So if Steam was to blame, why did they pull the plug on all of the other events? CoD, UT, etc?

Doom 3 is looking better and better all the time...

That problem appears to now be under control, but there is one that is out of the hands of the extremely hardworking Cyber X crew, and that is a problem with Counterstrike and Valve. There is a long series of e-mails between Valve and the Cyber X crew, in which Valve said they would be on site to offer support, and a few other things. Valve didn't show, and what little support it offered came way way too late to make a difference. A hint to companies, when 1200+ of your most rabid fans are in a room together playing the game that made you, and is much of your ongoing income, don't blow off the people who set the event up.

To make matters worse, it put out a 3MB patch in the middle of the gaming session. 1200 people at 3MB per head is 3.6GB, or enough to tie up every line the games had for the better part of 24 hours. Things crawled to a halt very very quickly. Add in that the only way to get the patch was over the fragile Steam network, and you have a recipe for disaster. Could it get worse? Oh yes, top this mess off with a liberal helping of Valve losing a router under the load, and the happy dance was nowhere to be seen among the Cyber X crew.