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The first time when I heard about Dreamhack coming to Mumbai, I was not only happy, but also proud, and why should I not be? Dreamhack is one of those major gaming events we wait for. Watching it online was okay but attending Dreamhack? I’m sure it was a surprise to the community. The response was overwhelming and everyone was counting down the days until the show began.
Dreamhack is not just another gaming tournament, it is like a festival for gamers. LAN matches, cosplays, vintage game section, music, we get it all in Dreamhack. The expectations were high and I don’t blame the community, it is Dreamhack after all!
However, right after Day 1, the complaints started to flood in. It was mostly from the community members and fans who attended the event. The complaints were not focused on a particular thing rather people were complaining about everything. People claimed that organizers messed up the entire event while community members posted on Facebook, claiming they were scammed.
You can take a deep breath and let it all slide and say, “those are the people who always complains” but that changed when Gadget360 claimed that Dreamhack Mumbai was running Nintendo ROMs in cloned consoles. Dreamhack is a very prestigious tournament and the vintage game section uses the original retro hardware.
The Gadget360 article claimed,
“You could select what game to play from a menu touting '76,000 in 1' titles to choose from. That's a dead giveaway that no official cartridges were involved, considering such compilations were never officially made. This makes their legitimacy questionable at best, and at worst, a case of piracy at a high-profile event like Dreamhack.”
Nintendo takes their older games very seriously and in the past, they even did force shutdown of the ROM websites. The CEO and founder of Nodwin Gaming – the company organizing Dreamhack Mumbai – clarified that they are not making any profit out of it, it is for the community, and if he is asked to stop, he will not do it again.
Ticket for Dreamhack Mumbai started from INR 499 and went all the way up to INR 14,999. Directly or indirectly they did make a profit out of what seems to be pirated content. Maybe a retro game section is not as important as the Dota2, CS: GO, or the PUBG section but I still think that the organizers should have been careful. There’s always another side of the story so we are still waiting for the organizers to release an official statement.
Fans are also complaining about things like the event not having a proper schedule, even canceling the main stage games. Events like Dreamhack are not allowed to mess things up this deep because the consequences can be heavy.
We are in a country where E-Sports is still developing, events like this will make a negative impact. I am sure it’s not easy to organize such a big event but if you are doing it, you should be more careful. Upsetting the fans might upset the Indian gaming community but upsetting the international community will be worse than you can imagine. In the same year where Optic India released their roster – now Dreamhack Mumbai is under the scope.
