National fighting game tournament BEAST 7 was held in Sweden, on February 17-19 of 2017. Attracting hundreds of attendants and some of the world's top Super Smash Bros. players, the brackets were stacked and the competition was fierce. Now 6 months after the tournament's conclusion, the winners still haven't received their prize money, and the organizers suggest that they're never going to get it.

Adam 'Armada' Lindgren, one of the undisputed top Super Smash Bros. Melee players in the world, is owed over €2000 for coming first in both the game's Singles and Doubles brackets. Tweeting yesterday about the situation, he explained that BEAST had yet to explain exactly what has happened to his winnings.

Ramin 'Mr R' Delshad has announced that he, too, has not received any of his hard earned winnings for placing first in the Smash 4 Singles. What's more, after numerous attempts to contact the event organizers and tweets, the fighting game pro received an email back from BEAST damage control explaining why the tournament host, Lolex, has not delivered payment yet.

"The accusations against Lolex made him isolate himself and made it hard to try and work out anything since he's the one that is paying out in the end. We're still working on it though and hopefully it will be sorted out as quickly as possible. As for how quickly that is, I do not know. I can only hope you understand."

Further attempts to contact the organizers at a later date, alongside more angry tweets on the subject, only resulted in a staff member contacting Mr R personally. In that correspondence, the organizers ask that he no longer post about the mail he was sent, as it could only result in commentators and other organizers also not receiving payment.

Since this point, a new statement has been made from BEAST, explaining that winnings cannot be payed out due to "unexpectedly high costs of running the tournament." The representative stated that they were concerned for Lolex's mental health, having isolated himself, and were unwilling to push him too hard on the matter. With eSports becoming more popular all the time, this is sure to be a disaster for all those that helped host the tournament and will likely prevent them from successfully hosting any future events.

It's a disgraceful, but sadly not unheard of, result for professional fighting game enthusiasts. While many competitions are run by competent operators, the events are often riddled with issues and this isn't the first time we've heard of prize money not being payed out.

Source: NeoGAF