The spotlight has been on the Cyberathlete Professional League for all the wrong reasons lately. But yesterday they hit back with a fascinating press release. The majority of the statement is geared towards the "new direction" CPL will take. The company seem to be setting themselves up as a kind of Facebook for gamers. Between the masses of business talk, CPL revealed very little detail. "There’s a need to get back to the roots that first allowed a community to develop through the CPL," according to Ryan Schumacher, CEO of WuLong Ventures Pte. LTD.

Interestingly, the management sees the new CPL as a "departure from the professional gaming craze that has consumed most of the industry." The statement as a whole, which you can find here, seems to be hinting that CPL will not be running the major tournaments we are used to.

But to the professional gamers that CPL appears to be shunning, the final paragraph of the statement is surely the most important. Titled "claims for unpaid prize money", the last section reads like this:



Players and gaming organisations will view this good news cautiously, however. Exactly how many teams qualify for payment is difficult to quantify, considering the closure of ex-CPL champion teams like NoA. Never the less, this is definitely a push in the right direction for a company looking to rebuild a deeply tarnished reputation.

Source: UKCT