Some people may have already found the news elsewhere that ESWC is to be closed down.
From their parent page, www.games-services.com:

Paris, April 5, 2009
Games-Services SA ceases all activities. Its liquidation has been pronounced by the Commercial Court of Paris March 30, 2009. In consequence, all the employees and managers have been relieved from their duties and laid off April 2nd, by the adjudication. The process of liquidation, which is starting this week, will notably organize the potential trade-in or resale of the company’s assets including the Electronic Sports World Cup and Overgame.

As most of you know, TrackMania Nations has been a regular fixture in recent ESWC events and so, while we appreciate that, for the people directly involved, there are more important issues than TrackMania, we thought we should talk a little to Nadeo about what this can mean for TM and in fact for them, and for the future.

We managed to gain a few moments with Florent Castelnerac, Director of Nadeo:

TMX Blog: How does this news about ESWC's problems affect Nadeo, if at all?

Florent: It affects Nadeo emotionally. We like the team behind ESWC and even had a great lunch at the company with all of them once upon a time. It is a long story that ends with this news. It is sad. Otherwise, it does not affect Nadeo. It reduces the potential to share ideas, vision and projects for the future, but we are totally independent from the ESWC. It also affects me if some players can not get their money or enjoy this years final.

TMX Blog: Trackmania Nations Forever is built on being a part of world tournaments, are there other competitions or organisations that Nadeo is looking at for TrackMania (and maybe future 'Mania games) to be a part of?

Florent: Yes and no. We would be glad for other world tournaments to grab TM as a key game. It could help to multiply the stories among the community, and we like community stories. Otherwise, we think that future of TrackMania competitions will be what they will be. If esports want to be strong, it needs more games like TM. Sincerely, I think TM is the best game designed for a wide audience esport discipline, but it does not mean it is still enough. The fall of big events or powerhouse bring the fall of an established world of esports, where violence issues, difficulty to watch matches and rights issues are real limits. We hope that TM is one game for a new generation of esport games. Other Mania games may or may not enter in this category one day.

TMX Blog: We are living in tough ecomomic times, its the first recession for a generation of young people and young companies. How is this for Nadeo? Do you see problems or opportunities, or is it 'business as usual'?

Florent: The fall of the economy is first the fall of a fake economy. I think TrackMania and VirtualSkipper players are real and really want to play it. It makes us stronger than others to go through these difficult times. If our partner were in difficulty, it could makes us some, but Nadeo has a good reputation, the team is quite small and we would probably find a way to finance future projects if we would be in bad shape. At the moment, the company can only congratulate itself for staying solid on a solid platform such as PC online games. The drop of the shelves are largely compensated by the increase of digital distribution.

We would like to wish those personally affected by the situation our sincere regards. We also wish to thank Nadeo for letting us take even more of their valuable time in answering a few questions about a difficult subject. Hopefully many of you will have found this of genuine interest.

It's funny, many people disregard coppers as pointless and worthless, certainly when we all loaded TMU for the first time and found coppers were paid to us each day just for loading the game, and that we get more of them if we link our TMU account to our old TM games, we were all pretty confused about what the purpose was.

Then, we find 'offical mode' and we say OK, so having a limited number of coppers means we only have a limited number of tries at an offical time. That works I guess, as it adds some tension and structure to trying to set offline records.

Next, we discover manialinks and find that we can download some TM items without ever leaving the game. Special things like cars, or mods, or signiture tracks of the game like 'The Trump Card II' with all the custom graphics installed for you. Cool, another use for coppers.

Later, the TMX manialink is created, which, even at the time we made it, I'm sure even MrD was wondering who was really going to use when all the tracks are already free to download on TMX. Yet, a while back MrD was able to send Fleppie about 100,000 coppers to create a TMX organisation, from which we will be able to give people tags, and most likely these will be paid for from the same source of TMX owned coppers.

So maybe Nadeo were not crazy and this bizarre in game currency actually works? To be convinced of that, we need to know if people are feeling the value of coppers themselves, or at least attaching value to them, making choices about their actions based on copper numerics. Lately, we are seeing evidence that they are.

When ManiaTeam arrived, it came with a daily charge, 40 coppers for 24 hours and this in places was met with reaction of 'omg 40 coppers' or '40 coppers wtf' – and these reactions are for a reason. The reason is that the 'cost' of playing is to effect peoples behaviour. Having paid 40 coppers, naturally you want to get some kind of return from that, so you are not likely to play maniateam for just 5 minutes. Smart move Nadeo, as maniateam requires people to find each other online, so there needs to be people sticking around getting value from their coppers. And that coppers can modify our behaviour is proof that they do infact have value.

Take a look at the 'Coppers Competitions' thread on TMX. Here authors put up their own coppers for others to win by racing their track. Again, coppers are effecting peoples behaviour. The builder is prepared to spend them on something important to him, and that is attracting people to play his track. The drivers are attracted by the coppers to spend time doing just that.

So if its acceptable to say that coppers must have some value, becuase they cause us to modify our behaviour, then the next question is, what is that value?

Well, until recently you could buy a game such as a copy of TMU in exchange for 30,000 coppers. The link on TMNF Exchange to upgrade to TMU asks for 20 British pounds, which is between 21 and 22 Euro at current rates. On that basis 15 coppers is equal to about 1p (in English money) and playing on ManiaTeam for up to 24 hours is costing about 2.5p, or very close to 0.03 Euro. Carry that into other areas and at an average supermarket a typical loaf of bread would cost about 1800 coppers. Meanwhile, a pint of beer could set you back 4500 coppers at your local public house!

All that is taking one strand of logic just a little too far of course, but none the less, coppers do have value and there are now rich people, and poor people even within TrackMania as a result of that.

Disclaimer: TMX Blog does not advise, condone, or encourage anyone to try and buy beer with coppers!