Mumbai — Lenovo India Gaming Week eSports tournament recently concluded in Mumbai. The LAN gaming tournament featured 35 popular multiplayer titles, which positively gathered gamers’ attention from all over the country.
Despite the fact that the India Gaming Week tournament concluded successfully by Lenovo, a few gamers have raised very serious and shocking allegations against Lenovo and event organizers by referring the entire tournament as “scam.”
According to a recent post by Reddit user SinA7X, participants had a very poor experience at the tournament venue. He further quoted how exactly the tournament was poorly organized, which the participants couldn’t call anything but a scam.
Apart from the technical issues such as low FPS and laggy gaming experience, gamers were forced to adjust to uncomfortable and unfair arrangements, which resulted in a huge amount of inconvenience and disappointment, SinA7X quoted.
The participant further revealed confusion related to prize pool. According to him, winners were given two options to choose from — either accept a prize money of Rs.50,000 or sign a contract with Lenovo to get Rs.1 lakh split over a course of 12 months.
“So you either let go off half your prize money or drag it for 12 months and do everything Lenovo India tells you to do,” he said.
At the other side, SinA7X further accused Lenovo India of having hosted a gaming tournament with Rs.10 Lakh prize pool declared.
“Lenovo hosted a 10 lakh gaming tournament, refused to pay the winners, had shitty arrangements, and reduced the number of matches,” SinA7X said.
He further accused the tournament director of the Lenovo India Gaming Week for getting physical with one of the CSGO admins.
“Some of the admins left the event in the middle because of all these shady shit Lenovo representatives were doing,” SinA7X added.
However, we at PC-Tablet got in touch with Lenovo India on this issue. In an email response to our query, Lenovo India clarified its role in the entire tournament.
“Lenovo, in an attempt to promote eSports in India partnered with the organisers of the India Gaming Week 2015. The objective was twofold — to promote gaming and also create awareness about Lenovo’s gaming products,” Lenovo India told PC-Tablet.
Lenovo India also explained us that the company had no active participation in organization and decision-making of the India Gaming Week tournament.
“We as Lenovo, simply sponsored the program and played no part in the event’s organization. Lenovo has no role in its execution (format, terms & conditions or selection of winners), and people named in the Reddit thread are not Lenovo employees,” Lenovo India said.
Lenovo India further ensured its support for eSports in the Indian gaming community, and also gave a hint on redefining better brand experience for gamers in the future.
“We remain steadfast in our support of eSports in the country and we shall endeavour to provide gamers with better brand experience in the future,” Lenovo India added.
Update: After Lenovo clarified its role in the event, Akshat Vyas, Tournament Director at India Gaming Week contacted PC-Tablet over email.
According to Vyas, the only reason participants were given two prize money options was to stay in touch with gamers and provide them mentorship opportunities over the course of year.
“There was never a contract offer in place to the 1st prize winners, only an assurance on a signed letterhead that they will be receiving the prize money over the course of the year. They were not obliged to do anything, the only reason this was done was to make it possible for the organizers to stay in touch with the team members over the course of a year and provide them with a mentorship program, attending which would be a matter of choice for the winners, not an obligation,” Vyas said.
He further denied an allegation made by SinA7X on Reddit that the tournament director got physical with one of the CSGO administrators.
“The tournament director did not get physical with any administrators,” Vyas added.
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