LAN events are a vital part of the eSports scene. What should fans and players expect from organizers when someone breaks the rules? Image credit: Northern Arena
Northern Arena 2016 isn't the first Counter Strike: Global Offensive LAN tournament to run into some issues, and it certainly won't be the last. The four-day event in Toronto faced lengthy delays, stream quality problems and poor equipment. These were all overshadowed by drama surrounding players breaking Northern Arena rules and how admins handled the situation.
The official rules and regulations of Northern Arena state that players must wear the provided noise-cancelling headphones during matches
The offense that caused the most uproar happened between Cloud 9 and Immortals on the third map in the best-of-three Finals match. In the clip below posted to Reddit by user /u/sidipi, Immortals player Henrique 'hen1' Teles is seen playing without his noise-cancelling headphones during the first two rounds on Overpass before putting them on at the start of the third round. Noise-cancelling headphones are used to prevent the players from hearing casters while playing to prevent them from gaining info on things such as the other team's positions and strategies. Despite being behind the Immortals computers, a tournament admin failed to ask Teles to put his headphones back on. Northern Arena admin "Lejuke", who was behind the Cloud 9 computers during the finals, released a video the day after Northern Arena trying to explain what had happened. In it, he details how he asked for the pause after Cloud 9's manager informed him that Teles had no headphones on. After reviewing the footage, he said he contacted the tournament manager and discussed the situation before bringing in Immortals' team captain Wilton "zews" Prado and Cloud 9's team captain Jordan 'n0thing' Gilbert. Prado argued that Teles can't understand English and that he wouldn't have been able to understand the casters anyways, Lejuke said. "As an admin my first thought was to restart all the rounds (on Overpass), so to make it 0-0," Lejuke stated. "It was not fair, it was not (in) the rules, so we restart everything." In a response on Reddit, Lejuke says that Prado stated if the map was restarted, that Immortals would forfeit the match and refuse to play. The tournament manager, he said, decided that the situation had no effect on the game and the map was resumed at a 2-0 scoreline for the Immortals. The Brazilian squad would go on to win Overpass 16-11, defeating Cloud 9 two maps to one in the finals.
So, what should players, teams and fans come to expect from tournament organizers and admins when situations like this come up?
Two things: consistent and firm enforcement, and clearer rules. In a Facebook post apologizing for the incident, Immortals CEO Noah Whinston stressed the need for consistent rule enforcement and admins taking responsibility for rulings instead of players. “Immortals as an esports organization believes that situations like these show the necessity of consistent rule enforcement," Winston said. "Admins should not be consulting players on rules interpretation and enforcement, and the inconsistent application of the rules up until this point in the tournament was a contributing factor to what occurred." There was another incident earlier in the tournament during a group stage match between Team Solomid and Echo Fox. Echo Fox's Shahzeb 'ShahZaM' Khan, Ronnie 'ryx' Bylicki and Sean 'seang@res' Gares were not wearing noise-cancelling headphones during the match. However, they were wearing over-ear headsets on top of the earbuds they were wearing. Gares explained in a Reddit post that admins had told them it was not necessary to wear the headphones that match. He says admins decided the team was not required to wear them in a previous match against Optic Gaming, despite it being against tournament rules. In the post, Gares also says he was not able to fully hear the casters during the matches. Put simply, if the rules state that players must wear noise-cancelling headphones during matches, admins need to make sure that all players abide by that rule in all matches. Northern Arena rules state that violations can result in verbal warnings, game and match forfeits and disqualification. However, there is no specific penalty for when a player is caught without their headphones on, and no specific ruling for when a violation occurs, how rounds that have already taken place should be handled. Instead, Northern Arena rules state that players should avoid stopping the game by any means and should instead ask for an investigation at the end of the half. In this situation, Cloud 9 would have had to play the entire 15 rounds of the half before they would have been able to make an appeal if tournament rules were followed. Organizers need to take time to ensure they have detailed rule sets so that when scenarios like what happened at Northern Arena come up, they're prepared and can get the matches back on track. Both admins and organizers need to do their due diligence and enforce the rules themselves, instead of pushing the responsibility onto the players. By failing to do these things, tournament organizers make it harder on themselves, and more importantly, harder on players, teams and fans.
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