So once again one of our beloved writers has gotten us into trouble.

This time it's Starks. We got Starks on board as a writer for two main reasons. First of all, awesome hair. It's important that hair should go directly up, ignoring the tedious call of gravity, and Starks' flat spiky do is exactly the sort of attitude we like to see in reviewer hair. Secondly we got him on because of his involvement with the competitive gaming scene.

Tournaments, LANs, and the like are an area of gaming that is quite specialised. It's made up of passionate and hardcore gamers who know way too much about any one game. It's also an area that neither Yug nor myself know jack about, or have any particular interest in. The eSports market is not one that we have any idea how to really target or talk to.

So we basically hired Starks as a translator, enabling communication between real people like us and the scary people who dwell...

So once again one of our beloved writers has gotten us into trouble.

This time it's Starks. We got Starks on board as a writer for two main reasons. First of all, awesome hair. It's important that hair should go directly up, ignoring the tedious call of gravity, and Starks' flat spiky do is exactly the sort of attitude we like to see in reviewer hair. Secondly we got him on because of his involvement with the competitive gaming scene.

Tournaments, LANs, and the like are an area of gaming that is quite specialised. It's made up of passionate and hardcore gamers who know way too much about any one game. It's also an area that neither Yug nor myself know jack about, or have any particular interest in. The eSports market is not one that we have any idea how to really target or talk to.

So we basically hired Starks as a translator, enabling communication between real people like us and the scary people who dwell in masses of tangled cat5 and the din of 300 overclocked PCs.

Aside from reporting on the tournaments themselves Starks is able and expected to represent the fears and concerns of the community. These concerns range from "so what's it like outside?" to "where the hell is my money?"

Starks most recent concern has been regarding GAME1 and the tournaments they hosted.

A few days ago Starks posted this article, talking about the competition and the fact that none of the winners of the Sydney comp (held in early November) had been paid. Emails and phone calls to the organisers had gone unanswered, and the competitive scene was left without money.

The importance of the prize money can't be overstated. Many of the competitors were young players, and in some cases flew down with their own money to compete.

There are several questions we get asked regularly. The most common is "what are you doing in my garden?", but coming in second is "what does Australia need to do to get professional gamers happening?".

The answer is complex. More competitions, more prize money, a larger general population, more online competitions, better coverage of competitions, all of these are factors. One factor that we hadn't taken into account before now is this: competitions have to pay when they say they will.

Most of the biggish competitions have prizes given in a combination of products and cash, and while there's a limit to the number of sets of headphones you can have the cash is pretty much the lifeblood of any professional endeavour. There's a strange concept people have of the word "professional". It means only one thing: someone makes money doing a certain activity. It doesn't actually mean "good", like some people take it to mean. If you're awesome at something but don't get paid at all for doing it... you're not a professional. The implication is that to be making money doing something you have to be good, but it certainly doesn't actually mean that. No, what it means is that you get paid.

It doesn't say when. How long is too long to wait for prize money? Winners have been left prizeless and without answers for way too long, and we commend Starks in bringing this issue to attention.

And it has gotten attention. From Kotaku to Canned Geek, there have been articles supporting Starks. Only MyGen has been critical, essentially claiming "anonymous" has been stirring up trouble. (Anonymous is Starks, by the way, in case you're at a Yug level of intellect.)

The MyGen article was originally posted as "GAME1 respond to late payment issues, fuelled by entrant who didn't even win", a title one has to see as being a petty shot directly at Starks. As well as being generally snarky MyGen are basically posting GAME1's official response press release. I won't say MyGen aren't entirely independent, but they did run the competitions that are under question, make of that what you will. The running and organising of the competitions is not under question, so I'm not sure why MyGen are being so obstreperous. They did a good job, by all reports, and the payment of prizes is not their responsibility.

The other bit of attention it's gotten us was a request to remove Starks' "offending" article. Starks declined and provided Yug's phone number instead when the polite request was ended with "or we'll sue for defamation". Regrettably we never did get that phone call. We had a good response ready too. Admittedly it was mostly animal noises and Monty Python quotes.

It's also interesting to note that Kotaku, who covered our coverage (it happens) has a few comments on their page as well, one of which is a threat to sue for defamation on the basis of them posting "hearsay". Would I be unreasonable to suggest that's the organisers again? Once again, not a strong suit.

You see, you can't sue someone for Libel (or slander) if what they say is true, or they had reason to believe it's true. The facts in this case spoke for themselves. Frankly we would have loved to be sued for reporting the truth. The publicity would have been awesome! The saddest thing is that the people responsible here seem to be more enthusiastic about making personal remarks and threatening to sue than genuinely explaining themselves or resolving the issue.

In the end, though, everything has worked out OK. Those who won prize money have been paid as promised, though in some cases less than promised, probably by genuine and understandable error.

The question has to be asked though, was it just a coincidence that it took so long to suddenly happen just after Starks posted about it and chased it up on behalf of the community? Was it just that things were quiet over Christmas/New Year? If so, why was there no response at all on this until Starks wrote an article making the issue public? If he hadn't, how long would it have taken for the winners to get their money?

On a related and less bitter note, this issue has brought a lot of stories out of the woodwork too, prizes that have been won and either were never received or took a long time to receive.

One of our forum contributors Retroman won Dragonball Z season 1 off madman.com.au and it took 3-4 months to arrive. Which is like a single fight scene worth in Dragonball Z time. Damn that show pissed me off with that. Was incredibly dragged out with long periods of nothing but dialogue. Kind of like my marriage.

Anyway, our own Cav is also waiting for a prize, $199 cordless Sony headphones won in a competition through playstation.com.au in mid-October.

I think the best prize goes to the story that inspired the above comic. Yug won a R.O.B., the Nintendo robot that's best known now as an oddity. It didn't arrive for a year by which time the NES was obsolete.

Now that's impressive. I've so far been unaffected by this not getting of prizes things by virtue of the fact that I have neither skill nor luck, so I haven't ever actually won anything.

But what about you? You win anything and not get it? Or wait by the mailbox for months on end for something? Let us know your own experiences on the forum.