Exclusive Interview: UGC CEO Matthew Jackson responds to skepticism, questions towards $1m CS2 tournament — Part Two

In part two of Dust2.us' extended interview with the founder and CEO of Ultimate Gaming Championships (UGC), Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore continues the conversation with Matthew Jackson about UGC and Global Domination Entertainment's (GDE's) upcoming $1m tournament Global Domination: Invasion.

This second part of the interview focuses on the granular details of the event, with questions being raised about the level of preparedness within the joint-venture as the qualifiers for the event start in less than a month.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The format for the tournament itself has raised some eyebrows, as has the million-dollar prize pool, but it is also supposedly for everyone, including amateurs and rookies. What player base is this event targeting?

I guess it's maybe a little cliché to say everyone. We are [also] targeting the pro players. We want the pro players to be involved. We have met with several different teams through the last two years.

But the idea that we can showcase up-and-coming teams, this kind of daydream of a new team of amateurs that can play through a bronze division, and then if they win it, they get one shot to relegate up.

From the Valve regulations, we cannot invite teams 1 through 12 on a global standard. So, you know, VRS will exclude those, but those teams can participate in the open qualifiers. We have a division for them that allows them to play through, so they're not going to be just playing some noobies, but then in that whole series, it does culminate to where a winner from a lower skill division gets a chance to play up.

Counter-Strike has done such a good job at keeping their community thriving for so long that if we can add some value in a way where a player could say, 'Oh, well, Counter-Strike, it's a cool game, how can I get involved?'

So that's a long way of answering who we're actually targeting because it is true we will have you know people on site and treat the pros with the utmost kind of leisure like they're used to having player handlers and whatnot. We will serve all of that, but this online component is really out there to say, 'Hey, is there anybody that wants to try to come up and get recognized?'

Could you explain the format starting from the very beginning in the territory events all the way to the finals?

So, I will preface this by saying that we have been speaking with our TOs, understanding some concerns about the amount of matches. We could announce a small format change at a divisional level in the next week or so.

A team joins the tournament and through the VRS system and other metrics we might pull, we would give that team a ranking within the amount of registered teams in the territory.

So, you have X amount of registered teams in the territory and we rank them from low to high and then we split those teams into four divisions. That's where you'll see the bronze, silver, gold, and platinum division. For the next three to four weeks those teams will actually play through what is currently designed as a Round Robin.

Best of one or best of three for these matches?

Best of one for this. We are aware of the potential for match fatigue and some things that might be inconvenient for players.

I hate it because from a competitive integrity perspective, I would love to give these teams an opportunity to see which one is the best by playing more matches. That's why we could potentially switch the Round Robin format to an elimination style or possibly Swiss style if we feel like the community would be better suited from a scheduling perspective.

But currently as it is currently listed, if I'm a team, I'm playing in a group of 15 other teams that have similar skill ranking as me and we are going to play and the team that has the best record in our group advances out to a single elimination division finals where they will be matched up against other group winners.

The top eight from that division go on to play in a Territory Finals where essentially the bronze members get a chance to relegate up through the silver and then if one does that then they get a chance to relegate through gold. If not, silver teams will relegate up through gold and progress up to who would qualify for the live event finals.

Where do the VRS invited teams fit into this?

They are going to play in a separate six-team per territory single elimination tournament. The top two teams out of each territory qualify for OKC.

The thought process here is since we can have specific VRS invited teams by putting them in a separate kind of competition which will occur later. I know there are regulations about the timeline of when they can start and whatnot and we have conformed to those specific timelines. But the idea is we are paying out the top eight million dollar prize pool. We want the best top eight teams that we can possibly get there.

I will say that we are kind of evaluating some of those elements due to time constraints over the course of the three days where it's currently outlined. I think 21 or 22 teams per territory get invites to OKC and the top two or three for each territory get all paid expenses. Those top two or three...

Sorry, I have to cut you off to interject here. The LAN is targeting 64 teams?

Yeah 64 teams. That's why I had mentioned we are re-evaluating some of those numbers just realizing the magnitude of... we do have a hardware committee...

A 64-team LAN in three days?

Correct.

So what's the format for OKC itself? Single Elimination?

Yeah single elimination except for the top eight teams, the VRS teams and the top eight teams, who will come and be showcased in two of their own isolated tournaments where they play each other.

We are looking at potentially booking some space in the few days build up to and seeing if the schedule allows it. These are some details where we may announce some adjustments and it is something we anticipated after speaking with Valve and confirming that the event meets all guidelines. The next thing they recommended was getting community feedback and I think this is a great place to start.

We've gotten some community feedback from other people and realized that, you know, this might be a pretty ambitious schedule.

So, I'll talk through the format that you're seeing and list the 21, 22 teams, but we might adjust some of those things moving forward. What we know is the top 12 teams per territory do get paid out prize money. Then the top two to three teams per territory get all expenses paid to attend. So those things will not change. We do need to figure out our hardware schedule and whatnot.

So, a 64 team LAN is pretty difficult to pull off in three days...

Yeah. They'd be very full days and we would not be able to effectively have a show.

Is there going to be a stage or is it going to be an open floor with a ton of PC setups? Do you have enough setups to run 8-10 matches at once?

Yes, so we will have the main arena which will be a stage. We're talking about potentially center stage. Got some very cool things planned for the actual spectator experience.

Luckily the stadium has so much space on the outside through their foyers and mini event spaces that we would likely have our hardware set up there. Probably a secondary smaller main stage.

If you look at how the bracket is structured by round three or four, I believe you can qualify and get an invite to OKC. So, if that's a silver or bronze top team, you know, they would be able to come play silver and bronze-ranked teams from other territories. That's where the interest is to get those teams matched up and see how it fares. But we do have commitment from AMD for hardware. We can certainly furnish 250 PCs if we need to.

We can play as many matches as needed. We went through the scheduling. We know it is incredibly tight and even with the maximum number of machines where you could have everybody playing round one at the same time, you get to a bottleneck at some point. So those are the things we're evaluating. But that is what we would love to see a way to do and we're willing to put the resources into that.

You know, since it is our first going Counter-Strike, I don't know the appetite of some of these teams like if they placed 20th, 21st they get invited with no expenses paid you know are they going to attend? I'm not sure.

What happens then if an international team cannot afford to attend the LAN or declines an invite? Is there a plan to replace them?

Yeah, It would be a declined invite and that slot is not filled. So, I mean if you know if you're top 12, then you know I mean it essentially boils down to better opportunities for other teams if another team can't attend.

But with where we're currently sitting, I think for us to try to figure out how to invite the next ranked team down and so on and so forth before getting some of these other kinds of format things buttoned up. You know, I would be remiss to say, yeah, we'll just invite the next team down, because at this moment we are evaluating the live LAN.

We would definitely want to pay the Top 12 out per territory. That's our commitment. We know that the top eight get a chance to play for a million dollars at the live finals.

The website mentions assessing what tier a team is based on something called "Steam stats". What does Steam stats mean here?

Yeah, that is something that we are evaluating internally, what metrics we would want to look at.

I liked the idea of trying to pull some player statistics and being able to use those as metrics to then accumulate a team rank. We obviously have the VRS system that we could look into if there are teams that do have VRS points that enter for that platinum division.

But this is something that I'm leaning on some tournament operators in the space you know what their guidance and thinking would be the best and the most appropriate way to to give a team an appropriate seed coming in.

You don't yet know what you're going to do for that even though the qualifiers start next month?

I mean for me I leaned on a kill the death ratio per player and then we have an Elo system in our site that could pull those metrics and then give the team an accrued stat. But I want to lean on a final decision from the tournament operations team.

I guess I would ask you in return. I don't know if you do this in an interview, but you know, if you had some recommendations from being so ingrained in Counter-Strike, what would be an interesting way to do that?

There's better metrics like the VRS to draw from. The way you are proposing to do it, with kill-death ratio or with Elo, seems like it could attract cheaters who would naturally have inflated stats. Is that something you're conscious of?

Yeah, for sure. I think that the objective of it is for a genuine non-cheater player to think they're got these metrics just kind of makes sense to say, 'Well our team is new, but we've got whatever stats like kill deaths [to achieve a higher rank] It kind of makes a pretty straightforward method. However, with the cheaters, we do have Akros Anti-Cheat as our anti-cheat partner.

You will have to download and install that. They have a whole list of people that have already been hardware banned that will not be able to enter this tournament. And that's how we're going to mitigate that. We realize from some of the feedback we've gotten from people we've been talking to the last four or five months that if you're going to open the door for all Counter-Strike players to come in and and get in and then you're that means you're going to open the door for these guys that that want to cheat. And so, we are monitoring that.

We're working with partners to eliminate that risk and yeah, you know, we’re ultimately going to do everything we possibly can to make sure that the player experience is good.

I think that just going back to the skill as we have right now, player skill is kind of a very wide range thing. Internally, we're evaluating how we determine that. Again, I do love the fact that our team is really wanting to flourish new Counter-Strike players and making this open to all but we also understand that it could cause some problems.

Akros seems to be a good industry-standard anti-cheat. Happy to partner with them. Really appreciate some of the feedback they've given us and that's our objective.

Looking at the qualifiers themselves, are UGC working with any local partners to help facilitate these global qualifiers or is it all going to be handled by UGC?

We have been in discussions with European operators and we have put out notice to the Asian market as well and there's interest. We would not anticipate having to handle those qualifiers directly.

We hope to add some creative direction with what we might showcase online, but in terms of the actual operation and functionality of it, then we would lean on those partners that have proven that they can operate. You know, I think again this is a very community-driven event focused on the community feeling like this is something good for the ecosystem.

We would be ignorant to try to to manage that when there are operators out there that have done such a great job moving forward. And, you know, that's where we're leaning heavily on Fragadelphia in North America to help us kind of identify those partners that would be able to to help us across the globe. In terms of the servers, we are going to be working with a partner that will have our servers spin up in specific regions based on territory.

Discussions are great, but these qualifiers are starting in a month. Are these agreements set in stone... do you have someone you can point to and say this is our Asian qualifier operator, NA operator, SA operator etc.?

We will have those, yes. I mean, we've got enough conversations where I can say we will have those. And again we were already running up to the gun to announce late and so we announced this to get the name out there and then we will be announcing more details on directing players in different territories and where they might find support as well you know.

The Discord started getting pretty active quickly...

So they're not in place yet?

Correct. I mean I'm not going to sit here and tell you something... we have commitments in place, yes, but we have not integrated that whole operation. That'll happen this week. A lot of things are coming on board this week to get tournament operations prepped and ready. We're doing the best we can to get more information and direction out in the next week.

On the website three territories are listed: Americas, Europe, and Asia. Will these massive regions be the only way the qualifiers are divided despite potential ping issues?

Yeah, so that's something we have discussed internally where the divisions will be skill but territory focused as well. Putting a metric in there to where we make sure those group play matches are at least on a server that suits both teams.

These are things we are discussing internally because at some point it becomes like, if you have a good team in South America and a good team in Canada comes in the finals, how are we handling that? So we're looking into that.

I know through the valve regulations, you know, the territories we chose or how they have it broken up and they do make mention of of sub regions in there and how you might qualify teams out from those sub regions like no more than X amount of teams from the Oceana division can qualify out to a specific final. So we're looking at that if that could be a good adaptation to make sure players are well-suited.

We also are just being conscious of the player base and where player volume might be and you know we want everybody to have a good experience. But we also realize that there's certain things that we may not be able to avoid and you know we're just doing our best to avoid as many of those as possible.

We've discussed your efforts to make this a Valve Ranked event. For that, UGC needs to apply and be approved by HLTV. Where are we in that process?

Yeah, so that was something we were advised of from Valve.

I will be honest, I thought that we needed to announce and then I would get that process done. We announced, and then I started that process and went through the form that they have. It seemed there were some questions on there that would not be able to be answered until we have properly generated certain seeds or invites. So, I'm talking to our tournament ops team to make sure we answer these things correctly and it is our full intention to conform with HLTV and submit what we need to with them.

You know, I will take a little responsibility and just in the past when we posted events usually they were kind of featured on community sites and so it's something that I probably need to button up. Going through the form I realized that you can check don't share any of these details until after the announcement. So you know I will take some responsibility for not having that done. But we are working quickly to resolve that.

I would love to meet with them. You know we want to be in this space for a while and we're doing this for the long term and so we know those are partners that we have to work with in order to make this a success. So forms being filled out hopefully we get a conversation with them. I'd love to figure out how we can fit within the great things that the Counter-Strike community is already doing.

With HLTV ultimately being the arbiter of whether an event is Ranked or Unranked, are there concerns about the event not receiving Ranked status? What would the implications of that rejection be?

I am hopeful we will be able to find a way to work this out. I'm hoping this will not be an issue. That's why I say that we are looking and evaluating format things that might make people more comfortable. I suppose if this isn't a ranked event it will impact the amount of prize money that we can put to the players. That's one of the stipulations. So I'm just hopeful that's not the case.

Since I know that we are even as the format stands, it meets the regulations from Valve and then you know the next steps we're going to talk to HLTV, the community, and make sure things are appropriately adjusted if requested.

So I'm hopeful that is not the case, but you know if it was to be the case and we cannot actually offer this prize money to players you know which I would think would be not that would not be beneficial for anyone. Then we would have to evaluate what happens because we can't do an OKC million dollar event if we're not able to get that done. So I hope that's a good answer.

Final question, do you see this as a one-off event or are there plans to host more events of this style after the first one?

If we can figure out the format this group plays with the bronze through platinum level.

We hope to have some online stuff that can now start fracturing off for those skill level players too. So we plan to have a full ecosystem of competitive Counter-Strike and more of these major scale events. With Mammoth Live we have a pretty good connection to the entertainment space in terms of venues and we've already started looking at some other possible venues. You know, getting out ahead of this for the next one is going to be our key focus. I'm learning along the way. I really appreciate you reaching out. I appreciate the feedback.

Ahead of the publication of part two of our interview Jackson reached out to Dust2.us that UGC plan on updating the format for the qualifiers "to break the group play into a separate league format independent from the open qualifier," once again tinkering with the format for their $1m tournament less than a month before the qualifiers are set to start.

With UGC's first foray into Counter-Strike 2 less than a month away, Jackson's answers reveal that multiple key details of the Global Domination: Invasion event are still up in the air, a concerning sign for a global tournament that has millions of dollars invested into it. With Jackson and UGC "laying the track as the train goes" it remains to be seen what will happen when the qualifiers kick off on June 17th.