UKCT - UKCounterTerrorist

Anomoly, a writer for US-based community site [gotfrag], has conducted a short but very in-depth interview with The Slash, one of co-owners of the SK organisation that recently suffered the loss of their CS.swe team, which was arguably the best in the world.

His answers shed more light onto the entire situation, and the moves that led to SK.swe leaving the company and re-forming Ninjas in Pyjamas. Here's a snippet:

Obviously SK.swe's team along with a few other players have departed recently from SK, can you explain why the rash departure?

At the same time we learned that the players wanted to make a showcase in Dallas out of themselves, which was something we really did not like at all. I always insisted on solving the problem face to face and not keeping anything away from the other. We realized the players wanted to make a move. That was the time when we asked them to sign the contracts before CPL or we would consider sending the German team, which by the way cost us the whole trip. It was thesame as sending the SWE team some people think otherwise, but CPL denied giving out the tickets as we broke a rule by letting this team play a qualifier and at the same time registering the SWE team. So there was no financial advantage at all on our side. When the players still did not move we felt a break in trust.
The whole situation was somehow clashed...

From that point on we concentrated on setting up a new team.

The answers given show SK's side of the story, and it's quite an interesting one too. Check the interview out here.

As you may be aware, every year there are various 'Person of the Year' awards - perhaps the most well known is the Sports Personality of the Year award. Well, US team and community the compLexity Syndicate, backed by rich owner Jason '1' Lake, have developed their own variant: the eSports Personality of the Year award. And after throwing his own money at ex 3D player Bullseye to sign a contract with a high salary, throwing $1000 at anyone who can build the team a good de_complexity map, they have decided to throw $500 at the winner of the eSports Personality poll.

And, after 785 community votes, Craig 'Torbull' Levine (owner of 3D) was found to be the winner with 32%, closely followed by Trevor 'Midway' Schmidt ([gotfrag] writer and director) with 24% and Andreas 'bds' Thorstensson ( SK co-owner and manager of the former SK.swe) with 17%.

You can see the announcement thread here. It remains to be seen how many other ways coL owner 1 can find to share his wealth, let's just hope it continues, eh?

Well following on from the previous significant system alterations, I have made various small adjustments this week to help improve the speed and functionality of the site. One major addition I have now completed is, as I'm sure you may have noticed with the message underneath the banner, the coding and implementation of a Private Messaging system for the site.

The system is a simple and efficient way first and foremost for the admin team to post recorded messages to each other without the hassle of e-mail. However, the functionality is only a benefit and so has been made available to all users on the site. As with any new and complicated additions to the site, there might well be a bug still hanging around - I've sorted all I can find, but if you find a bug please let me know ASAP (if it's one that can be exploited for the wrong reasons, please make sure you let me know via a private manner as opposed to a public post), thanks!

However, continuing the development of the site and its features and operations are only worth so much - the site needs to be maintained with fresh and up-to-date content. With the-guy-at-the-top Mat still absent, poster Mango^ inactive, and my immenent lack of activity that'll follow my return to uni this coming weekend, we're left with just 3 posters to maintain the content - and of these, Pie has been inactive recently. So, posting duties will be down solely to fsk and wintern - which isn't enough considering the constant production of relevant news within the community. As such, if you're enthusiastic and fancy keeping the [ukct] community on the top of current news, let myself or Pie know on #UKCT or, perhaps, PMing one of us on site!

Thanks for any and all help.

Well after only a couple of weeks in the team, [ukt] have reported that KritikaL has left Landed. Here's what he had to say:

When i joined landed i joined with the expectations that i would get a large chance to change stuff in the team, which i personally think would have done them well. As time went past i got given a very tiny chance to change stuff, i got chance to change tactics and stuff but i didnt really get a real grip on the clan.

In my opinion the team needed a large change in personnel i might be wrong , but thats what i feel.

Then about 3 weeks into joiining the clan i got told that weve gotta go to oxford to speak about the future of the clan on the 22nd of january.. i was up for going, then we started talking what it was about, i started getting told it was about landed getting money and lan sponsorship.

Now i aint a fan of 4kings for having the money which they have because i dont believe that they deserve it because their results recently arnt that brilliant and i believe there are teams without sponsorship who deserve more. Well now i hear Landed are getting money, and what exactly have they done ?! apart from my ex team beat them 13-0 13-3 13-4 and them losing @ every lan event in first round i just dont understand why a team with such bad results can now get sponsorship deals and so on.... doesnt feel right sorry.

Whereas many of us would jump at the chance to join a CS team whose players received a salary, it seems it was this reason that drove KritikaL out of the team. This would also seem to blow the lid on any major announcement Landed-Lan.co.uk might have been hoping to make regarding their developments.

Where he goes, we'll have to wait and see - either way, good luck to both KritikaL and Landed.

Top UK team LastChance have more good news to announce, following their #1 seeding in the upcoming [esl] UK Tournament.

With Song going inactive with exams, they have brought in former ForsakeN player Undone, as well as a new manager in the form of Dazz. Here's a snip of what Undone had to say on the LastChance site:

My name is Indy Singh, i`ve been playing Counterstrike since 1.5. A friend at school used to play it, SFAL|Opti and just to fit in with my irl friends i thought i`d give it a go too. Really enjoyed the game from the outset but only really player awp map for the first two/three months as i only had one ip . when i found different servers and learnt how to read the chat onscreen, i found out about clans etc. Played in a number of `shit` clans but thats when i enjoyed cs the most, my last clan was forsaken which in all honesty towards the end after having personality issues with a certain member and really not enjoying the game anymore decided to leave.

This leaves their active roster looking as such:

• AdY
  
• HeaDBulB
  
• hih1
  
• madSpunK
  
• Undone

Best of luck to both Undone and LastChance.