"The performance of the players belongs to the name they played for. The shirts will be re-invited to the ESWC, not the players."
Controversy arose when it turned that after moving to Meet Your Makers the five brave men that won the ESWC lost the right to defend their trophy. According to the ESWC rules, the performance of the players belongs to the name they played for and under. The shirts will be re-invited to the ESWC, but not the players.Rules are rules, they are there to be followed, without exceptions. Everyone knows why. Why do people create rules in the first place? And what good is a rule that does not serve its original purpose?
I am a judo referee with ten years of experience. I was taught that rules should protect the integrity of the sport, to safeguard against absurdities. This very rule can make a complete mockery out of the ESWC finals. All PGS needs to do is send their writing staff as the title defenders to stay in a five star hotel booked by the ESWC. Would it be a consolation for the ESWC if PGS is lambasted left and right if the finals event becomes a laughing stock? That the management of PGS Gaming would never do such a thing does not justify the existence of such a dangerous contingency.
The second thing I learned as a referee is that there is an intention behind every rule. There is a reason, a purpose to the rule, and it should not be forgotten along the way. Let me give an example:
"As it is today, there is no champion to defend the title! "
There used to be a point penalty for stepping outside of the competition area because competitors would leave the area in order to avoid an attack. The rule was made in order to eliminate this kind of “negative judo.” Several years later, the penalty rule was changed almost completely because players would try to score points by getting their opponent to leave the mat instead of throwing him.It was not the intention of the International Judo Federation to allow players to win fights without really using judo. The purpose was to stop negative judo, so as soon as the penalty started rewarding it, the rule was overhauled.
What was the intention behind giving ESWC champions autoberths into the next season's finals? It was to see that the players that won the tournament come back and defend their title. In today's reality this is not the case.
As it is today, there is no champion to defend the title! According to the ESWC rules, the champion does not exist at the moment because PGS Gaming does not have a CS team. The five players that won the event in 2007 are still on the same team together but they are not the ESWC champions anymore.
They have no right to defend the title is as if they were not even there. They will have to qualify like everyone else. Imagine a situation where kuben, Loord, LUq, NEO and TaZ, the ESWC 2007 champions, are in attendance at the ESWC finals this year. And their championship title is defended by five brave men from Madagaskar!
"If PGS does not get a CS team and MYM.pl qualifies for ESWC, will Matthieu Dallon say that the title defenders could not attend because they disbanded?"
Most likely, PGS Gaming will not hire five CS players from Madagaskar (as good a country as any, by the way, please do not get offended). But there is no one to top stop them. What moral right would those brave Madagascans have to defend a championship title won by someone else?If MYM.pl beats the five brave Madagascans from PGS Gaming in the 2008 final, will Matthieu Dallon tell the press that the Polish team defeated the title defenders? If PGS Gaming does not get a Counter-Strike team and MYM.pl qualifies for the event, will Matthieu Dallon say that the title defenders could not attend the event because they disbanded?
Is this the idea the ESWC officials had in mind when they created their rules? Was this the intention? Does the rule serve its original purpose? My answer is: no, I do not think so.
2) I have found out that the ESWC is in dialog with PGS Gaming about the berth. It is PGS's full right to accept the berth and send players to the event (by no means should the berth be taken away from them now!), which does not change the fact that I think the rule does not work properly.
3) The side effect of this may be detrimental to the Polish CS community. PGS (MYM.pl) has been taking every single spot for international events, effectively eliminating any chance for other teams to go to top international events to gain experience. Those teams desperately need that slot and it might turn out that MYM.pl will take it from them again.
I agree though that inviting the defending champion is useless. In any sport.
"The five players that won the event in 2007 are still on the same team together but they are not the ESWC champions anymore." - Thats not true. A team consists of more than five players. Even in eSports today.
Yes it's too bad that mYm are not invited, because it's the exact lineup, playing for a different team
No ESWC's rule is not wrong, it may not be most appropriate to the situation, because it doesn't deal with the different cases (the whole team/organization disbands, the full lineup moves to another organization) however when this issue showed up, there happened to be a rule for such a situation and if ESWC had bent over and ruled it in favor of mYm, ESWC would've been no different from WCG, and I don't think anyone wants that for the last serious Major event left.
Do you REALLY believe that an organization like PGS, which on the G7's board, will allow such a mockery as to send 5 total newbies ( AND Pay 5 plane tickets from Poland to the US, which is certainly WAY more expensive than 3 nights in any nice hotel around) ?? If you do believe so, then You should shut down you PC, go watch a news channel for a couple of hours, and walk out of your cave...)
PGS have S P O N S O R S , people who follow the team's result. They send a team like you describe which has no chance to get past the first group stage, and they can kiss their money goodbye. They will rather not send a team (and not waste 5 plane tickets worth of Polish currency) than risk sending a team that will get stomped.
Which leads me to believe that the analogy between how some Judo players exploit a rule to get extra points, and the whole point of giving the berth to the organization or to the lineup is kinda out of place.... unless the real message was "I am a judo referee with ten years of experience" :-]
I have actually said ESWC should not bend over and stick with inviting PGS.
"Do you REALLY believe that an organization like PGS will allow such a mockery as to send 5 total newbies"
No. It says so in the column.
(ofcourse the players win championships and can say 'I won ESWC 2007', but after all, it was PGS and not MYM as an _organisation_ that won that title and should keep that title.
Don't get me wrong, I do think it's not up to eSports standards to do such things, but if we really want to develop eSports, then we need to comply by such rules. If we keep ranting on such rules, we're all f*cking lying when we say we want to be as professional as possible with eSports.
Just 2 Belgian cents
If Neo or someone else from that ex-PGS Lineup had stayed in the team, it would be something completely different.
The thing is that you'd never see a complete Football team changing the club.
teams can move to other cities or can be sold to new owners who take it elsewhere
I think the biggest issue in this case is that the ESWC failed to react in 2004/2005 when Titans/SK.dk had the same problem.
The lifespan of a normal CounterStrike-team (whether in an organization or not) is not 12 months, and for those that actually lasts over 12 months, change of organizations is more the rule than exception. Even more, the most contracts are running from 1/1 to 31/12, and not from ESWC-victory to ESWC-start, so the rule is utterly useless. I fully accept what ESWC is trying to do, rewarding the organization for its work and investment, but the rule is stupid - for everybody.
A yuko for the Polish guy in the right corner, lets hope for a response from the left ESWC corner.
The whole layout of the text, the in-depth of what youre writing in a tone we all can understand. Top notch, keep it up.
I'll take an exemple. Look at football/soccer : Let's say Lyon won the French cup in 2007. Another team decides to buy all of its players cause Lyon doesn't have the money anymore to keep them. Lyon is STILL the cup winner. Where the players are now is irrelevant.
MYM.pl (I mean the players) is one of the few exemples of players staying in the same team for a long time, and when they switched teams, still played together.
It is a pity that they, who represent more than most what ESWC is trying to achieve with this rule, have to suffer from it, but I think this is still a good rule, when you take all of that into account.
The french scene was a total mess until a few years ago, and I want to believe this kind of rule (which is applied on the french ESWC quali, too, and was already discussed quite a few time within the French community) actually helped the scene develop towards at least a few stable teams.
Maybe I'm wrong. But something is needed to make it change, and having a fragile scene and not doing anything is not the best way to be trusted when talking to sponsors and such.
Besides, SK doesn't only consist of Carmac. There are other writers, like evan, Zechs, Maly. Everybody takes the topics he knows best. Otherwise they would only produce test-tube babies. Nobody wants that.
answer: TO BREAK THEM! :))
It's also a lot easier this time around. The SK/Titans issue a couple of years ago was much more difficult given the fact that Titans no longer existed. At least PGS, as an organisation, exists and they should therefore, in my eyes, be given the invite. Things are never as black and white as we try to make them seem ;)
The entire pgs.cs lineup moved to MYM whilst for the Titans/SK situation it was not the entire lineup at SK that won the previous ESWC.
Nevertheless it is really hard to form one solid rule for all cases so we will always see cases where the rules "should" be bent a little.
Similar situation and I am with Carmac on this one. Rules should benefit eSport and they should not get their legislative character from protecting themselves.
In both cases, ESWC and SEC decisions different from what we face now would have been better than the calls made, though in the ESWC case MYM.pl will have the chance to qualify and win ESWC, while at SEC SK does not even get the chance of doing so.
Have WCG never allowed the SEC champs to play in the tournament if they didnt qualify for WCG the previous year?
Who has finished 2nd at the last ESWC and WCG: NoA or mTw ? NoA for sure, all the titles belongs to this legendary tag as long as the ones with the lineup of Xeqtr You cannot say that the WEG title is for team 3D (former one on 1.6).