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court: organizer shall bear the civil liability for payment of bonus as the national champion of an e-sports game who failed to get the promised bonus of rmb 360,000, an internet cafe in lingshan y sued to court, requesting the event sponsorthe organizer, a network technology company in shanghai, to honor the bonus. recently, jiading district people’s court of shanghai (hereinafter referred to as “shanghai jiading court”) concluded the case by making the first-instance ruling that network technology company shall pay the rmb 360,000 bonus to the internet cafe. in september 2015, an internet cafe in lingshan y signed up to participate in the “xxx2015 national internet cafe e-sport invitational tournament” sponsored by a network technology company in shanghai. after overcoming all the difficulties in the way, the team of the internet cafe won the second place in the wildcard play-off with a bonus of rmb 20,000. in the subsequent national finals, the team won the first prize with excellent performance. after the game, the network technology company presented the team with a championship trophya simulated check for rmb 360,000. however, it turned out that this check became an “empty promise” as the network technology company never cashed it. failing to reach an agreement with the organizer, the internet cafe sued to the court. during the trial, the network technology company argued that it prepared rmb 2 million bonus for the event, of which more than rmb 1,600,000 had already been paid. the reason why the winner’s bonus wasn’t paid was that someone complained after the game there’s professional contestants in the champion team, which didn’t conform to the rules of the game. in addition, the team couldn’t participate in the game directly except in the name of internet cafe. the plaintiff didn’t provide its agreement with the team,therefore was ineligible to receive the bonus. after the trial, shanghai jiading court held that the defendant, a network technology company in shanghai, initiatedhosted the “xxx2015 national internet cafe e-sport invitational tournament” through relevant media, while the plaintiff, an internet cafe in lingshan y, obtained the qualification for the game after being examined by the defendantfinally took part in the final. after winning the first prize, the plaintiff was awarded a championship trophya simulated check for rmb 360,000 based on the examination of the plaintiff. it’s unjustified for the defendant to refuse to pay the bonus later. besides, there’s no factuallegal basis to support its argument that the bonus shouldn’t be paid because the plaintiff changed the contestantfailed to provide its agreement with the contestants. hence, it’s ruled that the defendant should bear the civil liability for paying the bonus. i. contract law of the people’s republic of china article 107 if a party fails to perform its obligations under a contract,its performance fails to satisfy the terms of the contract, it shall bear the liabilities for breach of contract such as to continue to perform its obligations, to take remedial measures,to compensate for losses. (author: zhang xiaoli, jiading district people’s court of shanghai)
