Even in this day and age, major esports events still have problems.
The Counter Pit League Season Two finals kicked off today in Split, Croatia at the Spaladium Arena. The Counter-Strike final features $80,000 in prizes with half of that heading to the eventual champion. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it’s not gone very smoothly. A plethora of problems have emerged on day one, and while they are not on the spectacular level of the infamous Gamers Paradise event last year, it has caused some players at the tournament to express their displeasure on social media
Less than two weeks after ESL received criticism for hosting four best-of-three matches on one day, Counter Pit have done the very same thing, going ahead with their schedule despite the recent problems it has caused. Unfortunately, the tournament was delayed by an hour, and seven hours in, only two of the four matches are complete.
For the players, the struggle has been going on since the start of the day. Multiple players have apparently been unable to set up properly before their games, which in turn causes delays. During the first series, Virtus Pro player Wiktor “TaZ” Wojtas had to switch out monitors after his broke mid-game.
Technical issues are the bane of every event, and it’s unusual to see a tournament run free of any sort of delay, but Counter Pit have also been struggling on the side of production. Casters being booted out of the game, deathmatch kill cam being on, and a poor looking stream top the list of issues they’ve been having.
Even the talent at the event have spoken up on social media about the poor quality production. Most recently, desk host Pala “Mantrousse” Gilroy Sen, analyst Janko “YNK” Paunovic, and analyst Duncan “Thorin” Shields were forced to stall for over thirty minutes before being fed map veto information to reveal to viewers.
The tournament rolls on at the time of writing, with one more best-of-three match to be played before the day ends. Virtus Pro and Na’Vi have progressed through, while Astralis face off against Torpedo gaming and EnvyUs will do battle with NRG Esports to decide the remaining semi-finalists.
Image via Valve
