Last weekend, users of the most popular betting site for Counter-Strike, were surprised to discover they were unable to bet on the month’s biggest events, DreamHack Stockholm. Since neither the betting site, CS:GO Lounge, nor DreamHack offered formal statement on the matter, the community was left to blindly point fingers.
Sources present at the event, however, tell the Daily Dot that CS:GO Lounge demanded free on-stream advertising in exchange for allowing the group stage games on the site. DreamHack refused the demand, and CS:GO Lounge were as good as their word, preventing thousands of Counter-Strike fans from placing bets on the group stage matches.
The popular CS:GO betting predictions Facebook page, CS:GO Bets Guru, put forth one popular explanation. In a statement on Sept. 25. the page said the lack of betting was actually down to the choice of venue, which left the group stage matches insecure. He suggested the tournament was vulnerable to be hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
One of our sources told us that this was not the case, however. “Simply put, they went to DreamHack and demanded that they include on-stream advertising if they wanted their games to be on CS:GO Lounge and available to bet on. DreamHack aren’t the kind of company to be strong-armed so the conversation was very brief.”
The source added “I doubt there was ever any danger of [CS:GO Lounge] ignoring the event totally, as that would hurt their own business. But it was clear they were trying to send DreamHack a message.”
CS:GO Lounge added the later stages of the tournaments, which were played at the main venue for the event, The Ericsson Globe Arena. Ahead of the final, technical problems knocked out the tournament for around an hour. At the time, CS:GO Lounge published a tweet seeming to mock DreamHack, attributing the downtime to a DDoS attack. DreamHack, however, denies the delays were related to a DDOS.
CS:GO lounge declined to comment on this article.
Photo via DreamHack/Flickr
