Cyber X Games Cancelled

A huge event funded by Microsoft, ATI and AMD has been hit by problems due to networking and patches. The event held in Las Vegas, America is tied with the Consumer Electronics Show 2004. A lot of blame has been put on a company who can't control source code leaks - Valve. The Cyber X team needed a 3MB file to patch systems ready to play the popular online game, Counterstrike. The file could only be obtained from Valves Steam network. Since there were 1000 or more computers, grabbing a patch of 3MB on each one fried one of Valves routers. According to the inquirer, emails between Cyber X staff and Valve weren't answered and no help was offered. If Valve weren't dead when the Half Life 2 source code leaked, they are now.

This didn't only affect Counterstrike gamers, it hit other gamers who had flown out from Europe to get to play. Intel sponsored team "4 Kings" from the UK were favorties to win the Return To Castle Wolfenstein tournament, according to some gamers the teams are splitting the prize money amongst them and are playing non competitive games. There maybe a smaller scale tournament held with prizes from the sponsors but this is unconfirmed. Online gaming struggles to become a spectator sport when events are not handled properly by those that organise and sponsor them.

View: Cyber X Gaming Site