While the genre is slowly growing as an esport, fighting game prize pools are still comparatively small compared to other genres, especially for games that don’t have large publisher backing. This is why when someone claims to have won nearly $30,000 dollars in a tournament, it tends to raise a few eyebrows.
When an unnamed temp staffer for Ota City, Japan held a press conference to claim that he had won ¥ 3,000,000 ($29,776 USD) for winning a Guilty Gear Xrd tournament held on September 20 and 21 in France, more than a few people were skeptical. With such a large prize pool, you’d think that this news would have been covered by major fighting game news sites, including us at Shoryuken. Indeed, not even Arc System Works’ own website lists such a tournament–a fact that, according to IT Media, had led many skeptics to dispute the player’s claim.
However, others also treated the story as legitimate. Both Jomo News and Asahi News reported on the story and the latter even interviewed the staffer in a now deleted article where he made statements on how his “driving force” to win was due to being mortified if he lost.
IT Media has shared a shot (with the player’s name removed) of one of the now deleted articles.
Faced with with mounting evidence and pressure from people on the net, the staffer finally admitted that the whole thing was too good to be true. “It was a lie,” he states to Mainichi News, which broke the story on the hoax. With this, the question now remains on what faces the player after his confession. According to FNN News (who covered the story on Japanese TV), Ota City officials are now looking at how to deal with him.
Sources: IT Media; Mainichi News; FNN; Kotaku