[I dont want this to become a thread with a discussion about what TB should or should not do. His case is just an example for how it works, so plz stay on Topic] EDIT: I dont mean that Blizzard should get no money, but rather than starting with 50 % fees on revenues, they should start with a lower percentage from my point of view.
Hi all, it seems like Blizzard gets 50% of the ad revenue of events if the advertisement income is higher than 5000 $. As I found out after opening a original thread with a question about it...
Update: On July 24 2011 23:25 TotalBiscuit wrote: This is what I know. Yes, you can go over $5k with special dispensation from Blizzard. However, it is policy for them to then require 50% of your ad revenue. I know of several large tournaments that have had to do this. If SHOUTcraft Invitational were to do this, it would mean less money getting into the hands of players, which is completely against what the tournament is all about. It makes no sense for SCI to do this, rather than just run more than one event.
Obviously is SCII the property of Blizzard and Blizzard is providing Battlenet as a Platform for us and have thereby expense they have to pay, but is taking 50 % of the revenue above 5k a fair deal? Just from an perspective like this case were the audience is donating money to the prize pool. My opinion is that Blizzard should a special license for these cases and allowing a Bigger Prize Pool, if the cash is provided by the community.
What do you guys think? (Discuss ;-) !!!)
[I edited it shortly before it got closed, so there are some line double, but this is the OP: Hi everybody,
Yesterday during the TotalBiscuit Invitational: TB told the amount of money people donated for the next tournament. It was more than 5k $ and he told the audience that the prize pool cap by blizzard is 5K $.
What I would like to know is how do tournaments get the right to have a higher prize pool and the conditions around that. I hope someone around here knows it ;-)
On July 25 2011 01:27 Nerdslayer wrote: Dude there is a difference between selling a product for profit and trying to control the product when it allrdy has been sold.
I dont even understand how this can be legal what blizzard is doing
Well if you read the ToS (and it was the same for WoW, I used to read them when servers were down :p ) you would learn that you never owned anything you bought.
Poll: Is the current state of the current free prize pool acceptable?
No, the free prize pool cap should be higher and the percentage payments should be lower. (305)
88%
Yes. (23)
7%
I dont care. (14)
4%
No, but I dont know what would be better. (5)
1%
347 total votes
Your vote: Is the current state of the current free prize pool acceptable?
(Vote): Yes. (Vote): No, the free prize pool cap should be higher and the percentage payments should be lower. (Vote): No, but I dont know what would be better. (Vote): I dont care.
May be the expression free prize pool is not so good, but in reallity a prize pool is most of the times made possible by ad revenue...
Yea I heard about this also yesteday. Its typical activision/blizzard really that 5k cap is actually hurting esports sicne it means less money for the players.
Blizzard should be ashamed really but I doubt they care
50% sounds like a lot. But I guess they can justify it since players or casters wouldn't be able to make that ad revenue without their game. It doesn't really encourage people to do these nice things for e-sports though.
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.
Sure, but you have to see it from an other perspective. Here a bunch of people donates money for a price pool and those people dont really get advertisement of it. The community is kind of investing in the growth of the sport, which will eventually help Blizzard.
My opinion is if a bunch of people donate money for an event with a big Prize pool that it should not fall under advertisement from my point of view....
On July 25 2011 01:03 Gnax wrote: 50% sounds like a lot. But I guess they can justify it since players or casters wouldn't be able to make that ad revenue without their game. It doesn't really encourage people to do these nice things for e-sports though.
It's in their hands. We can only hope Blizzard raises the cap sooner rather than later. Just keep plugging away.
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.
Sure, but you have to see it from an other perspective. Here a bunch of people donates money for a price pool and those people dont really get advertisement of it. The community is kind of investing in the growth of the sport, which will eventually help Blizzard.
My opinion is if a bunch of people donate money for an event with a big Prize pool that it should not fall under advertisement from my point of view....
I feel like this constricts esports. Blizzard is limiting the amount of money that is put into the hands of the players, when instead they should be increasing the amount of money put into the hands of the players to motivate more people to play and increase SC2 and E-sports in general.
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.
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.
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..
I think they are hurting themselves with this strategy. The profits are not that big to make some real earnings for Blizzard (i.e. for medium sized tournaments, very big tournaments would be the opposite). A company that big should ignore these "peanuts" and focus on the question how to make SC II and E-Sports even bigger. So maybe a higher "cut-off" amount would be good for these small/medium tournaments - about 10k-20k? And not 50% lol.
This seems ridiculous to me; it basically means we can never see a $10k event, since half of that $10k would go to Blizzard, and it just makes more sense from everyone's point of view to run the event for $5k in the first place. I think it is a really poor business and PR strategy for Blizzard to make the cut that high.
This is hurting eSports. Probably the first time I've used that phrase seriously in my life. Can't say it surprises me, but I definitely don't like it.
So the fans/players of SC2 donated $5000 to a tournament and now Blizz feels that they should earn 50% of the ad revenue of that tournament for whatever reason and make it harder for that tournament to grow? Dammit Blizz...
Wow 50% is just off the wall and it's for a fact going to hurt and discourage the establishment of new tournaments. I totally understand if Blizzard wants to make some money of big tournaments but something like 10-15% would be a lot more reasonable to me, the way it is now they will chock tournaments rather than give them an opportunity to grow. Greedy and bad for fans, players and tournament organizers.
I'd like to see a poll on the topic in the OP. Madchem, if you were to edit one in we could more easily see the opinions of the people of TL without having to wade through hundreds of pages (which this thread is sure to become).
IMO, demanding 50% of the ad revenue in the first place is ridiculous after everyone already bought the game - I would think that 10-20% would be far more reasonable, but I doubt blizzard cares at all for the suffering players when they know they'll continue playing in hopes of winning a major tournament.
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.
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..
Yeah and its capitalism that MADE starcraft 2 in the first place. You think a video game like this would EVER be created without a profit motive?
This is a shitty thing for bliz to do, and I dont liek it either, but ravencruiser is right. Battlenet is their property and they can do what they like with it. Now if we had LAN that would be another story, but we dont.
Kotick realised there was money he didn't yet have. He wants ALL the money.
Seriously though, it makes sense that Blizzard as a company is interested in this money and obviously most countries allow for this kind of thing (I doubt their standard terms are applicable everywhere though). However, it's ridiculous to expect 50% of the revenue. Is this only ad revenue or does it include sponsoring? Could you offer to pay out less money and instead have hardware prizes? Also, the rule if it stands just like that creates scenarios that are loss/loss. Say you run a tourney, instead of paying out 6k and giving up maybe 1k in ad revenue to Blizzard you pay out 5k. You make the same money, the players make less money, Blizzard makes NO money. How can anybody with who ever passed an economics class not realise that this kind of thing has to work progressively? Maybe it does not work as explained here and I'm completely off but Apparently the whole thing was thought up to profit off South Korea when Blizzard still expected SC2 to instantly become the new BW because outside of GSL and maybe MLG most tournaments, even with bigger prize pools, have a hard time staying economically feasible and destroying tournaments can't be Blizzard's idea of "nurturing free advertisment".
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.
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..
Yeah and its capitalism that MADE starcraft 2 in the first place. You think a video game like this would EVER be created without a profit motive?
This is a shitty thing for bliz to do, and I dont liek it either, but ravencruiser is right. Battlenet is their property and they can do what they like with it. Now if we had LAN that would be another story, but we dont.
Dude there is a difference between selling a product for profit and trying to control the product when it allrdy has been sold.
I dont even understand how this can be legal what blizzard is doing
I'm curious. If blizzard is asking for 50% of add revenue, will they still allow you host a tournament which is over the $5k limit if you don't have any ads at all? I.e. A privately sponsored tournament.
Its certainly acceptable. 50% is a guideline, blizzard makes specific arrangements with specific tournaments so its not an across the board requirement.
In addition, 50% is ad revenue only, things like tickets for events, stream sales, and individual relationship between sponsors and tournaments are obviously exempt.
Think of it this way-- do you want blizzard's only revenue stream from SC2 to be from game sales? If so, the life cycle of sc2 will be extremely short. This is good policy.
I'm pretty sure you need to get the facts straight, because this would be fairly easy to circumvent. I'm allso confused about if they want 50% of the ad ravenues or 50% of the total ravenues. So if someone could explain how this actaully works, that would be really helpfull.
[edit] If its true what the person above me wrote, then what does this whole thing have to do with donations.
On July 25 2011 01:27 Nerdslayer wrote: Dude there is a difference between selling a product for profit and trying to control the product when it allrdy has been sold.
I dont even understand how this can be legal what blizzard is doing
Well if you read the ToS (and it was the same for WoW, I used to read them when servers were down :p ) you would learn that you never owned anything you bought.
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.
I think blizz needs to look at how the money came about. If it was sponsored then sure, that makes sense. But if the prize pool comes from players entry fee's or private donations then it doesn't make sense to take a cut off the top.
On July 25 2011 01:30 QuAnTuM314 wrote: I'm curious. If blizzard is asking for 50% of add revenue, will they still allow you host a tournament which is over the $5k limit if you don't have any ads at all? I.e. A privately sponsored tournament.
Resistance if futile. They will simply change their ToS again.
On July 25 2011 01:34 caradoc wrote: Its certainly acceptable. 50% is a guideline, blizzard makes specific arrangements with specific tournaments so its not an across the board requirement.
In addition, 50% is ad revenue only, things like tickets for events, stream sales, and individual relationship between sponsors and tournaments are obviously exempt.
Think of it this way-- do you want blizzard's only revenue stream from SC2 to be from game sales? If so, the life cycle of sc2 will be extremely short. This is good policy.
May I ask what your sources are? Can you link to them or post credentials that you know what you're talking about (sorry - I dont recognize your name)?
I don't think Blizzard has fully grasped the fact that, literally, the only reason starcraft has survived this long is because of eSports. If they dry it up and kill it, they're only ruining themselves in the long run.
On July 25 2011 01:34 caradoc wrote: Its certainly acceptable. 50% is a guideline, blizzard makes specific arrangements with specific tournaments so its not an across the board requirement.
In addition, 50% is ad revenue only, things like tickets for events, stream sales, and individual relationship between sponsors and tournaments are obviously exempt.
Think of it this way-- do you want blizzard's only revenue stream from SC2 to be from game sales? If so, the life cycle of sc2 will be extremely short. This is good policy.
May I ask what your sources are? Can you link to them or post credentials that you know what you're talking about (sorry - I dont recognize your name)?
Stuff being "obvious" isnt really a good source.
I don't have a link or a source. I probably shouldn't have said obvious, but it seems to not really make logical/economic/management sense for Blizzard to be privy to the internal workings of all sponsorship arrangements.
Ad revenue is a metric that directly involves blizzard intellectual property (i.e. number of stream/live views), and so blizzard has a claim to a portion of revenue derived from people consuming Blizzard's IP. Ad revenue is directly based on number of views, which are presumably tuned in to consume blizzard IP.
But a separate relationship between a tournament organizer and a tournament sponsor is a different entity altogether, if I hold a tournament with an IBM station inside the tournament venue, even if starcraft2 is (one) focus of the tournament (The tournament could also deal with other games as well, i.e. IBM has no direct relationship with Blizzard) , blizzard cannot reasonably demand to know the specifics of the agreement I have with them, at least in my understanding of things.
It is analogous to blizzard demanding a 50% stake in pop and chip sales at a tournament.
On July 25 2011 01:27 Nerdslayer wrote: Dude there is a difference between selling a product for profit and trying to control the product when it allrdy has been sold.
I dont even understand how this can be legal what blizzard is doing
Well if you read the ToS (and it was the same for WoW, I used to read them when servers were down :p ) you would learn that you never owned anything you bought.
There's all kinds of crap in ToS, licensing agreements and whatnot, most of that stuff is only applicable under US law, some of it is just random bullshit they throw in to scare people and create the obstacle of legal fees in case you don't comply although you might actually win in court. You can put anything in that stuff, in Germany for example most agreements are ruled to be illegal because you don't accept them before buying the product (or in this case legally the license). Just showing me something before I install a game I already bought and probably can't exchange anymore because companies don't give you your money back once the box was opened would be profiting off a forced situation based on asynchronous information.
That being said, it would still be a bother in the countries that allow this dumb stuff.
Blizzard should use a tiered system like taxes, and maybe have some e-sports guys who look at special circumstances such as tournaments that aren't being run for a profit.
I don't mind Blizzard taking their part of the cake (even when this part really isn't a small one) but then they should add features supporting esport much faster (clan support, scoreboard, LAN !!!11) 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 .
On July 25 2011 02:14 Influ wrote: I don't mind Blizzard taking their part of the cake (even when this part really isn't a small one) but then they should add features supporting esport much faster (clan support, scoreboard, LAN !!!11) etc).
this is a good point-- The only way we would ever get LAN in sc2 is if Blizzard can derive a relatively dominant percentage of their sc2 revenue from tournaments/ad revenue/etc, and implenting LAN will have a positive effect on that revenue. Currently, implementing LAN has a potentially damaging effect on sc2 game sales, which is currently a large proportion of their sc2 revenue. Until that proportion changes, they will not take actions that will compromise their financial position.
On July 25 2011 01:11 Cel.erity wrote: This seems ridiculous to me; it basically means we can never see a $10k event, since half of that $10k would go to Blizzard, and it just makes more sense from everyone's point of view to run the event for $5k in the first place. I think it is a really poor business and PR strategy for Blizzard to make the cut that high.
Doesn't work like that. The percentage is taken from the money that is above 5k, if you run a 10k even then 2.5k goes to blizzard.(if the information in the OP is correct). Either way, we have seen plenty of tournaments with more than 5k for prize so I don't see it as an issue at the moment.
Blizzard will take it's cut, of course. I know this "big business" view may not be popular but it's 100% justifiable for them to have whatever policy they deem appropriate when it comes to tournaments. They spent (supposedly) $100 mil to develop and market SC2, not to mention the incurring costs of keeping battle.net up and the workforce to support it. People organizing tournaments spend $60 to buy the game, and in doing so agreed to Blizzard's terms in regards to everything related to SC2 - from streaming it, tempering with it, maintenance, and creating tournaments for it.
Since SC2 came out there have been an always increasing number of big (over $5000 prize pool) tournaments that have been flourishing, as well as thousands of small tournaments that have also been doing well and generating revenue for the streamers/organizers. There is no reason for them to change the policy if it's working and everyone is making money.
Blizzard is entitled to do this, but I find it foolish in the sense that a country can tax a company 50%, but that would stiffle the company's growth and thus how much can be taxed; I'll bet if the tax was lowered, the various tournaments in this case would grow tremendously and Blizzard would make lots more money because they have more to tax even with a lower tax rate.
Of course, the correlation between growth of tournaments' revenue and Blizzard taxing requires studies to pinpoint a good number that makes sense for Blizzard requires a study to be done, but my point is that 50% is way too arbitrary and more than likely too high to make much sense.
This shouldnt be suprising to anyone. Blizzard is growing esports by creating awesome games and of course they want a piece of that cake because they learned it the hard way with Broodwar and ICCUP and Kespa and whatnow. This is not killing esports this is effectively what keeps Blizzard into Esports and growing it.
Blizzard takes money from the tournaments, which in fact "hurts" e-sports.
To be true, they should see the tournaments as "free advertisment" for their game.
Right now, Blizzard acts not like they should, if they really care for E-Sports (which they obvisious don't ; its money that rulez, not E-Sports).
I'm not sold to how Blizzard acts, and i am not good with how it evolves.
*The second someone creates a way to bypass Battlenet and play the game without Blizzard (in the way) ; E-Sport might rise way more in SC2 ; otherwise theirs allways this problems connected with Blizzard.
**Big Events with giant cash out should be "awesome" events that push the game and make its E-Sport way more attractive ; if Blizzard "taxes" this kind of events, it just pushes tons of "small" events , nobody really cares for the super small ones.
Starcraft 2 is the property of Blizzard. The tournament isn't. I think it's outrageous they'd ask for money from tournaments when they've done none of the work involved in it beyond running off a copy of a game which every single player has already paid for.
Blizzard is entitled to impose whatever restrictions they want on tournaments. I feel like it's really a non-issue at the current time because, just as TB said, how easy is it to just run a second tournament?
However, I feel like Blizzard will take measures to stop this so they can get the ad dollars should it become a common practice.
EDIT: Above poster, of course that's the case. They didn't decide to make SC2 because they wanted to further the e-sports scene. They made it to cash in. Thinking otherwise is just nieve.
On July 25 2011 01:34 caradoc wrote: Its certainly acceptable. 50% is a guideline, blizzard makes specific arrangements with specific tournaments so its not an across the board requirement.
In addition, 50% is ad revenue only, things like tickets for events, stream sales, and individual relationship between sponsors and tournaments are obviously exempt.
Think of it this way-- do you want blizzard's only revenue stream from SC2 to be from game sales? If so, the life cycle of sc2 will be extremely short. This is good policy.
Quite true. Most tournament is mainly supported from sponsors not ads. Ads revenue is not a lot of money even considering very big event like DH, MLG. GSL maybe different, but the ads are in Korea and I doubt it will earn a lot from ads coz Gomtv is a online TV ... Besides, Blizzard should already work out a system with Gom.
Is it prize pool or first place prize? Seeing as MLG has 5k first place up until the grand finals, where is the official announcement from Blizzard concerning this matter?
You are aware that people organizing tournaments are also a business and are PROFITING from sponsors, advertisement, and ticket sales using Blizzard's intellectual property right?
Of course they expect some money in return. Not to mention big leagues such as MLG and GSL surely have agreements with Blizzard to pay less than 50%.
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.
i dont really care about the numbers, but i think blizzard should try to do whatever is most conducive to the growth of esports because that will end up working out best foar everyone.
On July 25 2011 02:53 Novalisk wrote: Is it prize pool or first place prize? Seeing as MLG has 5k first place up until the grand finals, where is the official announcement from Blizzard concerning this matter?
Even for our current major event MLG, sadly the ads revenue is kind of negligible ... If you see a lot of ads of dr.pepper Blizzard get $0 coz it's it is MLG sponsor. Ads only become important once you are on the real TV.
As long as SC2 is not in ESPN, u never have to worry about this. I think this policy is mainly to control the televised games like the BW situation in Korea right now. I seriously doubt SC2 will one day on NA/EU mainstream TV.
Honestly, without knowing how the rules actually work, the policies, and what the 50% is calculated based on ( gross ad revenue or ...? ) making any commentary on this is foolish.
Honestly, I'd like to see them lower the rate to 10-20%, but make the cutoff lower, like $1000 or even $500. That way, if you're running anything other than a weekly or small local tournament, you can expect to pay ad fees, but they aren't as crippling as 50%.
Let's say I can prove(legally speaking) that my event lost revenues because a major game got cut off because BNET was down, because of lag, because there was no LAN, whatever the reason might be - that it was Blizzards fault - can I sue them? After all, if they can have 50% of my profits, then they can surely have 50% of the responsibility for me losing money....
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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