Interview by Jason "Anomoly" Bass, Scott "SirScoots" Smith and Mark "Jesuit" Cheben

The recent cancellation of the CPL World Tour stop in Germany has sparked many rumors and questions about what exactly happened. GotFrag decided to go straight to the source and talk to Scott Valencia about what transpired that made this decision necessary.

Thanks for taking the time to do this interview.

Please start with a brief introduction of yourself.

My name is Scott Valencia. I am Operations Director for the CPL and oversee the CPL World Tour.

You mentioned “critical logistical challenges with the proposed venue”; could you please give us more detail on what exactly went wrong with the German venue?

I want everyone to understand that it was not any one “major” issue that made us reconsider the Germany stop, but more like many small issues. During our weekly meetings between the CPL staff, strategic partners, and Sponsors we looked at the list of open issues and decided that we were making too many exceptions to the base concept of the World Tour to be part of a big event like CG.

To give examples: we would have over 100,000 people at the venue, but our players would have to be behind a screened off area. Now it is great to be able to claim 100,000 saw your event, but being behind a screen does nothing to elevate the recognition of the sport, it creates a disconnect with our sponsors as their booths and the players are not in the same space. Then you have the issue of timing. The event has hard start and stop times. We thought we could work within those times, but that left no margin for errors and the gamers would have had to be waiting for the next match, as we would have no buffer time. The last issue was sponsors. We offer specific benefits to our sponsors for financial participation. Since the same model is used by the event, things that would normally be given to our sponsors as part of the package could not be provided.

Now none of these things alone would have stopped us from participating, but these combined with a few others would have made for a mediocre event. We don’t want that, and the gaming community does not deserve that.


The CPL puts a great deal of trust and responsibility in its strategic partners on the World Tour circuit. Why was it cancelled at such a late date?

These items were part of ongoing discussions, and we truly believed we would be able to negotiate solutions for most, if not all of them, and were on the path to do it. The questions we had to ask ourselves were: a) What happens if we run out of time? b) Will the gamer, and sponsors be happy with the event? c) Could we do better by waiting?

Secondly, I want to address strategic partners, and not just World Tour SP’s but all SP’s. This is a very difficult job, with a lot of responsibility and not a lot of recognition. They have the task of going out and securing additional sponsorship, venues, and handling the logistics for the event in a given country. I have walked that path, and it is not an easy thing to do. I have a lot of respect for the teams that take on the role of SP. As far as the World Tours SP’s go, I will take a lion’s share of the responsibility for the problems. I have not had the time I would have liked to help them work through issues, and teach them some of the tricks I have learned.

What exactly is the law, as you understand it, which would bar an M rated game from being played at an event like the CPL?

Well I want to state first that the “M” rating did not keep the game from being played. In Germany, it added to the difficulty of creating a “spectator event”, and therefore was not a good match for our tour. Now, in my understanding of the laws in Germany, A game with an “M” rating may not be played by players under the age of 18 in a tournament scenario, in addition you can not display it directly to the public, as you can not guarantee age of consent. In the United States the ESRB rating systems are just guidelines, not law. The CPL chooses to follow the rating system on principle.

Has an alternative location been chosen, and if so what makes this location good for holding a CPL stop, or what features are you looking for in a stop location?

We are currently in the final stages of conversation for a new stop, and hope to make announcements on the location and date in the next few weeks. We believe the gamers will find this new location fun and exciting. I want to point out that the World Tour concept is in its first year, and has never been done before. We are going to suffer bumps and bruises along the way as we learn the process, but what I believe differentiates the CPL from the competition is that we don’t shy away from our mistakes, or close up shop. We try and correct and continue!


There have been several articles about violence in video games on www.gotfrag.com and the perceived perception that such games cause young adults to act out in violent ways. How do you personally feel about this perceived relation of gaming to violence?

This is one of those questions that everyone seems to have different points of view. I personally don’t believe that gaming promotes violence any more than horror movies did for my generation, Westerns did for my father’s, or the gangster movies of my grandfather’s generation. We have always had violence as part of entertainment, and as part of our lives. I believe it is our responsibility to manage at what age people are getting more graphic content, but to say that it is the cause of kids “acting out”. I think that is wrong.