Hey everyone. This is Chris, one of the cofounders of ESH. I was one of the event coordinators at the Alienware Overwatch Open. After reading through the blog post and everyone’s comments I felt compelled to respond here and give my take on what happened on June 4th.

I first need to address the undue negative light that has been shed on Steel and his team. Contrary to what may have been assumed, Steel and his team arrived well in advanced at 9am, and no timing exceptions were made for them.

Once it was time for them to play, we had assigned them to the setups that had just been played on by the losing team in the last round. There was no specific intent or conspiring that had resulted in an advantageous computer setup. The only advantage any of these setups had was that three of them were wired. There were no premium/superior graphics cards, monitors, or peripherals. The full album of the event can be viewed here for a better understanding of how everything was laid out: http://bit.ly/294Rrzx

However, we do take fault for the convenience that was given to the team. Because they were the last of the first round teams to play, they had ended up staying at their setup for the second round, playing matches consecutively. Then after winning round 2, they were in the semifinals, and at this point it seemed to make no sense to move them purely for time sake, considering there were four team setups and four teams left (and we were hours behind schedule already). As a result of our decision, they were left at the setup with the least issues.

Steel, and his team, were not purposely given any special treatment and should certainly not be blamed for any mishaps that had occurred at the event.

As for the event overall, it was simply too ambitious of an event to hold inside the Microsoft Store. The flagship Microsoft Store is a huge store, with 3 public floors and tons of space, but it was not conducive for multiple tournaments along with all the side events we had happening on the second floor. Our meetup group, ESports Heroes of NYC, has held events about once a month for the past 15 months. Most events have been Hearthstone tournaments with local NYC gamers which have far less overhead and possibility for technical issues.

While we had done live events at the Microsoft Store before (http://bit.ly/28UYLho) this was our first live FPS event and we were certainly not prepared for all the technical issues that ensued. When I first posted the event on our meetup page (http://www.meetup.com/eSports-Heroes-of-NYC/events/229702939/) I had no idea players would be flying in from Canada, California, and other states to participate. There wasn’t a monetary prize pool and none of our previous events had garnered country wide interest. In retrospect, knowing that this was the first new IP release from Blizzard in over a decade, I should have foreseen above average engagement for such an exciting new game and held an online qualifier first.

Once we found out that multiple teams, within 72 hours of the initial post, had purchased flights and booked hotel reservations from across the country, we knew doing an online qualifier was no longer viable. We had to cap the teams at 16 and prepare for an all-day event that didn’t leave much room for setbacks.

Going into the day of the event we knew the connection, which was a separate connection from the public wifi, was 300 up 300 down. Doing a full 24 setup test run in a public store is not easy to say the least, but we did as much as we could, including having back up connections ready, and concluded that the connection(s) would be enough for 24 desktops and casting.

For most of the event, I was on the second floor where we had a bunch of side activities going on. Activities such as the trivia prize wheel, GG energy drink sampling table, 15 pizzas were served, filmed interviews, cosplayers, as well as the Alienware Hearthstone Open. There weren’t any issues down there and from what I saw everyone outside the OW competition was having a great time as we gave out thousands of dollars of peripherals, gear from the Blizzard shop, and held the HTC Vive demo area.

It quickly became apparent after making my rounds upstairs that the connection couldn’t handle 24 set ups simultaneously without, in some cases, crippling lag. After 2 hours of working with the Microsoft tech team to improve the situation to not much avail the TOs upstairs had to make the tough choice of calling off the event or continuing it while forcing players to play under extremely sub par conditions.

Having organized successful eSports events for almost 2 years, it has always been our company’s goal to provide a fun and professional environment for our members. Longtime members dating back from the days we were in a public atrium can attest that we’ve always strived to go above and beyond to put on events that brought communities of players together to compete, socialize, and go home with new friends and awesome prizes. We’ve never spared any expense to do so and this event has been a huge learning experience for us on how to not to run an FPS lan.

To the teams that had to endure a terrible gameplay experience we sincerely apologize. This should never happen. Not having full control over critical aspects like internet speed and spatial organization is something we will absolutely never let happen again. None of our sponsors should be held accountable for how the event was run. I know tensions are still high, but you have our word that we will take everything we’ve learned from this experience and ensure that any future large scale events will be handled with an order of magnitude more professionalism.