Mass tech issues at Launders LAN 2 results in group stage cancellations, loss of VRS status
Launders LAN 2 kicked off yesterday, with the $25,001 CAD Canadian LAN event struggling immensely. A slew of technical issues and mass delays forcing In-game corp, Mohan "launders" Govindasamy's production and tournament operations company, to cancel half of the group stage while offering refunds to the affected teams.
These serious issues greatly affected the experience of teams that paid to attend the Torontonian LAN while also resulting in Launders LAN 2 having HLTV coverage and VRS status stripped from the event.
According to players and teams on the ground, Launders LAN 2 reportedly suffered nearly twelve hours of delays due to issues with the servers and computers at the venue, with some of the computers reportedly not having Steam, Discord, or Counter-Strike 2 installed.
In another example of technical issues, Akimbo player Yizhi "kralz" Zhou pointed out the network suffering unplayable levels of lag. Overall, the issues with the servers resulted in In-game corp having to cut half of the group stage from the schedule, resulting in half of the 32 teams in attendance being left without playing a single map.
An official statement announced at the venue was publicized by Scott "ParkS" Park, who is attending the event for Rush B Media, further placing the blame on server issues while also confirming the refunds:
Dust2.us also reached out to launders for comment on the issues affecting Launders LAN 2, with the Canadian commentator stating:
So we have [Maelstrom Entertainment] doing production, FRAG\AMD providing PCs and our servers are working perfectly no problems on those fronts, but the venue [The Warehouse] forced us to hire their own networking and power team for the venue and they set up faulty switches and couldn’t figure out what was happening for the entire day. We switched them today and everything worked.
When the day ran late last night and they had no solution, Alex and I decided it would be best to offer full refunds for everyone in the group that couldn’t play their matches. Today we announced we’re offering a free to enter $10k prize pool compensation tournament online later this month for the teams that were refunded.
In this comment, launders confirmed plans for Launders LAN to host a $10,000 online event to try and compensate the sixteen teams that were unable to play the LAN event.
The LAN appears to be running without issue during day two as the In-game corp team have replaced the faulty switches, however this is undoubtedly a tough way to start the year for the NA CS scene.
Those interested in watching day two of Launders LAN 2 may do so here.
