PS3 Wireless Pads Banned At Evo
Aris ON Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 2:51PM 
I wasn't aware of this. Big thanks to TestYourMight.com for bringing it to my attention. Here is the original post by MrWizard.
Evolution 2011 is a Bring-Your-Own-Controller event. We provide the consoles, games, monitors and speakers for every game station, but it's up to the players to bring the controller they plan to play. This year we are restricting the controllers players are allowed to bring to ensure fair play and guarantee the integrity of the results.
How Wireless Controllers Work
All EVO games will be run on the Playstation 3. The Playstation 3 Dual Shock and Sixaxis controllers are both wireless devices. Plugging your controller into a PS3 for the first time pairs your controller to that Playstation. This pairing will be remembered by the Playstation until you sync your controller to another Playstation. We have found no reliable workaround to remove this pairing (1).
The Problem
Since there's no easy way to unpair a controller from a Playstation 3, any player who had previously played on a game console may accidently interfer with another game in progress. Consider the following scenario
1) Players A and B sync their controllers to the game station.
2) After they finish their game, Players A and B turn off their controllers.
3) Even though their controllers are turned off, the Playstation still remember that they are paired.
4) Players C and D sync their controllers and begin the next game.
5) Player A turns on his controller and hits the home button.
6) Since he hasn't yet synced his controller to the new station, hitting the home button will interrupt the game played by Players C and D.
There are a million different ways this can happen. For example:
1) A player eliminated from the tournament puts his controller in his backpack. While he's walking, some item in his backpack accidently bumps the home button, interrupting a game in progress.
2) A player finishes his semi-final match and turns off his controller. 15 minutes later he is called for his match in the finals of the winners bracket. While syncing his controller to the new Playstation, he accidently hits the home button while before his USB cord is plugged in, interrupting the semi-finals of the loser's bracket happening on the console he just left.
3) A sore loser eliminated from the tournament maliciously presses his home button to interrupt matches.
4) A player notices that is friend is about to lose a match on a console that he had just played on. He decides to "save" his friend by pressing the home button, forcing a replay of the round.
While some of these may sound far-fetched, each of these scenarios has happened at past EVO events. Some have occurred multiple times. In order to ensure the integrity of future events, we are not allowing players to use controllers which pair themselves with Playstations.
Allowed Controllers
1) Fight Sticks. To our knowledge, all fightsticks made by Hori and MadCatz use a wired connection and do not pair themselves to the PlayStation. They are all allowed.
2) MadCatz Fightpads. MadCatz Fightpad use a bluetooth USB dongle to pair the pad to the dongle. Since they do not create a paring between the pad and the Playstation 3, they are allowed.
3) All PS2 Controllers used with a PS2/PS3 convertor. Dualshock 2 or other PS2 controllers used with a converter box to convert them to PS3 controllers are allowed. For players accustomed to using a PS3 controller, this is your best option.
Specifically Banned Controllers
1) The Sixaxis and Dualshock 3 controllers designed for use on the Playstation 3 are specifically banned. These controllers have been the source of all of our problems in the past. We realize you can make these controllers "tournament friendly" by opening them and removing the batter, but we have no good way to enforce that rule at the scale EVO must operate on to finish on-time.
Reader Comments (44)
Oh, and I also use all the input shortcuts a game has to offer, just the piss glorious stick player master race off.
even as a pad user, i support sticks only since u r fukked in the arcades if u only know how to play on pad (a hard lesson learned)
fuck that, that hitbox stick is the future...cant wait to see someone beast with that at Evo
Just the registration for EVO costs $70. Plus traveling and staying in Vegas costs a good grip. You mean to tell me that someone can't spend $40 on a PS2 pad and a converter?
Banning PS3 wireless pads for a tournament with the amount of people who would be in attendance is a no-brainer and should have been done a year ago.
That "you are fucked in a arcade" argument is so fucking retarded today where arcades are extinct anywhere but asia and very small parts of the US.
Thanks for posting - funny how Laugh's convertors arrived on the same day I read this article.
I think 2 months is more than enough warning time. good decision by EVO to take care of this issue because it really pissed me off that KOR was let off like that last time around.
what's up with all the hate against KOR?
People mad because he pwned TOP KOREANS for free?
players that do no agreed with button mapping are not able to scape throwns .
who cares about beating koreans. its more about wireless pads being banned at evo last year but them being nice and allowing shitheads who dont read the rules use them and then cause failures of epic proportions to other TOP players. then evo announces that kor has been DQed because of his incompetence, but kor cries his way to the top and they decide to dismiss the DQ and let him back in just so he can go on crazy temper tantrums the rest of the tourney. it was fucking sickening to watch all of this go down from the beginning.
Woah now, what exactly KOR did to get DQ'd?
@loldongs
iirc he didn't unsync his controller and pressed the PS button while two people were having a match.
Fuck Kor, everyone is forgetting the Ryan Hart vs Gandido match!! If I were Gandido I'd still be dirty about what could have been..
@david
iirc evo was going to dq Gandido because he was the only one with a home button, but Ryan did the craziest thing ever and let it pass and replayed the entire match over and won. He coulda won by DQ but won by beating him instead. gandildo lost both ways.
crybabys like you jakeTHEsnake?
thank god. i swear it seems everyone that brings a pad to a tournament is also a retard. theres always some idiot who doesnt un sync his controller and fucks up other peoples match, they deserve it.
why not set up a dedicated PS3 for use as a de-sync station so people could de-sync PS3 pads there post-match?
all the poeplesaying shit about sony like xbox is better it would be the exact same case on xbox guys cmon its a valid reason but xbox would not be free of this problem at all. shiiiiiit if evo used xbox half the matches would end due to red ring. o.o
Glad they recognized the PS3 Madcatz Pad doesn't cause issues :)
I swear that SSF4 runs slower on PS3 though, snd so does MK.
F*** yo system, f*** yo stick, f*** yo couch!
When I was playing at the Relief for Japan tournament in socal, some random noob's wireless 360 controller disconnected 3 times because of low batteries. He could have been DQ'd but I let him keep playing.
Don't know why anyone in their right mind would use one of these at a tournament
@Kris Alioune is recognized as the best SF player in Europe and he plays on a pad. Derpderderp