps catch on to the product the organisers are trying to sell to advertisers, sponsors, television studios, etc.
But it’s probably going to be okay, the more manbabies act up, the less women are going to get involved in esports anyway. So, good job I suppose.
They’ll just have to play real video games instead.
Like Game of War and Candy Crush.
You know, the real successful video games.
we all know women are bad jokes of science. who wants to move along with a realistic human? this way smart humans (waves).
Males reaction times are on average in competitive scenarios 10% faster which for a twitchy game like CS:GO is the difference of who fires first and wins. I guess they could compete on even ground for the top 5% bracket but having a male and female league is better for the esport right now and promotes a wider audience which can appeal to more demographics.