What came out..
After 2 years, the upper executives discovered that some information the CEO stated, in their opinion is false. First and foremost, the XPL is not a LLC or any type of company (claimed to be registered in the state of New York), so the agreements with sponsers to a non-existent entity are a bit hard to swallow when it was finally discovered.
CoD Season 1 - Physical prizes that were booked to be sent out, it got to be about 60 days late and they were not sent out. Explanation given (at day 90), had a flood in the house where things were stored, ordered new prizes from the sponsor (Steelseries) to ship out, it will be delayed. This was about 6 months, we got a story about something being wrapped up in customs, which may or may nto be true, but it has been six months.
League of legends - Promised prizes, one of the staff at XPL put his own money in to cover 50% of the prizes. This money apparently has disappeared into the abyss.
CS16/CSS - Money prizes - these were not payed out or anything, stated "30 days" now its May 27th was the last day of game play, he just changed the rule to 90 days as you can see in the IRC thread above.
So, what does all this mean for TF2.. Well, one of the sponsors (MythLogic) as actually a friend of mine for the past 10 years and said he committed to getting things to the league so I know tangible prizes are in fact there for use by the league. So I felt relatively secure in thinking the tangible pieces were there will get paid out for TF2. However, as everything is coming to light, I have some concerns.
Putting it this way, I cannot guarantee the promised prizes in TF2 will ever be payed. Now will that stop teams from playing and so forth, not at all, the matches will hopefully be scheduled by someone, and you can play it with the assumption a prize may in fact never materialize. (I am kind of anticipating legal issues with some of the sponsor companies honestly) So that being said, I resigned from XPL effective about an hour ago.
No other way to put it, but I feel you were all misled with me as the mouth piece. And for that I deeply apologize to all. Not much more I can say.
How I found out all the information for those that are curious, I was watching the support tickets, then hopped into my teams match to basically get our clocks cleaned, dropped into IRC to see the staff channel actually having activity, I log into the forums to see most of the senior management has chosen to resign. I then spent the rest of the evening talking to everyone and basically comparing notes with the various other staff (now former) staff members. As I got some basic info, the public #xpleague channel was featuring the CEO basically being called out to the carpet on these issues by Dana. (Former CSS Manager) so I dropped into #tf2scrim and told people to hop in and see it as it happens. Dana took the IRC chat log and posted on her website which is linked above.
That being said, I have not had a chance to talk to the other TF2 staff so we will see how things go and if they choose to continue to work and get the matches scheduled and so forth. We had allt he matched mapped out for the rest of the season. Can XPL still be successful with TF2, yes it is possible, but not with me being part of it. It really will depend on what all the players decide. do you wish play some matches, have a good time, go for it, if you were in it mainly for the prize money, I would probably recommend re-thinking that.
Again, I apologize for all this.
Comments
I stand behind what Hawkeye, Nereus and I did to get this league running. I will not condone what XPL did to bring it crumbling down around us, nor condone lying to the community or us.
I am sincerely sorry guys!
No matter which way you cut it TF2 Competitive needs more "serious" leagues. It will be better competition for everyone to have more choice and options. I want ESEA (or any league) to take TF2 competitive seriously enough to make the changes we wanted and needed to make it BETTER.
People like Hawkeye are people who try hard to get things done and make things better and keep trying even though they get slammed for it when things don't work out. At least Hawkeye gave it his best shot at it and worked endless hours trying. Thank you Hawkeye for your efforts and being brave to make a change for the better of us all.
I don't think anyone is pissed at Hawkeye for this. It's not his fault the owner of XPL is a fraud. Hawkeye did everything he could to make XPL a success, but ultimately it was outside of his control what happened and I think everyone here realizes that.
Its not easy to do what you've been trying to do, and any one of us would have probably ended up with the same result. I know how difficult it is to do what you do, and I can say that this apology here is the most that you can do in any practical sense.
I encourage the rest of the people here not to kick him while he's down.
My people, let Pharaoh go!
Same as far as TWL goes. TWL has really gone downhill and since Div 1 dies every year there's not really anywhere to go after you've played in Div 2. I mean I guess we could join Div 1 and get like five FFWs and then lose to THPS.
Sounds fun, right?
Yea I was really looking forward to having XPL replace TWL and Hawkeye was just the man to do it. I could always use some help over at CEVO so maybe…
ESL America huh? sounds interesting, they open up on the 5th of this month. quote from their website "The new National ESL will use the existing ESL website system which currently supports 1.6 million unique visitors per month, due to over 2,500,000 ESL members. Each year ESL conducts over 100 eSports events while hosting 400,000 matches in its website per month." Now those are some big numbers (a stretch perhaps). I wonder how big ESEA, CEVO, and TWL's numbers are…
At least the CEVO guys aren't bad.
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