Following a week of miscommunication and false promises, local Dota 2 and League of Legends players expectations for the PLG event was critically low.

As I reported earlier, prize money that had been initially promised to players was removed and tournaments restructured only days before the scheduled date. This was an issue for many players in both the League and Dota 2 communities, but players who had been invited decided to go because PLG promised to announce big prizes during the tournaments.

Thursday April 3rd, 2014

I arrived at 5 PM and made my way through relatively empty hall towards the massive PLG arena. The set up was impressive, but not in use.

As I got closer I saw TTEsports Cafe struggling to set up their Dota 2 qualifiers and the players sitting around idly and no sign of the League of Legends players there. I questioned the players who told me they hadn't received any updates or news. TTEsports employees didn't know either.

I made my way into PLG's arena to try and figure out what was going on. According to PLG founder John Lacey, it was the fault of the players and TTEsports for not knowing the specifics of the tournament, Lacey also made the claim that the League of Legends players would have pay to get into comic-con to play in their invitational. PLG would only give passes for the second day of the two day League of Legends tournament and that all this information had been available “for a month” on the PLG site.

This claim that tournament information was available for a month is complete fabrication and willful dishonesty. Going back and looking the cached Google page for Power League Gaming's website shows that as of April 1st, 2014 League of legends was scheduled to be a three day tournament. Not only this, but the prize was listed as a full year sponsorship. As of April 6th, League of Legends was not an event that PLG held was planning to hold at Comic-con.

When players first heard about these tournaments there were also listings of open tournaments that were removed in the run up to Comic Con.

I didn't know this at the time, but with just a bit of research with google I was able to see how PLG had manipulated event information as they came closer to Comic Con. But of course, I didn't know all this while talking to them so with heavy reservations, I listened to them and reported back to the players.

Tired and bored of waiting the players asked to know when the qualifiers would happen and asked what time the tournament would start. PLG stated that they should be here at 11:30 AM on Friday.

Lets pause here for those who aren't familiar with Islam and Islamic culture. Friday for Muslims is a day of religious observance where Muslims go to a mosque and take part in Jumu'ah prayer and listen to a sermon by the Imam. On april 4th it was 12:26 AM and generally takes 30 minutes to one hour. Muslims in an Islamic country are not going to skip out on religious duties for the sake of a tournament.

John Lacey and his PR rep Nazih Fares wouldn't budge saying that the players need to come as early as possible even when teams Royal Flush and Wutang made it clear that it conflicted with prayer.

Comic Con started to close and the teams went home to try and finish their qualifiers. Connection problems at TTEsports Cafe prevented Royal flush and Wutang from finishing their matches.

Friday April 4th, 2014

I arrived late, reaching Comic Con around 5 surprised with the mass of people there. Making my way towards the PLG arena I arrived just to watch 'Team Fanta' go up against Alliance in reverse captains mode. The initial teams for this tournament were Wutang, Royal Flush, Millennium Cafe, and TTEsports so I had no clue who these guys were. I searched the convention for original teams but found no one.

Alliance made short work of Team Fanta ending the the game with a score of 35 to 2. In talking to volunteers with PLG I was able to find out that “Team Fanta” was a group of players who had been put together at the last minute to go against alliance to fill time.

Wutang And Royal Flush had left the tournament early as prizes had not yet been announced and because of aggressive and disrespectful behavior from John Lacey and PLG.

Royal Flush team member SalFactoR said that his team had shown up 2 hours earlier than 5 PM deadline TTEsports had told them to reach Comic Con by and upon arriving Lacey began shouting at them and berating them for showing up late. Upset with his behavior and the general failure of PLG to deliver on any promises Royal Flush left.

Wutang, who had waited for hours after arriving to play Alliance and for the tournament winnings to be announced, left extremely frustrated an hour before their match with no news.

Team TTEsports and Millennium cafe would go on to play Alliance, but promptly left after their matches were over, told by PLG that event sponsors Hyper X and Nvidia would reward them with things like GFX card and Ram. In discussions with Lacey the tournament had apparently always been exhibition matches and that the teams should be happy to get to play against one of the best teams in the world.

So what about the League of Legends players? After convincing Comic Con staff to allow them in, the four invited teams waited five hours before being told to return on Saturday. Depending on which player you talked to, the prize was wither 25,000 AED for first or 20,000 AED for first and 10,000 AED for second.

According to PLG volunteers Call of Duty and Titanfall tournaments were not taking place today. FIFA tournaments seemed to go on without a hitch and discussions with players didn't seem to show any glaring issues although a lot of them didn't seem to know what the prize money was.

Titanfall tournament was removed from the tournament listing, but google cache reveals that it was planned for the fourth and fifth for pro and masters tournaments respectively.

Saturday, 5th 2014

I arrived at 1 PM I hoped that the League of Legends tournament would be successful. In the PLG arena it looked like everything was going smoothly as players were here and ready to play. I started to notice more and more teams come in so I talked to players and it turned out the tournament had been turned into an open, single elimination tournament. The tournament had been removed from the PLG website sometime during the weekend.

I ran into League caster Flickdrop as the initial match of the tournament started. Lacey, who seemed to have no knowledge of League of Legends beyond the names he read off the screen, was casting alongside player Diamondzyzz. I took Flickdrop and Roberto, a player on one of the new teams, and recommended them to Lacey.

With a smile he invited Flickdrop and Roberto to cast the upcoming match.

It was announced the connections weren't good enough to continue with the tournament and that it was canceled. Lacey took it upon himself to explain to the players how it was their fault for not putting in the same amount of effort as PLG, and that they needed to make a commitment as well. He went on to lie to the players about how “a dota 2 team” had come on to stage with Alliance then promptly walked off to disrespect them.

Lacey took the main stage and began to give away electronics, even throwing out memory into the audience.

Remember the the memory and electronics promised to the Dota 2 teams?

After the give away a friendly game between two remaining teams began.

Lets say you run an e-sports organization and your casters seem to be coming through a bit quietly during their casting. What do you think you should do?

Would you:

a.) Tell them politely off mic that they are a bit too quiet and to raise their voice.

b.) Write a note for them and pass it to them while they are casting asking them to raise their voice.

c.) Take the headset from one of the casters during the pause to publicly shame both casters by putting on the headset and shouting, "if you want to be heard by everyone you need to talk loud like this, this why they call it shout casting guys. No one can hear you." And criticizing their casting in front of the entire convention.

If you chose c.) then you must be John Lacey, founder PLG! And that's exactly what he did. At this point I had had enough of the lies, the deception, and the lack of organization and the complete and utter lack of respect to every single player playing there. I was furious and I confronted him, asking him how could he disrespect the players like this putting them on blast in front of thousands of people.

Lacey said, "What? Why are you so serious man? It was just a joke!"

A joke.

After a heated exchange between me and Lacey, I left and said goodbye to the casters and left before things got worse. Lacey felt it was important for him to posture and followed me out telling me I would never work with PLG and started to shout at me telling to leave the event.

There were also some heated exchanges between the players and the organizers afterward, with players unhappy with the cancellation.

There are many more instances in which John Lacey, Nazih Fares, and PLG misled or lied to people, but are not directly relevant to this story.

Players here have been hoping that someone would come and give gamers an event to look forward to. I'll guess we'll keep looking, because PLG alienated an entire community with their behavior this weekend.

They've shown they can't be trusted and all they've done is hurt an already fragile scene.

NOTE: I've realized G14 is on September 11th, so I think we should postpone it for a week. 19/9 sounds good, right?

Event page.
Please RSVP to the event if you can.

We'll likely use standard tournament rules. If enough people are interested, we could have an entry fee with prize money.

Get Rekt League Tournament

GRL-Gaming (Get Rekt League) is about to host the 1st League of Legends Tournament for the Middle East and North Africa region starting July 9th! The tournament is expected to get 20+ teams with a prize pool set at 500 KWD, which is roughly $1650. If you're from the MENA region, join the competition and show us what you've got! If you're not in the MENA Region, we will be streaming the tournament games (English & Arabic) for you to observe and enjoy!

Tournament Information

Game: League of Legends

Game Region: EU West

Team size:5 Players + 1 Optional Substitute

Date: July 9th

Format: Double Elimination

Location: Online (MENA Players Only)

Prize Pool: 500 KWD

1st: 250 KWD

2nd: 150 KWD

3rd: 100 KWD

Website

www.grl.gg

Stream

English Stream

www.twitch.tv/grlgaming

Arabic Stream

www.twitch.tv/grlar

Rules

http://grl.gg/rules

About Us

We are a relatively new Kuwaiti organization looking to unite and expand the gaming/eSport scene in the MENA Region. We have had success running the first official Kuwaiti LoL tournament. You can find information about the previous tournament here:

http://www.lol-q8.com/

Hey there wonderful folks ! :) I just wanted to pop by and let you know that the game that I've been developing with my small team launched in Early Access yesterday.

Won't you check it out and let me know your thoughts ? Its certainly come a long way since the last time it was on show :)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/282960/

Best Regards and Much Love MrNexy

If you go into the game client and check the server list you should be able to see Dubai available. I'm getting a sweet 37 ping from the servers and I'll try and play a couple games and let you guys know how the experience is on my end.

Let me know if they've been stable if you have already used them.

Hey /r/MEGaming,

Just got done talking with Karam over at TTEsports Cafe and you can expect something big this Friday!

Not only are you going the have chance to win big this weekend, but you'll also have the chance to meet and play against XBOCT and Funn1ik of Na'Vi fame.

More information coming soon on specifics of place prizes, giveaways, and entry fees!

Edit 1: Registration for the event is now open! Don't know how much registration will cost, but typically it's 50 AED (about 5 hours of game time) for each player at the event.

Edit 2: Tournament poster with full info is here!

I'm trying to look for any players or communities around the middle eastern region that do any sort of competitive battling, such as smogon or VGC rulesets.

It's getting quite stale battling the people I know over and over again or faceless strangers ingame over the internet.

EDIT: if there are players but no group, I'm willing to set up one for us somewhere like facebook for maximum exposure.

Hi guys,

I've added the mindashq UI to give the sub a bit of a face lift. Let me know what you think! I'll be slowly adding to it over the next few days, tweaking it here and there to give it our own unique look.

The sub seems to be stuck at 80 subscribers and I'll be the first to admit this sub isn't as active as I had hoped it would be. I need your advice: what do you think we, and more specifically I, can do to increase traffic and discussions to gaming here?

I know there are plenty of like-minded folks from the tournaments I go to and work with to set up, but I don't know how to get people participating.

I've also set up a twitch stream over at twitch.tv/MEGamingtv where I'll be bringing you tournament content, giving away prizes to viewers, and showing off just about anything else I can get streaming from the region related to gaming.

So let me know what I'm doing wrong and what I'm doing right, and I'll try to improve the experience for all of us.

Valve has introduced our currencies to the steam store but that means devs can reprice their games for our countries and even charge $10 or $20 more for certain games https://www.change.org/p/valve-steam-revert-the-uae-and-saudi-arabia-unfair-currency-change-and-gift-restrictions-on-steam-559c4dc3-780b-40b4-8a1c-ecd0d3c7593c#petition-letter The linked petition is to let valve know you don't like the changes and plan on boycotting the steam store till they revert the changes You can contact valve here http://www.valvesoftware.com/email.php make sure to express your dissapointment

In light of the the threads by both an organizer and attendee on /r/GlobalOffensive, I wanted to provide my perspective as a local broadcaster and “e-sports journalist” (Can I call myself that?) surrounding the event.

I've split it into three sections in case you want to raise your pitch forks on a specific topic.

Venue:

The concerns about comfort and weather at ESL were pretty overblown. Once you entered the arena and were in the seating area the heat/humidity was not an issue. The real issue had to be that it was in such an out of the way location and in a place that was not designed around hosting spectator sports or events.

And if you were not one of 100-200 people to enter the arena first and to get a bean bag, then you ended up sitting in the grass which was pretty uncomfortable. Fortunately (unfortunately?) with the long breaks between games we were able to get up and stretch out legs. There was plenty of food available to buy and they were handing out free drinks in the arena for everyone.

Event & organization:

The main convention was basically a mini Middle East Comic-con. Just a couple of screens previewing games, some test stands for games already out, and a small artists alley that you could see in about 15 minutes. Nothing really noteworthy here unless you were REALLY looking forward to meeting some of the guests they had brought in.

We all came for Kris Fade though right?

Midway through the second day of the event, we were told that media was barred from going backstage/into VIP areas because people had been abusing media passes to go backstage and take pictures and selfies with pro-players. This pretty much put a stop to any possible interviews with players that we had hoped to do, and organizers told us on the third day that we'd have to do them through Skype on a later date.

There was also no press room for us to cover the event from, so we ended up doing impromptu work wherever we could.

I definitely appreciate the organizers and ESL giving a small subreddit like /r/megaming a chance to cover the event, and we can see why they'd be antsy about people abusing media privileges like they said. We hope they can work something out for any future tournaments so that we can do our work as well.

Format & Broadcasting:

When it came to the game format and broadcasting them, you can refer to all the complaints and discussion about the format on /r/globaloffensive. I'm not going to make any claims to knowing the best way to organize these types of tournaments since the tournaments I've organized and broadcast are usually for Dota 2 and LoL.

so was it worth the the ticket price and the hype? Unfortunately, not really. ESL did a comparatively (to what we've had in the UAE before) decent job of hosting and organizing the tournament but it was really held back by the venue location and venue design.

We got a couple of interviews done with some of the players which we've uploaded here on our subreddit if you'd like to check them out.

October 27th came and passed, and I haven't heard anything. Any of hear about it or see anything in the big game show about it?

The original post can be found on the dota 2 subreddit here.

In twelve days over 64 teams from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) will go online and take part in the online qualifiers for MSI Beat IT 2014. If you're at least superficially familiar with e-sports in the MENA region you'll know tournaments like this are rare for our region and to be represented on an international level like this is really exciting for the Dota 2 for the community here.

Alongside the announcement and implementation of the Dubai server and the growing support globally for e-sports, MSI Beat IT seemed like another step forward for a scene that is rife with scam artists, shady sponsorship deals, and corrupt organizer behavior to pick a few of the 'unsavory' details of the scene.

This tournament is a big deal for players who are hoping for a push for professionalism in the scene here.

I'm also excited as a local broadcaster of e-sports in Dubai. I moved to this city about year ago and have put myself into the scene, helping to organize and broadcast events in the United Arab Emirates whenever I have the chance to. I had hoped to cover and learn from a successful international event to improve what I do here, but decisions regarding the choice of organizers (Power League Gaming) leaves me with little hope of a professionally run event.

If you're not familiar with the full MSI Beat IT format, teams will play the online qualifier and the the top teams of that region (4-8 teams normally) will proceed to play a local LAN qualifier. The winner of the LAN qualifier, which will be held in Dubai for the Middle East, goes on to Taiwan to compete in a tournament with a prize pool worth 113,500 USD.

Although the MSI Beat IT website claims that MSI will be hosting the event, MSI has contracted PLG to host the event on their behalf. PLG has a long history of unscrupulous behavior and exploiting and lying to gamers to embellish their reputation to companies and sponmsors. They've blatantly astroturfed on reddit*, bought up fake likes **, and used image content taken from other websites.

After the Comic Con fiasco cybers cafes across the UAE turned away PLG from hosting future tournaments in their shops. The Dota 2 and other gaming communities made their voices heard, but they seemingly continue to be ignored by companies like MSI. To further show how out of touch PLG is they will be hosting the event in Magic Planet a glorified Chuck E. Cheese's with small theme park rides. To be fair to PLG this is likely one of the only places that has not turned them away.

I've taken this issue to the admins of the event but they say it's out of their hands; contracts have been signed and it's completely out of their control. MSI has not responded with an official statement or responded to any requests for clarity on the event. Players in the region have worked closely with the admins to root out teams not from the region trying to sneak in, so we know MSI and its admins care about keeping the tournament clean.

What I want, and what many other players have conveyed to me, is clarity and a statement regarding PLG being used by MSI to host this tournament. Why after all they have done to hurt this community has decided to go with PLG instead of proven organizers or hosted it yourselves?

Your decisions as a company and competitive organization will significantly impact this community later down the road. No one wants a scene like this. We don't want to be exploited, treated like commodities by event organizers, and lied to. No one in the world wants that and your decision to use PLG to organize this event sadly sends us a message that you don't care about us beyond a couple press photos and a fake PR event that can pad up your gamer credibility.

Please rethink your decision to use PLG or at least make clear your intentions behind the decision, as the community is at a loss to understand why you would do this.

TL;DR: MSI has hired Power League Gaming, an organization known to lie to and exploit the fragile competitive Middle Eastern e-sports scene for their own profit, to host their Middle East Qualifiers for MSI Beat IT. We want to know why MSI has decided to work with a group like this, as MSI has not released any statements or officially responded regarding the decision.

*KingOzimandus is the Head of PR & Marketing for PLG.

**Al Qahirah is a city that is a commonly used to generate fake likes on Facebook. A few months before may they had a large amount of likes from Iraq. PLG does not work in either country nor do they have the activity on their page to reflect 500,000+ likes. The image is from May as Facebook has started hiding Like statistics to the public.

PLG's follower activity is not in line with how many likes they have and have a somewhat compareble presence to IGN ME on social media.

Hello everyone, I mentioned before that I work with a small team in making games but I think we didn’t properly introduce ourselves. So in order to fix that tiny error, I thought it would it would be a good idea to start an AMA post to briefly explain ourselves and in the same time explain what we are working on. I’d prefer it if none of the questions involve “when is x released” as we don’t have any exact dates right now for any of our projects, otherwise feel free to ask us anything else.

I work as the scenario writer and the graphic designer of the team, but also as the spokesperson of the 3 man team, the other two are the ever so capable and busy programmers so we kinda complete each other. We have one text adventure up that some of you might have already tried out (if you haven’t you might find it here: http://zombiecamel.ae/withinthewallsenglish.html) and currently are working on 3 different projects, I know it’s best to focus on one project then hop on to the next, but due to the nature and the pace of our jobs we had to include a few minor projects next to our main project:

• Husk: Another text adventure, this one is a contribution made for an anthology organized by experimental game designer and writer Soha Al Sabaawi (http://pixie-mania.com/). A paranormal phenomenon hits Dubai in the 1980s where people and property begins to disappear without a trace, a young couple try to piece together the disappearance of their daughter as they slowly spiral down to a state of depression.

• Within the Walls: A graphic adventure remake to our earlier text adventure, improved with graphics, fixes, revisions and a few other bonuses. We’re also including Arabic since the text adventure builder we used for the first iteration didn’t support arabic.

• Project Pangaea: This is our main project, we currently can talk much about it beyond it being a science fiction RPG. our main platforms are PC, Mac, and Linux and might go for other platforms much later.

We post a lot of graphic work on our instagram http://instagram.com/zombiecamelgames, do follow us there.

So, go ahead and ask us anything :)

http://zombiecamel.ae

So, anyone grabbing their PS4 this weekend? I'm going to try to head down to MOE on Thursday night to cover Geekay's midnight launch, and I know Virgin are doing the same.

Want to play with other Playstation gamers in the Middle East/MENA region or Coordinate a /r/MEGaming tournament? Here's the list you've been looking for!

To get on the list please PM me your:

• Prefered Reddit username

• PSN ID

• Region/ Country (optional)

• Languages you speak (optional)

• Most played games (optional, highly recommended but keep it short)

Click Here to view the list!