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This is gambling. Just because its a game of skill and not luck, does not make this something other than gambling.
Secondly does blizzard even have the right's to implement this into a computer game?
Thirdly, i honestly doubt blizzard will even WANT to implement it. I strongly doubt it would become as big of a hit as poker making the rake blizzard take anywhere near as profitable to really be worth it. And what's more, they will have to have a big clusterfuck of a lawsuit to be able to persuade that it's fair and everyone has a chance. And on top of that they will get a massive amounts of emails of whiney kid's who apparantly accidently bought into the wrong entrance fee tournament so they want their money back or some other whiney kid who thinks he lost due to hacking.
This reminds me also, the thing with poker is that it quite simply can't be hacked - No drops, maphacks or whatever else, and its extremely hard to bot it. This kind of thing is just going to encourage cheating, and probably sway blizzard away from making it happen. Just imagine how badly online poker would have failed if people could download hacks for it.
Sorry if any of these points have been made before but i dont fancy reading 9 pages 
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Full, you have to be kidding.
Have you even Google'd "poker bot"? Go ahead, I'll wait.
Done? Good.
I'm not entertaining the thought that Blizzard will implement this for even ONE SECOND (legal headaches = huge nightmare), but it would be awesome, all the same.
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I feel that the best way to get around the gambling laws (even though this isn't gambling at all) is as Frozen Arbiter mentioned earlier make the tournaments use some sort of blizzard currency. You would buy this blizzard currency using real money. As long as this blizzard currency cannot convert back into real cash, you are buying a product from blizzard thus there is absolutely no gambling laws applied (mainly because this counts as sales/revenue and blizzard will pay a tax to the government it belongs in so they don't care). Then people can use this currency to compete in tournaments.
This currency can then be used to purchase blizzard products (like additional copies of SC2, WoW Cards), merchandise (Hats T-shirts), or blizzcon tickets =D. Blizzard makes money because it doesn't cost them retail price to give out their products. The currency can also be used to purchase some of the "premium" stuff blizzard said they are selling.
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http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/31/usc_sec_31_00005362----000-.html
US Federal Code, Title 31 > Subtitle IV > Chapter 53 > Subchapter IV > § 5362
+ Show Spoiler +(1) Bet or wager.— The term “bet or wager”—
(A) means the staking or risking by any person of something of value upon the outcome of a contest of others, a sporting event, or a game subject to chance, upon an agreement or understanding that the person or another person will receive something of value in the event of a certain outcome;
Here's the issue: if you want to call SC2 an E-Sport, then it falls under this definition of betting.
The reason sponsored tournaments are not illegal is because they fall under the following exception outlined in the code:
+ Show Spoiler +(ix) participation in any fantasy or simulation sports game or educational game or contest in which (if the game or contest involves a team or teams) no fantasy or simulation sports team is based on the current membership of an actual team that is a member of an amateur or professional sports organization (as those terms are defined in section 3701 of title 28) and that meets the following conditions:
(I) All prizes and awards offered to winning participants are established and made known to the participants in advance of the game or contest and their value is not determined by the number of participants or the amount of any fees paid by those participants.
(II) All winning outcomes reflect the relative knowledge and skill of the participants and are determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of the performance of individuals (athletes in the case of sports events) in multiple real-world sporting or other events.
(III) No winning outcome is based—
(aa) on the score, point-spread, or any performance or performances of any single real-world team or any combination of such teams; or
(bb) solely on any single performance of an individual athlete in any single real-world sporting or other event.
Because there's a prize pool set up beforehand that is independent of the fees paid by the entrants (ie, there is no "pot"), things like the TL Invitational are not subject to sanctions revolving around online gambling. As long as SnGs revolve around players creating a pot with their entrance fees and paying out a portion of those pots to the winner and runner-up, it'd be very hard to argue that SnGs would be covered by this exemption.
Also, FA: http://www.cigital.com/papers/download/developer_gambling.php <-- this is the link to the guys who cracked the shuffling algorithm. It's from 1999, so it's unfortunately a little more dated than I would've liked. But still, collusion in online poker is still decently common.
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There's gonna be something similar, you'll just have to be patient : )
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I'd really love this idea. Even if it was without money. Just spontaneous, automated tournaments. But I echo the sentiments of other that I think this is a legal nightmare for Blizz. Also, because it involves younger players it might be seen in a bad light. I can't see Blizzard supporting it but goodness it would be a lot of fun.
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While this would be an interesting system, I cannot see blizzard implementing such a thing.
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i think this is a nice idea in theory, but it will be abused so much, like arrenged games or players sticking in lower divison by purpose in order to be able to register to silver/bronze tournaments, pown noobs and get their money.
It is ok in poker to have a fat shark playing in micro limits just to gain some safe money, because the noob can always win with luck, but there is almost no luck factor in SC2 so....
Overall i think it should be something that only diamond/pro leagues have, this way it would be fair since only "experienced" and aware players will register in these tournaments.
Anyways the money system doesnt have to be in Bnet2.0, a website could handle it and hopefully one day we'll have a Bnet API so you can manage Bnet tournaments through your own website.
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This is such a great idea. The only problem is the fact that extremely good players will simply throw games to get placed in silver/gold leagues so that they can crush these. They'll just have multiple copies of SC2. I'm not sure how its avoided either.
Many of us would probably play in a few, meet some super high Diamond player in 5 'Gold' tournaments in a row and decide it isn't worth investing any more money.
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On June 19 2010 00:06 skipdog172 wrote:
This is such a great idea. The only problem is the fact that extremely good players will simply throw games to get placed in silver/gold leagues so that they can crush these. They'll just have multiple copies of SC2. I'm not sure how its avoided either.
Many of us would probably play in a few, meet some super high Diamond player in 5 'Gold' tournaments in a row and decide it isn't worth investing any more money.
Wouldn't be legal in the US in the format described. I'm not sure if it'd be legal if there was no Blizzard cut.
Side note, I wouldn't play a money tournament on BNET until they prove they can prevent map hacking.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Thanks - doesn't seem it was Pokerstars they broke tho, but some other room I've never heard of (I didn't play poker back then). Still interesting.
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Sounds like a great idea. Online gambling is illegal in the United States and also if it wasn't you'd have to be 18 to gamble. The majority of starcraft players arn't that old... so... ... yea. it wouldn't work.
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On June 19 2010 00:27 Count_Waltz wrote:
Sounds like a great idea. Online gambling is illegal in the United States and also if it wasn't you'd have to be 18 to gamble. The majority of starcraft players arn't that old... so... ... yea. it wouldn't work.
I don't know if this qualifies as gambling, though.
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I think this is just about the worst idea ever.
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Nice idea, however this would no be implemented for many many reasons.
a) Every countries take on this would be different, Blizzard may even have to deal with the gambling authorities in every country since cash tournaments have "wagers", this would also make the game 18A/21A in most countries or simply banned. Note: there are ZERO casinos in China (above ground) and China's internet censorship probably bans online poker (confirm?).
b) Even if the world were perfect and this would be allowed to happen, it should only be at the top tier level (Pro-league and up). Why? Someone somewhere would easily find some sort of way to farm the bronze league tournaments.
c) Lets not forget that these tournaments and prizes are merely for fun and incentives for nerds like you and I to become better, play better and give entertainment. While the dream of living off these winnings is often desired, its not the goal of the tournament organizers to enrich these players. The goal is to provide entertainment and sometimes make a small profit off advertising themselves.
d) If I could play Starcraft for a living I would, but what's to stop a player like Spirit_Moon, who was basically a God for a period of time, from just basically pooling everyone's money. After a while, who would play with him anymore? (OH SPIRIT MOON IS IN THIS, GTFO!! Can't win!! Withdraw money now!!) While this plan might be good in theory, all the mediocre players would eventually run out of money to throw at this and give up (like online poker) or smarten up and know to avoid competition, which is not something I would want in the community.
The only way to get better is to play better people. How are you ever going to play better people if it costs you more than the time you are already dedicating to the game? Every time I play Starcraft I spend 3+ hours I could have spent doing something else. Do I really want to incur an average hourly cost to this time that would end up being more expensive than World of Warcraft for most people? (no I don't play WoW).
I mean, sure there will be your grinders that know when to play and can execute top level players or place in the money often enough, but what about the other 95% of the population that just bought this game to have fun?
Once the game splits into "money vs play money" we all know what the play money tables are like. Nobody takes it seriously and no matter how many points you get it would be meaningless and therefore nobody would ever play that seriously.
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Dont make it first 3 places are in the pricepool
Make it like 10/30 or something like that , poker does this aswell , so u might get somethin from the cake sometimes !
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[B]
d) While this plan might be good in theory, all the mediocre players would eventually run out of money to throw at this and give up (like online poker) or smarten up and know to avoid competition, which is not something I would want in the community.
The difference is, since online poker is largely luck based as well as skill based, the fish often win pots they "shouldn't" (aka against the odds), giving them the illusion that they are skilled players, and causing them to continuously throw money into it.
So, only the very very best players would actually continue playing at this, and then they would end up breaking nearly even and paying huge amounts of rake.
And quite honestly, i am disgusted that this type of thing is actually being supported by this community.
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While I like the idea, it would be a complete nightmare for Blizzard to implement. The legal issues alone will basically make sc2 either illegal or not worth distributing in over half the world.
Not to mention that unsupervised tournaments for cash is basically an open invitation for cheating, so Blizzard would need a very expensive anti-cheating analysis system in place.
Online poker sites get away with it since they are hosted in offshore tax-havens and aren't actually active in most countries(ie, they are not actively promoting themselves or selling any products).
I don't know many countries which go after the players in those sites, so they are basically doing business in a legal vacuum. They are technically illegal, but players from most countries where they are illegal are still allowed to play on them.
Blizzard does not have those options available to them.
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Sweden33719 Posts
and China's internet censorship probably bans online poker (confirm?).
Yep :<
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EPT
