Crossfire.nu has today left the Heaven Media group and will now operate as an independent entity.

Despite the best efforts of both parties, we have come to the realisation that we are unable to assist Crossfire in reaching its full potential, and as such we cannot in good conscience continue along the road we are on. The right, and sensible, action for Heaven Media to take is to hand back ownership of Crossfire, to give the community what they need.

Mark Reed, Chairman of Heaven Media, said: "Whilst we have made efforts to engage and grow Crossfire it hasn't resulted in the success we had hoped for. Having reached a fork in the road as to where next to go, we decided in the interests of the Crossfire community to release the site from the Heaven Media group."

Stuart Saw stated: "The Heaven Media opportunity was one that was too good to turn down. Unfortunately, the operational realities of the deal proved that eventually both parties were losing out from the relationship. We've taken the decision to part ways out of a joint feeling of responsibility to Crossfire and the gamers within it. I'd like to thank Heaven Media for their selfless behaviour in this move and look forward to maintaining a good relationship with them going forward."

Crossfire and Heaven Media will continue an on-going strategic relationship. Crossfire will be looking for ways to best support the ET community going forward whilst Heaven Media will continue to support their gaming community that includes Cadred.org, Tek-9.net and EsportsHeaven.net.

After an enthralling first week which saw Swedish 1.6 legend Emil 'HeatoN' Christensen take the glory and the gold we can now reveal the participants for week 2 of the Rush Poker Challenge.

For anyone who hasn't been following the goings on or isn't familiar with the Rush Poker concept the premise is simple, it's poker on steroids. Instead of the long, drawn-out hands and excruciating waits once players fold a hand they will be thrown straight back into it on another table, meaning there's no waiting around for the hand to end. It's a revolutionary poker format available only on Full Tilt Poker and each week 4 e-sports luminaries will be trying their hand at the game, with the aim of qualifying for the grant final of the Rush Poker Challenge.

This week see's some interesting characters step up to the plate, including Enemy Territory superstar Mikko 'Vanhaomena' Taskinen, a jack of all TF2 related trades and current ButtonBashers captain Marco 'mvp.' Wichmann, Team Dignitas owner and former king of BF1942 Michael 'ODEE' O'Dell and the man behind our sister site Tek9 Steven 'dfb' Leunens.

So, will mvp. be bashing more than buttons? Can Vanhaomena port his aggressive playstyle to the poker world? Will ODEE be heading to Dignitas and can Steven Tek more than 9 hands?

The only way to find out is to head over to the Rush Poker Challenge website.

Heaven Media, in association with Full Tilt Poker, are excited to announce the Rush Poker Challenge.

Two days ago we announced four tournaments on Esports Heaven, with a total of €6,000 in cash prizes for Counter-Strike: Source, Call of Duty 4, Team Fortress 2 and Quake Live. I am talking, of course, about the Full Tilt Poker Challenge.

This is our biggest set of tournaments ever to take place on Esports Heaven since we launched the site in July 2009, and two of the tournaments are also the two biggest cash tournaments in their own right. Feedback from all Heaven Media websites has been amazing, and from external gaming sites all over Europe, but a number of comments here on Crossfire did make us think long and hard...

Heaven Media are looking for a talented Ruby on Rails developer to work on new and existing projects.

While this will not be a full-time job with Heaven Media, any suitible applicants will be considered for the chance to do paid project work within the company on an as-needed basis.

Heaven Media is one of the world’s fastest growing media companies in the Enthusiast Gaming segment, with nine highly-popular websites, and this is a great opportunity to get involved, earn some money, and possibly even build the foundations for a more permanent paid role within the company.

If you have the relevant experience with Ruby on Rails (and other web technologies), and feel you could be the perfect fit for us, please get in touch right away.

Just send an email introducing yourself and your work to Corin Cole ([email protected])

Heaven Media is asking you to donate to the Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

A major earthquake struck Haiti on 12 January just ten miles from the capital city of Port-au-Prince.

As many as 200,000 people are believed to be dead, and it is still too early to know the full human cost of this tragedy.

We have set up a page for donations to Oxfam's efforts through JustGiving.com, a UK-based organisation which facilitates donations to a number of charities, and with a target of £500 set, secretly we'll be disappointed if we can't hit four-digits.

We believe that the decision to help should be an easy one, but in case you needed a little extra persuasion, here it is: Adam Godfrey, our very own Business Developement Manager at Heaven Media and of course the Reason Gaming manager/owner, has agreed that if we hit the £500, he will allow himself to be tied up at Multiplay's i39 event, for the community to chuck wet sponges at him!

Oh, and as an added incentive, if we can double our target, and hit £1,000... he'll do it wearing only his underwear. Who said that helping your fellow human beings couldn't have a second (albeit very minor) purpose?

Keep an eye out later in the week for another announcement to help spur on donations - we think we've got a real cracker in store for you.

No matter how much or how little you feel you can afford, do your part now, even the smallest of donations will help.

Donate now at http://www.justgiving.com/esports-for-haiti

If you like, why not reply in the comments below telling us that you donated and if you are feeling brave and want to shame the others, let us know what you donated ;)

As some of you will have noticed, Crossfire experienced some downtime from late last night until and through the morning, preventing anyone from accessing the site.

A small amount of downtime around 1am CET was expected, while a number of our servers were moved between two data centres in the Netherlands, however during the move some technical issues occured, causing a far longer downtime than we had expected.

Our technical team worked all night and all morning to bring the servers back online and we can confirm that no data has been lost as a result of these technical issues.

We'd like to apologise for this unforseen period of downtime to all Crossfire users, but assure you that the task has now been fully completed and normal service will be resumed.

Here at Heaven Media we are big fans of twitter. Really big fans. And, having already launched accounts for Cadred (@Cadred_org) and TEK9 (@Tek9_org) we thought it was about time to get Crossfire tweeting out loud!

I'm sure some of you are already keen twitter fanatics, while others may not even heard of this "twitter" thing (oh who am I kidding, it's 2009 - everybody has heard of it!) But regardless of your past experience, we think it's a great way to communicate with friends, and also to keep up with the goings on at Crossfire, so to help pursuade some of you non-believers, we dug deep into the realms of imagination... and the lovely guys over at Activision have given us some prizes to give out!

We do indeed have five beautiful brand-new copies of Wolfenstein to be won, courtesy of Activision, and to win one all you have to do is follow @Crossfire_nu on twitter, and answer one simple question:

In what year was Activision founded?

To answer, and enter the competition, just follow the three simple steps:

1.) Sign-up to Twitter if you don't already have an account - sign-up here

2.) Follow Crossfire_nu on Twitter - http://twitter.com/Crossfire_nu

3.) Tweet the following message: Activision was founded in XXXX, and I want to win a copy of Wolfenstein from @Crossfire_nu! - just replace XXXX with the correct year!

So if you want to win a copy of Wolfenstein, enter now and we wish you the best of luck - but we're sure you'll enjoy being a Crossfire follower on twitter even if you don't win!

A little over a month ago we announced the "Crossfire Community Champions Competition", with some tasty prizes on offer to help boost user-generated content after the downtime we saw caused by the hardware failure - afterall, isn't it the user content that makes Crossfire what it is?

Thank-you to absolutely everyone who has contributed since then, and congratulations to the winners:

These five users won themselves a Razer Lachesis Phantom White mouse!

beggin
killerboy
Krosan
Chosen
essAkz

The following three won themselves a game server for 1 month from YCN-Hosting!

Homer
eiM
Seanza

Can winners please claim their prizes be sending me a private message on this site, including your email address so you can be contacted.

While we originally planned the Community Champions Competition to be an, albeit highly alliterated, one off, because of the great response we've seen we've decided we'll now be giving away a tasty prize each month, just as a little extra incentive for people wanting to contribute to the site's news, write articles, or anything else.

For the next month, therefore, the prize on offer is a brand new set of Razer Moray gaming earphones (RRP €54.99)

As with last month, everybody has the chance to enter, all you have to do is provide the community with useful up-to-date news, articles and columns for the crossfire community.

Thank-you once again to everyone who does contribute, and good luck to everyone hoping to win in the future!

Predict the score in the ESH Alienware Invasion tournaments and get fully kitted out by Alienware and Team Dignitas!

The Esports Heaven Alienware Invasion has arrived, supporting both Call of Duty 4 and Counter Strike: Source. With Alienware providing cash prizes for the winners, both cups are all but full. However, now you have the chance to compete in this tournament even if you aren't playing.

From the playoff stages onwards, you will be able to predict every single game in this prestigious Alienware tournament, for both CoD4 and CS:S. At the end of the tournament the winner will walk away with a fantastic prize courtesy of both Alienware and leading UK organisation, Team Dignitas.

• Alienware M15x Gaming Laptop as used by Team Dignitas
  
• Team Dignitas T-Shirt with their Name printed on it
  
• Team Dignitas coat
  
• Team Dignitas hat
  
• Razer gaming accessories as used by Team Dignitas[/b]

This competition is open to Europeans, it however requires them to fly to London for a day to both collect the prize and do the neccessary PR work.