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On June 03 2026 05:44 ChillFlame wrote:Show nested quote +On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:time for some positive vibes guys! what a great match! great commentary! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2404647033i have some weird/sad news though guys. Beomulf's twitter account is gone? I hope he is ok. Any how, guys, just for discussion purposes, who do you guys think were and are the top 3 Stormgate commentators of all time? I put this question to ChatGPT and it gave me: Artosis, Tasteless and Rotterdam. I had to contest this conclusion and after some back and forth here is what the AI said. So if we're grading on actual Stormgate mileage, not RTS fame, my list would be:
BeoMulf
PiG
Nathanias What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators? I love listening to Beomulf commentated Stormgate matches while I'm playing SC2 1v1s.  I know we're on tl.net, but the concept of tournaments, commentators, and pro-player-oriented balance before the game is even out seems so bizarre to me. IMO, esports must grow organically. If a game is interesting to compete in, people will. By spending money on esports before shipping the game, you divert funding from more important areas. The game will be less developed, and players will be less likely to compete in it. By spending money on esports, you make it worse for esports. FG spent a shit ton of money on tournaments while they still had ~30% of the game done. They had fucking tournaments with placeholder models. Then they ran out of money, made a surprised Pikachu face, cried a bit, and wrapped the whole thing. Like, no shit. You spend money to show your game to a large audience, people see fucking rocket shooting deers, and refuse to buy it. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was sabotage. Regarding the commentators, I think folks here are totally right. Some people highlight the same game for 20 years, some people try to jump on the new thing to boost their career. There's nothing inherently bad with it. There's always a risk. If a game you jump into fails, it might also drag you with it. Now the bizarre part. Do you remember random race in SG? Because it didn't have one. If you lock random, your opponent sees your race at the start. Do you know why it is as it is? Because SC2 ladder gods jumped in, said it was terrible and needs to be changed, then they left. Again. Players from another game pushed a change to the ladder, and then they left. And the devs fucking listened to them and kept the change AFTER they left. I still can't comprehend this to the full extent of its surreal fuckedupishness. The moment I saw random isn't random in this game, I understood that the ladder will be terribly boring, because people who made this call are not capable of making something fun. P.S. Edit. I play(ed) T in SC2, and I always look forward to TvR. Random players usually cheese, so I must count cheeses from all matchups, do an early scout, and branch my build accordingly, or even improvise something out of the box. But they might also not cheese. You know what it is? It's called strategy. You gather intel, think, create a strategy, and then execute it. Usually, players who hate random don't like to think, they like to "operate" a build order. By removing a random race from RTS, you further remove "S" from it and encourage a mindless build order race.
It's understandable why they want the esports scene to be preplanned.
One is to get the pro to start putting time in and stream it, that way they can market to an existing fanbase.
That will also give content creators to use as well.
No doubt they also want to sell it so that the investors feel justified to spend so much and getting a piece of esports.
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On June 03 2026 08:20 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2026 05:44 ChillFlame wrote:On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:time for some positive vibes guys! what a great match! great commentary! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2404647033i have some weird/sad news though guys. Beomulf's twitter account is gone? I hope he is ok. Any how, guys, just for discussion purposes, who do you guys think were and are the top 3 Stormgate commentators of all time? I put this question to ChatGPT and it gave me: Artosis, Tasteless and Rotterdam. I had to contest this conclusion and after some back and forth here is what the AI said. So if we're grading on actual Stormgate mileage, not RTS fame, my list would be:
BeoMulf
PiG
Nathanias What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators? I love listening to Beomulf commentated Stormgate matches while I'm playing SC2 1v1s. I know we're on tl.net, but the concept of tournaments, commentators, and pro-player-oriented balance before the game is even out seems so bizarre to me. IMO, esports must grow organically. If a game is interesting to compete in, people will. By spending money on esports before shipping the game, you divert funding from more important areas. The game will be less developed, and players will be less likely to compete in it. By spending money on esports, you make it worse for esports. FG spent a shit ton of money on tournaments while they still had ~30% of the game done. They had fucking tournaments with placeholder models. Then they ran out of money, made a surprised Pikachu face, cried a bit, and wrapped the whole thing. Like, no shit. You spend money to show your game to a large audience, people see fucking rocket shooting deers, and refuse to buy it. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was sabotage. Regarding the commentators, I think folks here are totally right. Some people highlight the same game for 20 years, some people try to jump on the new thing to boost their career. There's nothing inherently bad with it. There's always a risk. If a game you jump into fails, it might also drag you with it. Now the bizarre part. Do you remember random race in SG? Because it didn't have one. If you lock random, your opponent sees your race at the start. Do you know why it is as it is? Because SC2 ladder gods jumped in, said it was terrible and needs to be changed, then they left. Again. Players from another game pushed a change to the ladder, and then they left. And the devs fucking listened to them and kept the change AFTER they left. I still can't comprehend this to the full extent of its surreal fuckedupishness. The moment I saw random isn't random in this game, I understood that the ladder will be terribly boring, because people who made this call are not capable of making something fun. P.S. Edit. I play(ed) T in SC2, and I always look forward to TvR. Random players usually cheese, so I must count cheeses from all matchups, do an early scout, and branch my build accordingly, or even improvise something out of the box. But they might also not cheese. You know what it is? It's called strategy. You gather intel, think, create a strategy, and then execute it. Usually, players who hate random don't like to think, they like to "operate" a build order. By removing a random race from RTS, you further remove "S" from it and encourage a mindless build order race. It's understandable why they want the esports scene to be preplanned. One is to get the pro to start putting time in and stream it, that way they can market to an existing fanbase. That will also give content creators to use as well. No doubt they also want to sell it so that the investors feel justified to spend so much and getting a piece of esports.
But all that happens organically (nowadays) if the game is good.
I guess a strategic point of comparison would be Valve / Dota 2 in the early days, where they tossed a 1.6 million dollar tournament onto effectively a game in late beta. The difference there is/was the 'late beta' was more a port of an existing and popular game than it was new IP and new ideas. People already knew dota was fun, there was interest and and existing market to capture from both HoN and LoL, so even though throwing a multimillion dollar international tournament with an obscene (for the time) prize pool was a gamble as much as an investment, it still seems a lot more sane of a gamble than Stormgate planning for Esports before proving they can hold more concurrent players than Sc2 twitch streams can hold viewers.
Dota2 had some level of numbers to back it up in terms of playerbase and viewership, and behind that they still had Valve being financially able to take the hit if their gamble failed. I don't see the same level of risk management for Frost Giant.
I do think it's reasonable to say Valve/Dota2 needed the gamble to slingshot its esports (so 'gambling on esports' isnt always bad), but they had something of a foundation to slingshot from.
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On June 03 2026 08:44 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2026 08:20 ETisME wrote:On June 03 2026 05:44 ChillFlame wrote:On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:time for some positive vibes guys! what a great match! great commentary! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2404647033i have some weird/sad news though guys. Beomulf's twitter account is gone? I hope he is ok. Any how, guys, just for discussion purposes, who do you guys think were and are the top 3 Stormgate commentators of all time? I put this question to ChatGPT and it gave me: Artosis, Tasteless and Rotterdam. I had to contest this conclusion and after some back and forth here is what the AI said. So if we're grading on actual Stormgate mileage, not RTS fame, my list would be:
BeoMulf
PiG
Nathanias What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators? I love listening to Beomulf commentated Stormgate matches while I'm playing SC2 1v1s. I know we're on tl.net, but the concept of tournaments, commentators, and pro-player-oriented balance before the game is even out seems so bizarre to me. IMO, esports must grow organically. If a game is interesting to compete in, people will. By spending money on esports before shipping the game, you divert funding from more important areas. The game will be less developed, and players will be less likely to compete in it. By spending money on esports, you make it worse for esports. FG spent a shit ton of money on tournaments while they still had ~30% of the game done. They had fucking tournaments with placeholder models. Then they ran out of money, made a surprised Pikachu face, cried a bit, and wrapped the whole thing. Like, no shit. You spend money to show your game to a large audience, people see fucking rocket shooting deers, and refuse to buy it. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was sabotage. Regarding the commentators, I think folks here are totally right. Some people highlight the same game for 20 years, some people try to jump on the new thing to boost their career. There's nothing inherently bad with it. There's always a risk. If a game you jump into fails, it might also drag you with it. Now the bizarre part. Do you remember random race in SG? Because it didn't have one. If you lock random, your opponent sees your race at the start. Do you know why it is as it is? Because SC2 ladder gods jumped in, said it was terrible and needs to be changed, then they left. Again. Players from another game pushed a change to the ladder, and then they left. And the devs fucking listened to them and kept the change AFTER they left. I still can't comprehend this to the full extent of its surreal fuckedupishness. The moment I saw random isn't random in this game, I understood that the ladder will be terribly boring, because people who made this call are not capable of making something fun. P.S. Edit. I play(ed) T in SC2, and I always look forward to TvR. Random players usually cheese, so I must count cheeses from all matchups, do an early scout, and branch my build accordingly, or even improvise something out of the box. But they might also not cheese. You know what it is? It's called strategy. You gather intel, think, create a strategy, and then execute it. Usually, players who hate random don't like to think, they like to "operate" a build order. By removing a random race from RTS, you further remove "S" from it and encourage a mindless build order race. It's understandable why they want the esports scene to be preplanned. One is to get the pro to start putting time in and stream it, that way they can market to an existing fanbase. That will also give content creators to use as well. No doubt they also want to sell it so that the investors feel justified to spend so much and getting a piece of esports. But all that happens organically (nowadays) if the game is good. I guess a strategic point of comparison would be Valve / Dota 2 in the early days, where they tossed a 1.6 million dollar tournament onto effectively a game in late beta. The difference there is/was the 'late beta' was more a port of an existing and popular game than it was new IP and new ideas. People already knew dota was fun, there was interest and and existing market to capture from both HoN and LoL, so even though throwing a multimillion dollar international tournament with an obscene (for the time) prize pool was a gamble as much as an investment, it still seems a lot more sane of a gamble than Stormgate planning for Esports before proving they can hold more concurrent players than Sc2 twitch streams can hold viewers. Dota2 had some level of numbers to back it up in terms of playerbase and viewership, and behind that they still had Valve being financially able to take the hit if their gamble failed. I don't see the same level of risk management for Frost Giant. I do think it's reasonable to say Valve/Dota2 needed the gamble to slingshot its esports (so 'gambling on esports' isnt always bad), but they had something of a foundation to slingshot from.
Valve tied the game's monetization to tournaments with compendium.
I don't know how it works today, but during the first Internationals, people bought compendiums to get rare skins and stuff, and part of the money went to the prize pool.
I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm sure it sold pretty good.
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On June 03 2026 08:44 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2026 08:20 ETisME wrote:On June 03 2026 05:44 ChillFlame wrote:On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:time for some positive vibes guys! what a great match! great commentary! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2404647033i have some weird/sad news though guys. Beomulf's twitter account is gone? I hope he is ok. Any how, guys, just for discussion purposes, who do you guys think were and are the top 3 Stormgate commentators of all time? I put this question to ChatGPT and it gave me: Artosis, Tasteless and Rotterdam. I had to contest this conclusion and after some back and forth here is what the AI said. So if we're grading on actual Stormgate mileage, not RTS fame, my list would be:
BeoMulf
PiG
Nathanias What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators? I love listening to Beomulf commentated Stormgate matches while I'm playing SC2 1v1s. I know we're on tl.net, but the concept of tournaments, commentators, and pro-player-oriented balance before the game is even out seems so bizarre to me. IMO, esports must grow organically. If a game is interesting to compete in, people will. By spending money on esports before shipping the game, you divert funding from more important areas. The game will be less developed, and players will be less likely to compete in it. By spending money on esports, you make it worse for esports. FG spent a shit ton of money on tournaments while they still had ~30% of the game done. They had fucking tournaments with placeholder models. Then they ran out of money, made a surprised Pikachu face, cried a bit, and wrapped the whole thing. Like, no shit. You spend money to show your game to a large audience, people see fucking rocket shooting deers, and refuse to buy it. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was sabotage. Regarding the commentators, I think folks here are totally right. Some people highlight the same game for 20 years, some people try to jump on the new thing to boost their career. There's nothing inherently bad with it. There's always a risk. If a game you jump into fails, it might also drag you with it. Now the bizarre part. Do you remember random race in SG? Because it didn't have one. If you lock random, your opponent sees your race at the start. Do you know why it is as it is? Because SC2 ladder gods jumped in, said it was terrible and needs to be changed, then they left. Again. Players from another game pushed a change to the ladder, and then they left. And the devs fucking listened to them and kept the change AFTER they left. I still can't comprehend this to the full extent of its surreal fuckedupishness. The moment I saw random isn't random in this game, I understood that the ladder will be terribly boring, because people who made this call are not capable of making something fun. P.S. Edit. I play(ed) T in SC2, and I always look forward to TvR. Random players usually cheese, so I must count cheeses from all matchups, do an early scout, and branch my build accordingly, or even improvise something out of the box. But they might also not cheese. You know what it is? It's called strategy. You gather intel, think, create a strategy, and then execute it. Usually, players who hate random don't like to think, they like to "operate" a build order. By removing a random race from RTS, you further remove "S" from it and encourage a mindless build order race. It's understandable why they want the esports scene to be preplanned. One is to get the pro to start putting time in and stream it, that way they can market to an existing fanbase. That will also give content creators to use as well. No doubt they also want to sell it so that the investors feel justified to spend so much and getting a piece of esports. But all that happens organically (nowadays) if the game is good. I guess a strategic point of comparison would be Valve / Dota 2 in the early days, where they tossed a 1.6 million dollar tournament onto effectively a game in late beta. The difference there is/was the 'late beta' was more a port of an existing and popular game than it was new IP and new ideas. People already knew dota was fun, there was interest and and existing market to capture from both HoN and LoL, so even though throwing a multimillion dollar international tournament with an obscene (for the time) prize pool was a gamble as much as an investment, it still seems a lot more sane of a gamble than Stormgate planning for Esports before proving they can hold more concurrent players than Sc2 twitch streams can hold viewers. Dota2 had some level of numbers to back it up in terms of playerbase and viewership, and behind that they still had Valve being financially able to take the hit if their gamble failed. I don't see the same level of risk management for Frost Giant. I do think it's reasonable to say Valve/Dota2 needed the gamble to slingshot its esports (so 'gambling on esports' isnt always bad), but they had something of a foundation to slingshot from.
I am not disagreeing, but they were probably needed it for the investors. Esport is most likely part of the initial pitch, and so some fundings would have allocated to it.
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On June 03 2026 08:20 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2026 05:44 ChillFlame wrote:On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:time for some positive vibes guys! what a great match! great commentary! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2404647033i have some weird/sad news though guys. Beomulf's twitter account is gone? I hope he is ok. Any how, guys, just for discussion purposes, who do you guys think were and are the top 3 Stormgate commentators of all time? I put this question to ChatGPT and it gave me: Artosis, Tasteless and Rotterdam. I had to contest this conclusion and after some back and forth here is what the AI said. So if we're grading on actual Stormgate mileage, not RTS fame, my list would be:
BeoMulf
PiG
Nathanias What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators? I love listening to Beomulf commentated Stormgate matches while I'm playing SC2 1v1s. I know we're on tl.net, but the concept of tournaments, commentators, and pro-player-oriented balance before the game is even out seems so bizarre to me. IMO, esports must grow organically. If a game is interesting to compete in, people will. By spending money on esports before shipping the game, you divert funding from more important areas. The game will be less developed, and players will be less likely to compete in it. By spending money on esports, you make it worse for esports. FG spent a shit ton of money on tournaments while they still had ~30% of the game done. They had fucking tournaments with placeholder models. Then they ran out of money, made a surprised Pikachu face, cried a bit, and wrapped the whole thing. Like, no shit. You spend money to show your game to a large audience, people see fucking rocket shooting deers, and refuse to buy it. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was sabotage. Regarding the commentators, I think folks here are totally right. Some people highlight the same game for 20 years, some people try to jump on the new thing to boost their career. There's nothing inherently bad with it. There's always a risk. If a game you jump into fails, it might also drag you with it. Now the bizarre part. Do you remember random race in SG? Because it didn't have one. If you lock random, your opponent sees your race at the start. Do you know why it is as it is? Because SC2 ladder gods jumped in, said it was terrible and needs to be changed, then they left. Again. Players from another game pushed a change to the ladder, and then they left. And the devs fucking listened to them and kept the change AFTER they left. I still can't comprehend this to the full extent of its surreal fuckedupishness. The moment I saw random isn't random in this game, I understood that the ladder will be terribly boring, because people who made this call are not capable of making something fun. P.S. Edit. I play(ed) T in SC2, and I always look forward to TvR. Random players usually cheese, so I must count cheeses from all matchups, do an early scout, and branch my build accordingly, or even improvise something out of the box. But they might also not cheese. You know what it is? It's called strategy. You gather intel, think, create a strategy, and then execute it. Usually, players who hate random don't like to think, they like to "operate" a build order. By removing a random race from RTS, you further remove "S" from it and encourage a mindless build order race. It's understandable why they want the esports scene to be preplanned. One is to get the pro to start putting time in and stream it, that way they can market to an existing fanbase. That will also give content creators to use as well. No doubt they also want to sell it so that the investors feel justified to spend so much and getting a piece of esports.
Yeah, you're right about their motivation, but it is also a risk.
Esports is basically an extended marketing. If a game gets popular as an esports, it gets media coverage and additional sales as a result.
If a game fails as an esports (for example, Heroes of the Storm), you just waste money down the drain.
You could spend the same money on the more conventional marketing and get more from it.
With the state of the game it had (placeholder models, missing lighting, desynced animations, terrible sound mixing, etc.), it was never a risk. It was a guaranteed shot in their foot.
They spent tons of money to show everyone how bad their game was.
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You're also right about investors, but it was probably on FG too.
Tim promised them SC3 with insane revenue to get the investment, but he probably put the accent on e-sports himself.
He could push it as a campaign+co-op game, because it is what made SC2 profitable.
E-sports is a money sink, both for sponsors and publishers. You have to be very precise with it.
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On June 03 2026 09:00 ChillFlame wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2026 08:44 Fleetfeet wrote:On June 03 2026 08:20 ETisME wrote:On June 03 2026 05:44 ChillFlame wrote:On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:time for some positive vibes guys! what a great match! great commentary! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2404647033i have some weird/sad news though guys. Beomulf's twitter account is gone? I hope he is ok. Any how, guys, just for discussion purposes, who do you guys think were and are the top 3 Stormgate commentators of all time? I put this question to ChatGPT and it gave me: Artosis, Tasteless and Rotterdam. I had to contest this conclusion and after some back and forth here is what the AI said. So if we're grading on actual Stormgate mileage, not RTS fame, my list would be:
BeoMulf
PiG
Nathanias What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators? I love listening to Beomulf commentated Stormgate matches while I'm playing SC2 1v1s. I know we're on tl.net, but the concept of tournaments, commentators, and pro-player-oriented balance before the game is even out seems so bizarre to me. IMO, esports must grow organically. If a game is interesting to compete in, people will. By spending money on esports before shipping the game, you divert funding from more important areas. The game will be less developed, and players will be less likely to compete in it. By spending money on esports, you make it worse for esports. FG spent a shit ton of money on tournaments while they still had ~30% of the game done. They had fucking tournaments with placeholder models. Then they ran out of money, made a surprised Pikachu face, cried a bit, and wrapped the whole thing. Like, no shit. You spend money to show your game to a large audience, people see fucking rocket shooting deers, and refuse to buy it. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was sabotage. Regarding the commentators, I think folks here are totally right. Some people highlight the same game for 20 years, some people try to jump on the new thing to boost their career. There's nothing inherently bad with it. There's always a risk. If a game you jump into fails, it might also drag you with it. Now the bizarre part. Do you remember random race in SG? Because it didn't have one. If you lock random, your opponent sees your race at the start. Do you know why it is as it is? Because SC2 ladder gods jumped in, said it was terrible and needs to be changed, then they left. Again. Players from another game pushed a change to the ladder, and then they left. And the devs fucking listened to them and kept the change AFTER they left. I still can't comprehend this to the full extent of its surreal fuckedupishness. The moment I saw random isn't random in this game, I understood that the ladder will be terribly boring, because people who made this call are not capable of making something fun. P.S. Edit. I play(ed) T in SC2, and I always look forward to TvR. Random players usually cheese, so I must count cheeses from all matchups, do an early scout, and branch my build accordingly, or even improvise something out of the box. But they might also not cheese. You know what it is? It's called strategy. You gather intel, think, create a strategy, and then execute it. Usually, players who hate random don't like to think, they like to "operate" a build order. By removing a random race from RTS, you further remove "S" from it and encourage a mindless build order race. It's understandable why they want the esports scene to be preplanned. One is to get the pro to start putting time in and stream it, that way they can market to an existing fanbase. That will also give content creators to use as well. No doubt they also want to sell it so that the investors feel justified to spend so much and getting a piece of esports. But all that happens organically (nowadays) if the game is good. I guess a strategic point of comparison would be Valve / Dota 2 in the early days, where they tossed a 1.6 million dollar tournament onto effectively a game in late beta. The difference there is/was the 'late beta' was more a port of an existing and popular game than it was new IP and new ideas. People already knew dota was fun, there was interest and and existing market to capture from both HoN and LoL, so even though throwing a multimillion dollar international tournament with an obscene (for the time) prize pool was a gamble as much as an investment, it still seems a lot more sane of a gamble than Stormgate planning for Esports before proving they can hold more concurrent players than Sc2 twitch streams can hold viewers. Dota2 had some level of numbers to back it up in terms of playerbase and viewership, and behind that they still had Valve being financially able to take the hit if their gamble failed. I don't see the same level of risk management for Frost Giant. I do think it's reasonable to say Valve/Dota2 needed the gamble to slingshot its esports (so 'gambling on esports' isnt always bad), but they had something of a foundation to slingshot from. Valve tied the game's monetization to tournaments with compendium. I don't know how it works today, but during the first Internationals, people bought compendiums to get rare skins and stuff, and part of the money went to the prize pool. I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm sure it sold pretty good.
They did eventually, yeah, but not at first. TI 1 and 2 was just valve-funded. They didn't have crowdfunding for the prize pool.
TI3 had compendium purchases and nearly doubled the prize pool, then TI4 went berserk and added north of 8m to the prize pool, but all of that is well outside the scope of what I'm talking about. Initially it was Valve effectively gambling on esports, which obviously has since paid off, and imo was a much much more sensible gamble than anything FG dumped into esports.
That said, ETisME is probably correct that some of the gamble cost was offloaded to investors, so it's hard to say how much it actually cost FG.
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Northern Ireland27386 Posts
On June 03 2026 05:44 ChillFlame wrote:Show nested quote +On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:time for some positive vibes guys! what a great match! great commentary! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2404647033i have some weird/sad news though guys. Beomulf's twitter account is gone? I hope he is ok. Any how, guys, just for discussion purposes, who do you guys think were and are the top 3 Stormgate commentators of all time? I put this question to ChatGPT and it gave me: Artosis, Tasteless and Rotterdam. I had to contest this conclusion and after some back and forth here is what the AI said. So if we're grading on actual Stormgate mileage, not RTS fame, my list would be:
BeoMulf
PiG
Nathanias What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators? I love listening to Beomulf commentated Stormgate matches while I'm playing SC2 1v1s. I know we're on tl.net, but the concept of tournaments, commentators, and pro-player-oriented balance before the game is even out seems so bizarre to me. IMO, esports must grow organically. If a game is interesting to compete in, people will. By spending money on esports before shipping the game, you divert funding from more important areas. The game will be less developed, and players will be less likely to compete in it. By spending money on esports, you make it worse for esports. FG spent a shit ton of money on tournaments while they still had ~30% of the game done. They had fucking tournaments with placeholder models. Then they ran out of money, made a surprised Pikachu face, cried a bit, and wrapped the whole thing. Like, no shit. You spend money to show your game to a large audience, people see fucking rocket shooting deers, and refuse to buy it. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was sabotage. Regarding the commentators, I think folks here are totally right. Some people highlight the same game for 20 years, some people try to jump on the new thing to boost their career. There's nothing inherently bad with it. There's always a risk. If a game you jump into fails, it might also drag you with it. Now the bizarre part. Do you remember random race in SG? Because it didn't have one. If you lock random, your opponent sees your race at the start. Do you know why it is as it is? Because SC2 ladder gods jumped in, said it was terrible and needs to be changed, then they left. Again. Players from another game pushed a change to the ladder, and then they left. And the devs fucking listened to them and kept the change AFTER they left. I still can't comprehend this to the full extent of its surreal fuckedupishness. The moment I saw random isn't random in this game, I understood that the ladder will be terribly boring, because people who made this call are not capable of making something fun. P.S. Edit. I play(ed) T in SC2, and I always look forward to TvR. Random players usually cheese, so I must count cheeses from all matchups, do an early scout, and branch my build accordingly, or even improvise something out of the box. But they might also not cheese. You know what it is? It's called strategy. You gather intel, think, create a strategy, and then execute it. Usually, players who hate random don't like to think, they like to "operate" a build order. By removing a random race from RTS, you further remove "S" from it and encourage a mindless build order race.
VRandom can be fucking awful, it depends on the game to be fair. It depends on how optimised openings need to be, or how quickly you can deviate off your first scout
PvR in WoL was hot garbage. vZ your first pylon ideally forms the first part of your wall, and you have to do that pre-scout. VTerran, not good, but playable. Versus Toss, godawful
So you’re just rolling dice really or doing a garbage catch all build like 3 gate sentry expand versus a player likely doing a stock build against you that’s somewhat good given they know your races
TvR was fine on the other hand
Other games, VR is fine as well
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On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators?
Apparently someone named "FrankSriracha" got to cast Barracks, Snow, Best, Scan and other famous BW pros compete in a $10k tournament playing the even shittier 2024 Early Access version of Stormgate: https://liquipedia.net/stormgate/Stormgate_League_Invitational#Commentators_&_Staff
I'd love an English VOD of these pros pretending to like and care about the game, but I haven't found one yet. Maybe it was so bad they buried it. In any case, I think this automatically puts "FrankSriracha" on the list of all-time Stormgate commentators!
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On June 04 2026 00:56 crablogic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators?
Apparently someone named "FrankSriracha" got to cast Barracks, Snow, Best, Scan and other famous BW pros compete in a $10k tournament playing the even shittier 2024 Early Access version of Stormgate: https://liquipedia.net/stormgate/Stormgate_League_Invitational#Commentators_&_StaffI'd love an English VOD of these pros pretending to like and care about the game, but I haven't found one yet. Maybe it was so bad they buried it. In any case, I think this automatically puts "FrankSriracha" on the list of all-time Stormgate commentators!
According to Liquipedia, FrankSriracha is the host of StormgateArchive, the last surviving Stormgate streamer on Twitch.
The real irony is that StormgateArchive has not enabled VODs on his Twitch channel (for whatever reason) so there is no actual archive available for StormgateArchive. I guess that's okay, though, because he continues to stream old tournament videos from like two years ago, over and over, for an audience of 0 to 4 people.
Maybe he doesn't understand how VODs work?
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On June 04 2026 08:00 Jeremy Reimer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2026 00:56 crablogic wrote:On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators?
Apparently someone named "FrankSriracha" got to cast Barracks, Snow, Best, Scan and other famous BW pros compete in a $10k tournament playing the even shittier 2024 Early Access version of Stormgate: https://liquipedia.net/stormgate/Stormgate_League_Invitational#Commentators_&_StaffI'd love an English VOD of these pros pretending to like and care about the game, but I haven't found one yet. Maybe it was so bad they buried it. In any case, I think this automatically puts "FrankSriracha" on the list of all-time Stormgate commentators! According to Liquipedia, FrankSriracha is the host of StormgateArchive, the last surviving Stormgate streamer on Twitch. The real irony is that StormgateArchive has not enabled VODs on his Twitch channel (for whatever reason) so there is no actual archive available for StormgateArchive. I guess that's okay, though, because he continues to stream old tournament videos from like two years ago, over and over, for an audience of 0 to 4 people. Maybe he doesn't understand how VODs work?
I think this guy had a dedicated resource. He paid for hosting out of his pocket. It closed a year ago or so.
I'm yet to understand the phenomenon of emotional attachment to this game.
I don't think there's something SG does better than SC2 apart from minor things like memorized camera positions. Nor does it have some special vibe or feeling like some crappy games do.
Yet, some people are so devoted, we're lucky there were no doxxing incidents.
UPD: found it https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1k047y2/stormgatearchive_going_offline/
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On June 04 2026 11:22 ChillFlame wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2026 08:00 Jeremy Reimer wrote:On June 04 2026 00:56 crablogic wrote:On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators?
Apparently someone named "FrankSriracha" got to cast Barracks, Snow, Best, Scan and other famous BW pros compete in a $10k tournament playing the even shittier 2024 Early Access version of Stormgate: https://liquipedia.net/stormgate/Stormgate_League_Invitational#Commentators_&_StaffI'd love an English VOD of these pros pretending to like and care about the game, but I haven't found one yet. Maybe it was so bad they buried it. In any case, I think this automatically puts "FrankSriracha" on the list of all-time Stormgate commentators! According to Liquipedia, FrankSriracha is the host of StormgateArchive, the last surviving Stormgate streamer on Twitch. The real irony is that StormgateArchive has not enabled VODs on his Twitch channel (for whatever reason) so there is no actual archive available for StormgateArchive. I guess that's okay, though, because he continues to stream old tournament videos from like two years ago, over and over, for an audience of 0 to 4 people. Maybe he doesn't understand how VODs work? I think this guy had a dedicated resource. He paid for hosting out of his pocket. It closed a year ago or so. I'm yet to understand the phenomenon of emotional attachment to this game. I don't think there's something SG does better than SC2 apart from minor things like memorized camera positions. Nor does it have some special vibe or feeling like some crappy games do. Yet, some people are so devoted, we're lucky there were no doxxing incidents. UPD: found it https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1k047y2/stormgatearchive_going_offline/
That's so weird. According to that thread, StormgateArchives was running his website, which apparently hosted the videos he created from OBS, on his own personal computer and Internet connection. I mean, self-hosting on a home cable Internet connection is thing you can do (I did it briefly in the early 2000s) but in the modern era it's just bonkers. And for video? Even sillier were the multiple "offers to help" to preserve the site, all of which went nowhere.
It's all really strange, because you have Twitch VODs, and if that somehow fails, you have YouTube available... for free. But there's no StormgateArchive YouTube channel that I can find. The only Stormgate channel I could find on YouTube was Noveastar Stormgate. They were still posting VODs up until two months ago, which was when multiplayer went away.
It is indeed odd that people still have an emotional attachment to this game, or at the very least an unending fascination with the whole saga (that's me, for sure). I don't know how to explain it. At some point we will all just have to let it go. But I'm not doing it until Tim throws in the towel. 
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On June 05 2026 01:56 Jeremy Reimer wrote:It is indeed odd that people still have an emotional attachment to this game, or at the very least an unending fascination with the whole saga (that's me, for sure). I don't know how to explain it. At some point we will all just have to let it go. But I'm not doing it until Tim throws in towel.
Well, it's pretty easy to say why I am emotionally attached.
1. I have been arguing with people on the Internet since the Dial-Up era.
2. I like RTS games.
3. I hate crooked game devs. After the "Funded till release" and "Get all year zero heroes" saga, I took this shit personally.
Not because it impacted me in any direct way, I didn't pay them any money, but because of how they handled the situation.
Tim made the most infuriating excuses possible. I felt so fucking dumb, my ego would not let me sleep.
It almost felt like Tim made these stupid excuses specifically to insult my intelligence. And I'm not an academic or anything.
I felt the most prominent butthurt since, I dunno, Activision bought Blizzard, and everybody told me it would be alright and it won't impact the quality and direction of games. Yep, that was exactly the case.
It's pretty easy to explain why people hate this game, but not so easy to explain why people love it. I just can't understand the appeal. My only guess, they feel special because of parasocial relationships with the devs. They feel like they're doing their part in development and defend it no matter what.
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I am fascinated by bs-ing salesmen.
I've watched Glengarry Glen Ross about 40 times.
"For the words of the profits"
"Were written on the studio wall"
"And echoes with the sound of salesmen", RUSH , Spirit of Radio.
It was cool to discover Mike Morhiame was also a big Rush fan. I saw Geddy Lee a few times at a ScotiaBank at Castleknock and Eglinton in North west Toronto. It was his home branch. He always had a 'god I hope no one recognizes me' look on his face. 😎
At this point though the biggest ex-Blizzard bs-er has gotta be Rob Pardo. 12 years .... A zillion concept presentation ... $100M in funding ... ZERO games.
Without Pardo's work making substantial changes to SC1 turning it into b Brood War... would Korean eSports have ever existed?
I can't wait for the announcement that Pardo's game studio is shutting down.
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On June 05 2026 05:26 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
I am fascinated by bs-ing salesmen.
Not only was it a prominent bs-ing salesman case.
It's more about how unnecessary and stupid it was.
There are a lot of snake oil salesmen around, but none of them triggers me much. They promise a lot, deliver a legal minimum, and book it with the money. I don't approve it, but at least I understand it.
I don't understand Tims.
Tims success plan:
1. Say "Year zero" is the whole EA.
2. Say everyone who paid $60 (IIRC) will get all the "Year Zero" commanders.
3. Don't give the commanders and ninja edit the FAQ as if nothing happened.
4. Get caught by a German news website (Achtung!)
5. Pretend as if nothing happened.
6. Get backlash.
7. Lie that it's technically impossible to refund or give away commanders because some people have bought it via Steam
8. Give 1 commander as an apology for not shipping 3 commanders people paid for (you still don't give these commanders, it's not 1 commander in addition to 3 promised).
9. Lose all the credibility you had
10. ??
11. Profit.
What the hell was this Dr. Evil bullshit? For me, it's on par with Nintendo suing kids over hand-drawn pictures on social media. Or Sony blocking people's accounts with all games out of spite, because they refunded their games via the bank.
YOU DON'T GET ANY MONEY OUT OF THIS. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
If Tims are bs-ing salesmen, they are certainly bad ones.
What's the problem with giving away ALL the commanders as an apology? It's a digital product, you don't lose anything. You already lost money because of your incompetence, now it's time for a damage control.
You lose potential sales, yes, but they are potential, and angry players won't pay you anyway. In the retrospective, that was exactly what had happened, they hadn't had crazy sales or anything like that. Quite the opposite.
They might've spun it as they were super generous and player-friendly. Instead, they just alienated their most loyal playerbase, people who paid them money without concrete obligations (KS backers). People who potentially might have bought all the future campaigns and commanders.
As I said, their caricature incompetence insults my intelligence. Because there was a time when I took them seriously. That means I am a fucking moron. I'd be ok if they pulled a clever scheme or something.
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On June 05 2026 06:28 ChillFlame wrote:
As I said, their caricature incompetence insults my intelligence. Because there was a time when I took them seriously. That means I am a fucking moron. I'd be ok if they pulled a clever scheme or something.
don't be so hard on yourself... everyone has blind spots. i thought Pam Grier was a super cool human. Turns out she is a nut job. i never thought Trump would carry through all his crazy promises about tariffs.. .and he ended up implementing them. 
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Rule 1 of being a bs salesman is don't buy you own supply. The fact Tim invested half a mil into SG shows it wasn't a scam for him. He was just utterly delusional.
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Northern Ireland27386 Posts
On June 03 2026 15:49 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2026 05:44 ChillFlame wrote:On June 02 2026 22:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:time for some positive vibes guys! what a great match! great commentary! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2404647033i have some weird/sad news though guys. Beomulf's twitter account is gone? I hope he is ok. Any how, guys, just for discussion purposes, who do you guys think were and are the top 3 Stormgate commentators of all time? I put this question to ChatGPT and it gave me: Artosis, Tasteless and Rotterdam. I had to contest this conclusion and after some back and forth here is what the AI said. So if we're grading on actual Stormgate mileage, not RTS fame, my list would be:
BeoMulf
PiG
Nathanias What 4th commentator would you add to create the Mount Rushmore of Stormgate Commentators? I love listening to Beomulf commentated Stormgate matches while I'm playing SC2 1v1s. I know we're on tl.net, but the concept of tournaments, commentators, and pro-player-oriented balance before the game is even out seems so bizarre to me. IMO, esports must grow organically. If a game is interesting to compete in, people will. By spending money on esports before shipping the game, you divert funding from more important areas. The game will be less developed, and players will be less likely to compete in it. By spending money on esports, you make it worse for esports. FG spent a shit ton of money on tournaments while they still had ~30% of the game done. They had fucking tournaments with placeholder models. Then they ran out of money, made a surprised Pikachu face, cried a bit, and wrapped the whole thing. Like, no shit. You spend money to show your game to a large audience, people see fucking rocket shooting deers, and refuse to buy it. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was sabotage. Regarding the commentators, I think folks here are totally right. Some people highlight the same game for 20 years, some people try to jump on the new thing to boost their career. There's nothing inherently bad with it. There's always a risk. If a game you jump into fails, it might also drag you with it. Now the bizarre part. Do you remember random race in SG? Because it didn't have one. If you lock random, your opponent sees your race at the start. Do you know why it is as it is? Because SC2 ladder gods jumped in, said it was terrible and needs to be changed, then they left. Again. Players from another game pushed a change to the ladder, and then they left. And the devs fucking listened to them and kept the change AFTER they left. I still can't comprehend this to the full extent of its surreal fuckedupishness. The moment I saw random isn't random in this game, I understood that the ladder will be terribly boring, because people who made this call are not capable of making something fun. P.S. Edit. I play(ed) T in SC2, and I always look forward to TvR. Random players usually cheese, so I must count cheeses from all matchups, do an early scout, and branch my build accordingly, or even improvise something out of the box. But they might also not cheese. You know what it is? It's called strategy. You gather intel, think, create a strategy, and then execute it. Usually, players who hate random don't like to think, they like to "operate" a build order. By removing a random race from RTS, you further remove "S" from it and encourage a mindless build order race. VRandom can be fucking awful, it depends on the game to be fair. It depends on how optimised openings need to be, or how quickly you can deviate off your first scout PvR in WoL was hot garbage. vZ your first pylon ideally forms the first part of your wall, and you have to do that pre-scout. VTerran, not good, but playable. Versus Toss, godawful So you’re just rolling dice really or doing a garbage catch all build like 3 gate sentry expand versus a player likely doing a stock build against you that’s somewhat good given they know your races TvR was fine on the other hand Other games, VR is fine as well
I’m intrigued to hear the thoughts of others, specially those who’ve played a lot of other games.
My general contention is if you need quite optimised openers versus each faction, that you have to make a call on before you scout, vR can really suck.
If those aren’t a factor, then I think it’s interesting and adds quite a lot to a game. I dunno specifically how SG’s dynamic was in this domain, hence my reference to WoL in SC2
I think a lot of what makes vRandom fun or not really depends on how the game itself functions.
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I love Random in SC1 and SC2. I like playing it and playing against it.
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On June 05 2026 06:28 ChillFlame wrote:
What the hell was this Dr. Evil bullshit? For me, it's on par with Nintendo suing kids over hand-drawn pictures on social media. Or Sony blocking people's accounts with all games out of spite, because they refunded their games via the bank.
YOU DON'T GET ANY MONEY OUT OF THIS. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
If Tims are bs-ing salesmen, they are certainly bad ones.
What's the problem with giving away ALL the commanders as an apology? It's a digital product, you don't lose anything. You already lost money because of your incompetence, now it's time for a damage control.
You lose potential sales, yes, but they are potential, and angry players won't pay you anyway. In the retrospective, that was exactly what had happened, they hadn't had crazy sales or anything like that. Quite the opposite.
They might've spun it as they were super generous and player-friendly. Instead, they just alienated their most loyal playerbase, people who paid them money without concrete obligations (KS backers). People who potentially might have bought all the future campaigns and commanders.
As I said, their caricature incompetence insults my intelligence. Because there was a time when I took them seriously. That means I am a fucking moron. I'd be ok if they pulled a clever scheme or something.
Screwing over their most avid backers for minimal financial gain was probably the most unnecessarily stupid thing that Tim Morten ever did. But there is a very long list.
With all the stupidity going on, nobody has ever pointed out the complete insanity of their online strategy. As in, the way that they outsourced all the online components of Stormgate to not one, but two different third-party services, who were themselves outsourcing to Amazon AWS.
They spent a staggering amount of money on this. For all of 2025, the year of Stormgate's "launch", the cost of servers alone was $263,588, or about $22,000 per month, to support an average of about 100 concurrent players, and a peak of just under 1,000 at launch. That kind of traffic could have been handled by a dev's laptop.
That $263,588 was about double what Stormgate earned in revenue in 2025. And it was about triple what Stormgate earned after deducting Steam fees and refunds. No matter how much it "scaled down", it never became profitable. In December 2025, Stormgate earned $4,091, or $2,467 after Steam fees and refunds, but the cost of the servers was $6,453.
Everyone knows that Tim was bad at leadership, at running a company, and at game design. But he was supposed to be the "money man", a guy who knew how to handle finances. Except he was super bad at that as well.
Another example: there is a line item in Frost Giant's pants-on-head insane 2025 SEC filing titled "Deferred Revenue", listed as a liability, for $1,753,064. Deferred revenue is supposed to be listed as a liability, according to standard accounting principles, because it represents income for products or services that the company hasn't delivered yet.
Only it makes zero sense that Frost Giant is sitting on $1.7 million of "Stormgate product" that it hasn't delivered to a customer that already paid for it. What this item actually is, is a $2 million "license fee" from Kakao Games in Korea, for the rights to sell Stormgate in that region, that Frost Giant put in their books two years ago. (It is absolutely not, as some have speculated, some sort of deal for licensing the Snowplay "engine", which was never actually licensed to anybody)
Anyway, Tim Morten took out $500,000 from this "license fee" and reported it as income in 2024, and then booked another $500,000 as income in 2025. That's how the company managed to stay afloat for as long as they did.
But none of this was real. Doing some simple math, it seems like Kakao Games paid Frost Giant $247,000 based on the games that they sold in that region, during both Early Access and launch. There was probably a sort of sliding scale, where the license fee could go up to $2,000,000 depending on how many games were sold. But those numbers, like all of Frost Giant's numbers, were fantasies. So now the remaining $1.75 million sits as "deferred revenue", again in some fantasy world where Koreans buy millions upon millions of copies of Stormgate after it has become a dead game.
This is all part of the financial wizardry and money-savvy abilities of Tim Morten.
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EPT
