CEO Gaming founder Alex Jebailey has warned players to not throw furniture while celebrating wins at CEO, following a player breaking a light fixture while celebrating a win.
During the Mortal Kombat Winner’s Finals at CEO, player Dyloch celebrated his win by picking up the chair and throwing it off-stage- directly into the stage lighting.
“If one more person pops off throwing anything you will be banned from any event I ever do. This is a final warning to anyone in the future. Do not throw things”, Jebailey said on Twitter.
Many fans even pointed out that light fixtures aren’t exactly cheap -with the same model as the one broken costing well over two thousand dollars, far more than the prize pool for the tournament.
After winning the Mortal Kombat tournament, Dyloch acknowledged that he would be “taking responsibility” for the property damage.
Considering estimates put the Mortal Kombat 1 prize at around 500 dollars and the light at at least 4 times as much, it’s created a tragic situation where Revloch may be the first fighting game player to lose money by taking first, and all for a pop off not even made for winning first.
The Danger Of Pop-Offs
Pop-offs have always been considered a big part of fighting game culture- players exploding with emotion after a hard-fought battle.
However, historically a lot of the best ones have typically been fairly peaceful, like the unbridled excitement of Justin Wong rolling on the floor or the somber tone of Arslan Ash doing a muslim sujud after taking first at Tekken 7.
At the end of the day it’s great to have a stage where players can express themselves in more ways than just crossing their arms on stage.
At the same time, though, some forward thinking would be great- Tournament organizers like Jebailey work hard being able to get venues for big events like CEO, and that job becomes easier when they can make 100% guarantees that the venue won’t be partially destroyed in the process.
The discussion around pop-offs started again this year with Smash Bros player HungryBox similarly throwing a chair at an event.
While many in the audience found the act of violence against furniture entertaining many older fans found it an unnecessary venue risk that would only make finding venues for future events trickier.
