The CPL have announced that all 2008 competitions and tournaments have been suspended:

However, the current fragmentation of the sport, a crowded field of competing leagues, and the current economic climate have prompted the CPL to suspend its pro-tournament operations. The CPL regrets that this news will disappoint those that were planning on attending the summer and winter events this year.

The 'fragmentation' issue is a particularly interesting one; we have some history with competitive gaming and there are certainly a lot of challenges when it comes to keeping people interested in one particular game when so many new awesome games come out each year.

No doubt though this will lead to some interesting developments in the pro-gaming scene as the other entities move to take advantage of this new vacuum in the space.

cyber-athlete loooool

No one was really interested in cpl anymore anyway. It seems to all be about the CGS these days. When I was in Asia it was on ESPN prime time.

Fragmentation = CS 1.6 & Source

CPl were in a catch 22. They had hardware sponsors like intel and nvidia that were sponsoring an event playing 10 year old games. I think valve were sponsoring it too and they wanted to push their new games through it. Valved totally cocked up CS source so some people continued playing 1.6 while others switched to source because they felt there would be more competitions for it. Then the CPL kept pushing comps for random games like Painkiller.

They apparently owe prize money to winners as far back as 2005. Glad I got my money out of them!

Yep, its a tough one. Sponsors are going to want to go where the money is, and the money is where the players are - which is the game that is the most popular.

I can't see the stats on the Steam page any more - looks like they might've taken it down? - but last time I saw it, CS1.6 was still way, way, way more popular than CS:S in pub server play and I believe comp play.

I've always felt going with CS was the wrong thing to do for competitive sports - I don't think its interesting to watch for the layperson, it doesn't have decent built-in functionality for competitive play, the round-based gameplay style isn't conducive to a decent spectator environment, etc. But it was popular, so that's why it was always the game of choice - even at LAN events we organised.

It would have been good for competition organisers to make a bold move and pick a _good_ competition game, rather than a popular game. I think this would have been best for the 'sport' in terms of purity. Obviously the big stumbling block is that it might not ever have gotten anywhere without the sponsorship that came from the mass popularity of CS.. but its fun to dream.