The Venezuelan qualifier for the World Cyber Games was called off half way through last weekend, leaving all of the players empty-handed.

The qualifier was due to take place at the Sambil Maracaibo Convention Center in Maracaibo, the country's second largest city, and reward the winners of the tournaments with a spot in the 2010 Pan-American event.

It was impossible, according to the organizer of the Venezuelan qualifier, Christian Cox, to provide paid travel and accomodation to this year's WCG finals in Chengdu, citing that Samsung had decided to pull out as the main sponsor of the event due to a new law in the country against violent games.

However, according to, Rafael "MaldiNatOr" Moreno, captain of Counter-Strike team NoLimit, such law has yet not been approved and it only targets minors, just like it happens in Germany.

"This WCG was a fraud, and why was it a fraud? Because they made use of a law that has not been approved yet and is only for minors and they cancelled the trip to China and kept all the money to themselves," Moreno told HLTV.org.

But that was not the end of it. The DoTA qualifier was scheduled to start on Friday but when the participating teams arrived at the venue, there was still no sign of the computers. The competition ended up being transferred to a local internet cafe, whose owner did not take long to send the players back to the original venue as he had not been paid anything.

At the Sambil Maracaibo Convention Center, the Counter-Strike qualifier had started, but the company providing the computers and monitors started packing their things just two maps into the competition, claiming they had not been paid by the WCG organizer.

Meanwhile, the players learned that the organizer was not going to cover the teams' expenses, like he had promised to, leaving several gamers with nothing to eat and no place to stay for more than two days.

Things heated up right after as gamers protested against this situation, resulting in two of them being assaulted by the convention center's security. After this, the event was called off and the players were ordered to leave the venue.

This is not the first time that this has happened in Venezuela. In 2003, Cox, who has held the WCG license in the country for six years, refused to pay the plane tickets to the winning team, who ended up missing the event. In fact, he has only sent FIFA representatives to the world finals, from 2005 onwards.

As it stands now, the teams and players will not only miss out on the WCG finals, but also their involvement in next year's Pan-American tournament is in doubt. The Venezuelan community is now united against Cox as they hope he will finally lose his WCG license.

"We are studying a way to make a request but we never signed anything...," he added. "We want the WCG to give the license to someone else who is more serious and has a sense of responsibility."

HLTV.org has tried to contact the WCG on this matter, but without success.