X-Fi scathing allegations of blackmail against professional Counter Strike team, defusekids. We have just received a statement from senior defusekids player, Ivan 'Apollo' Wuddhisukhum, who was very disappointed that the team was bearing the brunt of the blame from the situation.
"Our trip to Spain from A to Z:
We approached RedCode after our ESWC journey, for our organisation had no budget to pay for any international LAN.
We agreed to an initial budget of €500, to cover the primary travel expenses plus hotel stay, and agreed that extra expenses would be covered post-lan. A small summary of our costs:
Rental bus: €500
And there you have it, the initial budget all blown away just for the van!
Additional expenses:
Gasoline (all those with a car can and will agree)
Hotel stop on the road (driving 12hrs in a row = madness)
I will not go into detail, but the trip was a heavy one, beset with all sorts of problems. It took us 18hrs to get there. And the troubles only just commenced!
When we finally arrived at the Bilbao Exhibition centre (gamegune), it was already about 12 at night... After the trip we had we were really looking forward to get in our hotel room, since Yopi told us that everything was arranged. When we first met the redcode crew, everything seemed a little bit chaotic, since the guys who where responsible to take care of us and arrange our stuffs, like inscriptions, hotel, tournament information etc where the 3 same guys who organized the Counter-Strike 1.6 tournament. We still had a lot of confidence and we waited for a bout 1 hour at the entree of the gaming hall, redcode didn’t want to pay for our team coach his entree and they fixed him a press pass to get him free in. we felt a little bit weird about that, because our team coach was about to be with us during our games and not to be in the press area, but they said that if we get him in fast nobody would notice...
When we came at the point to get our hotel information for our first night in Spain, we suddenly heard that they didn't book any hotels and didn't have gear with them to get us a sleep at the LAN either. One guy from redCode even said that he didn’t know anything about booking a hotel for us, he didn’t even know about paying that for us. We confronted Yopi with everything and Yopi then said that they just had a small internal communication problem. The organisation didn’t have money to pay our hotel, but one of the crewmembers of redcode gave us money from his own bank account to pay our first night our hotel. Tough they couldn’t tell us where to find a hotel, since none of them was from Bilbao or knew the city. We went to about 5 hotels in a close range from the event that was within our budget, but all hotels where fully booked. We didn’t have any GPS and with no knowledge of Spanish we felt doomed and not helped by redCode at all. Luckily enough the Spanish people where very helpful and we found a random guy in the middle of the night who drove to a hotel about 20 minutes from the event. The money redcode paid wasn’t even enough to pay our first night, so we had to use our own last money for food, to pay the night.
The next day, we had problems to find our way back to the event, but we managed to get there, again with help from the good Spanish civilians. When we told the organisation about our hell night, they promised us that everything would be fixed for the second night and that we didn’t need to worries about anything at all.
After a full day of waiting and gaming we were about to go to our hotel again. Seemed that the redcode organisation again forgot to fix our hotel, again they gave us some money without any problems, from the crewmember his own bank account again. Same like the previous night, we had to find our hotel without any GPS or decent knowledge of the Spanish language. This night we weren’t so lucky, we where about driving for 1 and a half our in Spain to find a hotel that had room for 7 people. Suddenly out of nowhere we saw a truck with a Belgian car plate, we made him stop and asked him if he had a GPS and get us to a hotel, he did so, but we had to go on a very high and dangerous hill. Our car didn’t make the hill and it stopped in the middle of it, it was very dark there and we thought that we would die, because our car was going backwards downhill. We managed to get down very slow and take another road to the hotel we lost more then an hour again. About at 5 in the morning we found a hotel and could get some sleep. Yopi told us to be back at 1 in the afternoon, so we did.
When we where near the event, we got an SMS from a mate in Holland who told us we where disqualified, no one from redCode called us. When we arrived at the event, some admin from gamegune said that we had to play at 12, we confronted Yopi with him, because he said we had to play at 1, lucky for us the redCode admins had some influence on the gamegune admins and because Convention where really eager to play versus us after they beat SK Gaming.
We played our game and won it, even with all the extra motion we shouldn’t go trough. The same day we lost from PGS and from ZYKON and where knocked out of the tournament. At that point we saw that the crewmembers from redCode changed mentality towards us, and weren’t so friendly anymore, we felt that discussion would come up if we would ask for our hotel the 3rd night.
What we felt earlier, happened, again no hotels were booked and they didn’t want to give us money to go to a hotel. Our team captain ferdi had to threaten the redCode crew with actions and that it is totally unacceptable not getting a hotel for us. They clearly said that we were out of the tournament and that's why they acted all difficult and that they just didn’t had any money with them anymore. Frank, our manager got his 500€ back the day before, that he paid for the car and he used that money to pay our hotel for the third night.
The day after we returned to the event we went to ask our money back (500€), money for gasoline, toll etc to get back in Belgium. We were told that we would receive it back, that we did a good event and that neder, the boss of redcode will give it all back to us. We didn't have time to wait for the money, we wanted to but some of us were going to on vacation and we HAD to drive back. We had to trust them on their word, whatever that is worth. When we came back online, we thought everything was fine and that we would receive the money back but neder said he didn't even know of the arrangement and that we were already over our 500€ budget.
If the organisation would have arranged all the hotels, we wouldn't have to drive all night in Spain looking for hotels, wasting our gasoline while we have to play a world event the day after. I hope all of you will take the time to read this thing trough since friendship is going to waste because now we all have to pay a share part of 500€ back to Bax and some people don't want to do that since all of this just isn't fair..."
In another strange twist, since the original story was published here on SK Gaming, the press release on the redCode eSports site was taken down temporarily. Only to be reposted later by another administrator on the site.