If you guys want a reason why this is a good idea, consider this:
Blizzard essentially completely abandoned WC3 once it stopped being in their best interest to maintain it and whatnot. As a community, we want Blizzard to continue to have as much of a vested interest in SC2 as possible. $5000 is still a lot of money. Numerous tournaments is great as well. Sure, its not ideal. But Blizzard continuing to make money off of SC2 tournaments is a really good thing. It gives them reason to encourage tournaments and to facilitate tournaments.
I realize that those of you who haven't come from WC3 don't know the pain as well as some of us do. But please believe me that we should be happy Blizzard has found a way to profit off of tournaments and that in the long run, its good for us.
On July 25 2011 03:39 Mohdoo wrote: If you guys want a reason why this is a good idea, consider this:
Blizzard essentially completely abandoned WC3 once it stopped being in their best interest to maintain it and whatnot. As a community, we want Blizzard to continue to have as much of a vested interest in SC2 as possible. $5000 is still a lot of money. Numerous tournaments is great as well. Sure, its not ideal. But Blizzard continuing to make money off of SC2 tournaments is a really good thing. It gives them reason to encourage tournaments and to facilitate tournaments.
I realize that those of you who haven't come from WC3 don't know the pain as well as some of us do. But please believe me that we should be happy Blizzard has found a way to profit off of tournaments and that in the long run, its good for us.
Blizzard essentially completely abandoned BW in 2001 and it's doing fine.
If Blizzard wants to take a share of the ad-revenue they should at least make the changes less steep. introducing more ranges.
Although personal I think Blizzard should take the share out of prize money to be able to put a 'tax-like' progression. For example it could go like this:
This schemes allows a more flexible progression raising prize pools. For example a 6000 prize pool would mean: 1000*0.5 = $50 so its Effective Tax Rate is : 50/6000 = 0.833%
for $9000 prize pool the blizzard tax would be $200 (ETR : 2.22%) and so forth.
On July 25 2011 01:02 Ravencruiser wrote: Blizzard is a for-profit company.
It makes a product, and if you use the product you must agree to a set of conditions outlined by Blizzard.
I see no problems here.
The problem I see is that it's a continuation of the policies that have accounted for roughly zero growth in the video game industry since 2006, since the industry took on a casual gaming boom and it then jumped off and left for mobile phones. This is another example of "profit first, growth second". Growth has to come first. Blizzard should be using StarCraft II to legitimize the notion in the West that you can make good money by becoming a video game player, and then using their talents as continued and sustained advertising for your products. These are the same kinds of licensing fees that effectively ruined any chance at World of Warcraft becoming a professional endeavor (even if it wasn't designed to be one in the first place). Growth has to come first at some point ever, or we're going to be here five years from now talking about how all of the gigantic publishers collapsed.
Not sure if its mentioned already, but there might be another perspective about this except for the obvious profit of blizzard. Having this cap makes it so that only serious organizers can arrange big tournaments and I suppose it's safer for players to attend the events that has been given an OK by blizzard, essentially meaning that the tournament organizers actually have the funds to pay out the prizes etc.
In the past there has been several tournaments where players have not been paid etc..
On July 25 2011 01:07 Nerdslayer wrote: You dont see a problem? yea it makes a product to make money but they also control everything els related to the product. To make an analogy what if companies that make footballs decide to charge the premier league half of there add revenue for the use of there footballs! Its absurd really.
Companies that make footballs no longer own the footballs after they are sold. Blizzard owns Starcraft 2, even after licenses to play it are sold.
its capitalisme in its finest form and it stinks and the reason why it stinks becuase it takes away money from the players and that is wrong..
Complaints about capitalism are getting silly around here. The fact that Starcraft 2 was not developed in a Socialist / Communist or any system other than Capitalism should tell you something. Capitalism is why we have Starcraft 2 in the first place. Remove the incentive (profit motive) and things just simply don't get done.
You are funny. I wonder how people ever got anything done before there was capitalism... you know, for the first 50.000 years of our existence .
I also think this is a humorous stance to take. Civilizations emerged as a result of trade systems, but capitalism is NOT synonymous with trade and there were many inventions prior to the establishment of modern capitalism (agriculture, the wheel/other tools, artistry, architecture, etc). Mercantilism is not necessarily capitalism, nor is seeking "profit" an idea unique to capitalism.
If you want to look at the things that come as a result of seeking more profit and more domination over a market (not necessarily capitalism but I think that's what people are referring to here), than this is an example of it, along with limiting cross-server play, disabling LAN, making people buy new licenses to change your name more than once, balancing the game and creating maps for lower leagued players, and almost everything everyone here is always complaining about.
There is more to making a great game than just increasing the profit motive, and I don't think people understand that. Of course it's difficult to find examples of this because the current economic system makes it inherently arduous to pursue such a path, so a half assed example of a game that looks decent and that isn't being produced by a huge gaming corporation (and is supposed to be sold at a less than standard price at release) is Hawken.
On July 25 2011 03:39 Mohdoo wrote: If you guys want a reason why this is a good idea, consider this:
Blizzard essentially completely abandoned WC3 once it stopped being in their best interest to maintain it and whatnot. As a community, we want Blizzard to continue to have as much of a vested interest in SC2 as possible. $5000 is still a lot of money. Numerous tournaments is great as well. Sure, its not ideal. But Blizzard continuing to make money off of SC2 tournaments is a really good thing. It gives them reason to encourage tournaments and to facilitate tournaments.
I realize that those of you who haven't come from WC3 don't know the pain as well as some of us do. But please believe me that we should be happy Blizzard has found a way to profit off of tournaments and that in the long run, its good for us.
The amount Blizzard will make from creaming off tournament money will be fractional compared to actually selling the game in the first place. How many tournaments do you see that have over $5000 in prizes? It's so low infact, that it makes you wonder why they're doing it in the first place. All it does is HURT ESPORTS
On July 25 2011 03:39 Mohdoo wrote: If you guys want a reason why this is a good idea, consider this:
Blizzard essentially completely abandoned WC3 once it stopped being in their best interest to maintain it and whatnot. As a community, we want Blizzard to continue to have as much of a vested interest in SC2 as possible. $5000 is still a lot of money. Numerous tournaments is great as well. Sure, its not ideal. But Blizzard continuing to make money off of SC2 tournaments is a really good thing. It gives them reason to encourage tournaments and to facilitate tournaments.
I realize that those of you who haven't come from WC3 don't know the pain as well as some of us do. But please believe me that we should be happy Blizzard has found a way to profit off of tournaments and that in the long run, its good for us.
Blizzard essentially completely abandoned BW in 2001 and it's doing fine.
Blizzard also took a very off-hand approach to Brood War. Third parties took initiative and molded what would become the standards for competitive Brood War play because Blizzard hadn't coded the game in a means where they have to call the shots. The Warcraft III competitive scene's biggest issue was creating a regularly-rotating map pool. While some of that had to do with the increased complexity of Warcraft III maps (and the difficulty of creating good ones), it was primarily due to the fact that Blizzard has not changed their map pool in seven years. Those maps have become the de-facto competitive maps as a result. So even when a decent map like Amazonia comes out, nobody is going to play it because "it's not on the ladder pool". You now have that same problem in StarCraft II, the players are having trouble getting the maps they want into the ladder pool.
On July 25 2011 01:02 Ravencruiser wrote: Blizzard is a for-profit company.
It makes a product, and if you use the product you must agree to a set of conditions outlined by Blizzard.
I see no problems here.
The community is kind of investing in the growth of the sport, which will eventually help Blizzard.
How will it help Blizzard, if they don't make any money from it?
I do think it should be tiered and not have such a hard line, but that's not really a moral thing.
Here's a twist: Five years from now, this will basically be Blizzard's only source of revenue from SC2, as I suppose they planned.
On July 25 2011 03:39 arterian wrote: 50% holy shit no wonder Blizzard is trying to promote e-sports, it fucking lines their pockets.
Yes? Of course it does. That's why they made SC2 in the first place.
The bright side: The longer the game is out and the more the casuals evaporate, the more important e-sports is to Blizz, and they'll start being more e-sports friendly.
You can legally divide the tournaments in less important smaller tournaments using the same games as result of those tournaments, to divide the amount of money and never reach those 5k.
On July 25 2011 01:02 Ravencruiser wrote: Blizzard is a for-profit company.
It makes a product, and if you use the product you must agree to a set of conditions outlined by Blizzard.
I see no problems here.
The community is kind of investing in the growth of the sport, which will eventually help Blizzard.
How will it help Blizzard, if they don't make any money from it?
I never said, that they should take no money, but I think to start with 50 % just prevents bigger prize pools for tournament, which are brought up by the comunity(if those are supposed to be >5k$).
A 50% cut is a massive barrier to entry for new tournaments, no doubt. Blizzard should consider revising their take to be more gradual as the prize pool increases, but it should never go as high as 50%. That's just unreasonable. This basically forces tourneys to stay small (<$5k) until expanding and eating the 50% cut is profitable for them, which is not an easy jump. This also puts tournaments in the awkward position of having to charge larger entry fees to players to make up for the lost revenue.
It's 50% of ad revenues above $5000. It's NOT THE PRIZE POOL of the tournament, it's ad revenues. If you have a tournament with 10k in prizes, but the stream is free and you aren't getting paid by advertisers, then there's no 50% cut.
Large tournaments aren't funded by ad revenue; they're funded by sponsors.
On July 25 2011 03:09 Pinski wrote: I think a lot of people are somewhat misunderstanding this issue.
It's not that if you have a $10k prize pool, blizzard gets $2.5k off the top, it's that if you have a $10k prize pool, and you make say $2k off ad revenue, blizzard gets $1k of that money.
They need to setup a sliding scale based on prize pool. Because let's face it, just because a tournament goes above $5k in prize pool doesn't mean that it's ad revenue miraculously increases two-fold to make the tourney holder that much more money.
Either way, I'm sure bigger companies have a crack team of accountants that deal with all the paying of blizzard for their 50% ad revenue.
No, blizzard gets $0 because your ad revenue is still under $5k.
Having a lackluster BNet 2.0 is also "unacceptable", but you don't see Blizzard doing anything about it. Chat channels, of all things, came extremely late. And they aren't even good.
It'd be nice to see a handful of big changes, but I don't see it happening before Heart of the Swarm. They want moar monies ;d
This isn't entirely accurate, and as far as i'm aware most tournament organizers are under NDA once they go over 5K so you won't get a proper explanation....its not as money grubbing as the OP makes it out to be. Closing, unless TB actually isn't under NDA (you can PM me).
EPT
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