Cyber Evolution

Cyber Evolution (CEVO) is an online video game competition organization created in 2003 as Cyber Evolution Volunteer Organization changing names officially in 2007 to CEVO, LLC., is most notable being the first pay-to-play league with payouts to winning teams and players. CEVO was founded and is owned by Charlie Plitt and is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. CEVO is an Limited liability company. Although created in 2003 the first season of CEVO was in 2005.
CEVO is known for holding seasonal competitions and tournaments for Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Source and the .
Seasons
CEVO's seasons are typically 8 weeks with 1 or 2 matches per a week based on the game and which tier you are in. Playoffs are double elimination and have a BO3 (Best of 3) match for the finals. Prizes are given to the top 6 teams. Matches for computer games are played while players run the CMN3 (CEVO Match Network) which is used for an anti-cheat system to prevent cheating during league play.
The competition tiers for cevo are CEVO F (Free), CEVO A (Amature), CEVO M (Main), and CEVO P (Professional). Each tier has a higher payout for winning teams and players.
CEVO is currently in Season 8 for Counter-Strike: Source, Season 10 for Counter-Strike, and Season 4 for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Pay-to-play
CEVO is the first online pay-to-play league requiring all players of a team to pay in order to be eligible for playing matches in the league.
With the exception of CEVO Free all players must pay $20 to be eligible to play a season for a certain event in CEVO, late registration is $25. Tournaments which require pay are $5 to register a player. Some tournaments give players free registration to the regular season as well as a move up to a higher tier for placing in the tournament. This is usually a move up to CEVO Main or an invite to qualify for CEVO Professional. CEVO occasionally has early season registration specials allowing users to pay for registration at a discounted rate of $15.
As of 2009 CEVO is a competetor with E-Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA), the pay-to-play pug service for Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike 1.6 reformatted their website, implemented a pay-to-play competetive league after the demise of CAL (Cyberathlete Amateur League)
Games
CEVO is currently holding competitions for:
Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike: Source
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Team Fortress 2
Defense of the Ancients(DotA)
Call of Duty: World at War
Left 4 Dead
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
Day of Defeat
CEVO has also started to hold competitions on consoles where matches are played via xbox live.
CEVO Professional Champions
CS:S
CEVO p s1 - Enervate
CEVO p s2 - Hyper!
CEVO p s3 - Complexity LA
CEVO p s4 - Complexity LA
CEVO p s5 - Dallas Venom
CEVO p s6 - Dallas Venom
CEVO p s7 - Cyber Revolution (FEVER)
CEVO p s8 - TBA (Regular season in progress)

1.6
Gamers Tour
In 2008 CEVO started a partnership with iGames to have a series of LAN (Local Area Network) tournaments with participating iGames LAN centers across the United States. This would be called the Gamers Tour, which is now in phase 2 for 2009. Most of these events were held in the Mid-West and on the East Coast.
The largest Gamers Tour event was the Alienware 7.5k tournament which was a 2 day competition held at multiple locations throughout the United States. Day 1 was a LAN competition at each tournament location and the winners from the LAN events went on to participate on Day 2 which was a WAN (Wide Area Network) where each team played at their LAN center for a $7,500 prize. Some players in the tournament were featured in a frag video with the best shots in the tournament made by Alienware. This was followed by a second Alienware sponsored event held online, teams who made it to the WAN in the first tournament were guarenteed spots in the second grand finals bracket won by KEYBOARD SMASHERS(known cheating team).
Affiliations and Sponsors
CEVO is sponsored by Advanced Micro Devices/ATI Technologies, Nationvoice, NZXT, OCZ Technology, Razer USA, Sapphire Technology, Slim Jim, Thermaltake, and Turtle Beach Systems
They are partners with GotGames, and iGames.
Their media coverage is done by GameFire, E-Rev TV, WinOUT, LAG TV, Pwnage.tv, TGBF, Insider Sports, Complexity Gaming, and Community Fortress.
Their infrastructure is powered by Layered Tech, Nuclear Fallout, and Grid Layer.
Before the Championship Gaming Series (CGS) went bankrupt, CEVO had a partnership with the CGS for the CGS Pro-Am competition where amateur teams could sign up and play in a tournament with the possibility of playing the CGS franchise teams. The Pro-Am used CEVO infrastructure to run the tournament such as the CEVO website and the CMN3 anti-cheat. CGS Franchise teams where also guaranteed spots in CEVO Professional for Counter-Strike: Source, they were contracted to play during the off-season but CGS team play was optional in CEVO P during the CGS seasons.
Controversy
There is controversy with CEVO's cheating disputes where league administration reviews demos and sees the players cheating they will still pass the dispute ticket if nothing is seen on the CMN3 logs from that match. There is also controversy around the fact that CEVO is a business so their best interests may not be in banning players who are seen as "customers" from the league.

 
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