Turn Your Online Gaming Skills into Cash Money
New online ‘play for cash prizes’ service launching in June
SPOnG met up with the British team behind Tournament.com earlier today, an impressive new service that will offer players the opportunity to convert their online gaming skills into cash prizes.
Tournament.com has to date announced an exclusive agreement with game publisher Valve, and is currently in discussions with “every other major publisher of online games” to set up other, similar exclusive deals, according to the company’s Managing Director, Marcus Pearcey (pictured, right).
Pearcey’s aim is to open up what they imagine and hope to be a huge, currently untapped market of gamers willing to pay a nominal amount of money to be in with a chance of winning big cash prizes.
The Valve exclusive means that once the service launches later next month you can sign up to play Counter-Strike or Half-Life tournaments.
“Valve couldn’t offer this service themselves because it’s not their core business and we have a team of thirty full-time development and customer services staff to make sure we provide a seamless service,” Pearcey told SPOnG.
Tournament.com is currently in the last stages of an intensive beta trial with an impressive 10,000 testers ensuring the service is cheat-free and works as smoothly as possible.
Pearcey is adamant that Tournament.com is going to offer serious, skilled gamers the opportunity to make a living from their passion.
“We think that there should be an opportunity for the best gamers, should they wish, to even make a living out of playing professionally, with sponsorship deals and so on – just like, for example, professional snooker players do. Why is there a difference? In this way we hope to change the way gaming is perceived.”
So how does it work? To get involved players will have to download and launch the Tournament.com client (see pictures below), via which players can choose which type of game and match they want to play – maybe a ten-minute blast on Counter-Strike with the option of pocketing a few quid or perhaps a blast in a perpetual, ongoing game of Half Life 2 where, if you get killed, you lose a dollar (currently worth around 50 pence) and if you kill another player, you gain a dollar. Simple, yet genius.
At this point, SPOnG remembered, we also had this idea over a pub table around five years ago, as we are sure many of you also have. The difference being, however, that the guys behind Tournament.com have gone out and raised the capital, developed the technology and set up a company to actually make it happen.
Obviously, players are going to have to be older than 18-years of age and will have to submit funds to their virtual wallet in the game via a credit card or PayPal account.
Unlike in Europe, online gambling is illegal in all fifty US states, but (and this is where Tournament.com has seen the massive opportunity here) 36 of them make exceptions for skill-based gaming.
We’ll bring you the full Tournament.com interview and more news on which other titles and publishers will be getting involved in this intriguing and innovative ‘cash prize incentive’ service as and when we get it.
Click here to have a look for yourself.
Tournament.com has to date announced an exclusive agreement with game publisher Valve, and is currently in discussions with “every other major publisher of online games” to set up other, similar exclusive deals, according to the company’s Managing Director, Marcus Pearcey (pictured, right).
Pearcey’s aim is to open up what they imagine and hope to be a huge, currently untapped market of gamers willing to pay a nominal amount of money to be in with a chance of winning big cash prizes.
The Valve exclusive means that once the service launches later next month you can sign up to play Counter-Strike or Half-Life tournaments.
“Valve couldn’t offer this service themselves because it’s not their core business and we have a team of thirty full-time development and customer services staff to make sure we provide a seamless service,” Pearcey told SPOnG.
Tournament.com is currently in the last stages of an intensive beta trial with an impressive 10,000 testers ensuring the service is cheat-free and works as smoothly as possible.
Pearcey is adamant that Tournament.com is going to offer serious, skilled gamers the opportunity to make a living from their passion.
“We think that there should be an opportunity for the best gamers, should they wish, to even make a living out of playing professionally, with sponsorship deals and so on – just like, for example, professional snooker players do. Why is there a difference? In this way we hope to change the way gaming is perceived.”
So how does it work? To get involved players will have to download and launch the Tournament.com client (see pictures below), via which players can choose which type of game and match they want to play – maybe a ten-minute blast on Counter-Strike with the option of pocketing a few quid or perhaps a blast in a perpetual, ongoing game of Half Life 2 where, if you get killed, you lose a dollar (currently worth around 50 pence) and if you kill another player, you gain a dollar. Simple, yet genius.
At this point, SPOnG remembered, we also had this idea over a pub table around five years ago, as we are sure many of you also have. The difference being, however, that the guys behind Tournament.com have gone out and raised the capital, developed the technology and set up a company to actually make it happen.
Obviously, players are going to have to be older than 18-years of age and will have to submit funds to their virtual wallet in the game via a credit card or PayPal account.
Unlike in Europe, online gambling is illegal in all fifty US states, but (and this is where Tournament.com has seen the massive opportunity here) 36 of them make exceptions for skill-based gaming.
We’ll bring you the full Tournament.com interview and more news on which other titles and publishers will be getting involved in this intriguing and innovative ‘cash prize incentive’ service as and when we get it.
Click here to have a look for yourself.
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Comments
Reality 24 May 2007 20:53
1/3
nice fluff piece spong -- but some critical analysis would have been better. tornament.com is hardly any different from prizefight.co.uk and other cash-for-frags sites that came and failed before it. other than some weak "web 2.0" community features they're doing nothing new that hasn't been done before, and clearly don't understand why the average gamer doesn't want to pay to play counter-strike or any other game for that matter. let's see how many of those 10,000 testers stick around when they have to risk their own money.
Voodoo 25 May 2007 12:27
2/3
I'll be hanging around! PF was rubbish compared to Tournament.com. I think I played 2 games on PF and walked away. I am now a regular Tcom player and although their system still needs some finishing touches, it is miles ahead of PF or any other system that has been before.
zoydwheeler 25 May 2007 13:06
3/3
Direct from their PR guy:
"Tournament.com offers licensed games, so you are not breaking the license agreement, and there isn't a worry of having the service shut down at any moment. Tournament.com also has patent-pending anti-cheat technology in addition to human review. We're confident we are providing a safe and secure environment for players to legally and responsibly play the top online FPS games."
Proof will soon be seen post-launch next month I suppose...
"Tournament.com offers licensed games, so you are not breaking the license agreement, and there isn't a worry of having the service shut down at any moment. Tournament.com also has patent-pending anti-cheat technology in addition to human review. We're confident we are providing a safe and secure environment for players to legally and responsibly play the top online FPS games."
Proof will soon be seen post-launch next month I suppose...