EPTNA/EU tournaments are saying: "hey, send us like 1 or 2 really good Koreans, and a few more mediocre Koreans, so we can still get viewership, and foreigners can still have a decent shot at winning tournaments if the 1,2 Koreans ever get upsetted by cheese, or has a bad day, or something"
While Korean tournaments are: "Errrr... I think we can still keep our league to still be way more premier than the other tournaments. I mean, we'll lose SOME prestige, but if we don't agree to this blizzard gonna get mad at us, so we have to sorta agree to this"
Blizzard's just sitting in the back: "Niceeee this will work out nicely, since foreigners can win, we retain viewership past the RO8, which will probably mean more money from US/EU scene, good good everything according to plan"
and now the meeting behind closed door is over, they've made the decisions and they announce it
Korean players are basically like: "zomg wtf is this junk, why we get blind sided by this?"
If at that meeting if there was ANYONE actually truly speaking for the interest of the Korean players, this model would've been criticized quite a bit to say the least. A ton of players such as Polt, MC, Taeja, Hero, Seed, and other players all tweeting w/ something along the lines of "Koreans are gonna/I might have to move to NA/EU if they/i can". I mean think about it, those are pretty big name players, and even they are considering moving to NA/EU.
It honestly brings tears to my eyes to see that all these players that we love, and respect gets screwed out of nowhere, and honestly, most people aren't even thinking about that. All they think about is "what do I get out of this announcement?" Overall in Korea, where SC2 is already having difficulties, in THAT scene we're going to have SC2 get even less tournaments. Players are gonna get less exposure, and it's only going to make it worse for the lower level teams to survive (imagine a team without top 10 KR level player, I mean it's pretty easy to imagine that since there are... more than 10 teams if you combine ESF/KeSPA. Now, that team used to get earning from making it to ROx on both GSL, and OSL + foreign tournaments, but now, they most likely get even less prize money with basically less half the number of total tournaments). When teams fall, we feel sad for an hours, a day, a week, but then when something like this happens where it actually threatens the not-so-well-sponsored teams, the community isn't outraged, because the community is getting something (better story line or w/e) out of this deal, and we're too happy/concentrated with the marshmallow we get to eat, we don't see the starving teams.
I know that there is no perfect system. The system before this blizzard announcement was not sustainable. Koreans going to NA/EU tournaments and taking the prize money, while viewership noticeably dropping once the last foreigner was knocked out. Yeah, I get that someone had to do something, and someone was going to get screwed. But honestly, we're going with the plan that's going to hurt the top players? the ones that you know, put in the time, and effort, and energy to strive to be the best? the ones who put on the show for us? the ones that make people love the game as much as you do? And not only that, we're going to do this to the ones who dedicated their entire youth, 12+ hours a day in to the practice? I don't know if this is right. They do the most work, they're the workers in the scene, and we're the ones who sit on our asses pay $100 in a year, and enjoy the fruits of their countless hours of work. I believe we're hurting the wrong people here. It's pretty well known that Koreans players get paid next to nothing unless you're at the top. Sure, this model will give A LOT more money to the top players. But what about the next Jaedong in the making? Remember that Jaedong failed his challenger tournament multiple times before making it in BW. How's he and his team going to survive, when no one on his team can make it in to top 5 of OSL/GSL? And they surely this team can't pay for their entire team to move to NA, and give up competing in Pro-league. What are they left to do?
Today was a sad day for me. It was a day where I saw the big company, blizzard, screwed over the voiceless players, for the US/EU tournaments, and for the viewers.
