It was announced last night that ESL Halo has decided to cancel Cup #1 in their current series, after players began complaining about party connectivity failures. The Cup was meant to be held today and was canceled at the last minute. ESL Halo made the announcement on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/ESLHalo/status/592138153491886080
ESLGaming is an eSports organization which hosts competitions on a multitude of games. They put out some instructions on how to deal with the connectivity issues, instructing players to hard reset their XBox, but noted that this might have to be done before every match. In the end they canceled the cup entirely. The cancellation has received backlash from fans who had planned to watch the cup today. The competition was going to pit 43 registered teams against each other. The competition had already progressed to the quarterfinals when the cancellation announcement was made, and as of now, the website still says the series is going on.
The nature of eSports means last minute changes are common, usually requiring certain features to be turned off, but occasional server issues can result in cancelling an event entirely. However fans and teams are upset that the cancellation took place so abruptly. One of the last big eSports cancellations was the cancelling of IGN's IPL6 tournament in 2013, which was done with only a months notice. While IGN's notice was short, ESL Halo is recieving more criticism because the tournament had already progressed prior to the sudden cancellation. The incredibly short notice has caused many players to lash back at ESL over cancelled plans and work in order to participate. Many are asking if they will still receive HCS points for participating, and lamented that their teammates had to take off work in order to compete in the tournament which is no longer happening.
Since its launch the Halo: Master Chief Collection has had numerous issues with multiplayer, requiring updates from 343 to attempt to fix the issues. Players have complained, however, that there are still major issues in multiplayer. The 4/21 update specifically may be causing the connectivity issues that resulted in the tournament cancellation.
The tournament promised a $1000 cash prize. ESLGaming has not commented yet on whether they will reschedule a tournament for the quarterfinalists.
Do you think ESLGaming should have cancelled the tournament in the face of issues? Leave a comment below!
