[D] GSL Stream/Vod Pricing - Will you buy? - Page 19

On September 02 2010 10:23 Vz0 wrote:
Interesting question:

What if the stream is
1.) 100% Smooth
2.) 1080p + 3D Ready


???

On September 02 2010 10:28 Hesmyrr wrote:
I don't care, we should organize and go to nearest Korean embassy and complain in the banner of prejudice. Branding "racism" as a sword always get something done

On September 02 2010 11:23 Zanez.smarty wrote:
This is a huge mistake. They will do this for season 1, and 98% of people will watch illegal, restreams or stolen VoDs/Replays. Then they will realize they made a mistake and season 2 will be considerably cheaper... But honestly it is too late, because by that point, everyone will have figured out about restreaming and VoD pirating, so they will have no need to buy the subscription... the convenience will be gone.

I was more than willing to purchase a premium account for GomTV to watch the GSL, because it would be simple, convenient and obvious. But now I won't, because the price is not worth the convenience... so I am going to find a solid restreamer, watch Korean version or get hold of the VoDs some other way, which will be more complicated and frustrating, but once I have figured out how to do that by the end of the month, I will have no reason to go to GomTV even if they lower the price.

This sounds like one of two things to me. Either Xenophobia or simple ignorance...

The only reasoning I can see behind such a gigantic price is... well that they simply do not want us to watch it. They can pretend they do by providing an English client and giving us Tastosis to commentate, that way their sponsors (Western companies like Intel) and Blizzard will be happy that they are providing the service. This price will just turn away foreigners, they will make minimal profits from it, that way when they do their profit projections, they can see that they are losing money or gaining nothing by providing their service to the west, and therefore have an excuse to stop all english streaming entirely. It seems completely unreasonable, but possible.
KESPA is related to GOM in some way or another, so I can honestly see a potential hand in this from them... KESPA stands to profit if SC2 fails in either Korea or the West.

The other reason I can see for this price is downright stupidity and ignorance. They either think that 50$ is a perfect price for us, overfed, consumerist, rich Americans, or they have absolutely no knowledge of how economics work. I can't imagine the latter is necessarily the case, because I have a hard time believing that a big company could have gotten as far as it did without the knowledge of how a basic economic model... I mean do they really honestly believe that charging more money means more profits? Seriously?
I suppose they could misunderstand their demographic... The majority of SC2 players are college students and young people with very little spare income (I don't get my loan till the 7th anyway). We can't afford to pay such unreasonable amounts for the game. Also, we are in a different timezone from those Koreans (REALLY!?)... I personally need to wake up at 3am to see the games live. Most people will miss the majority of the streams, so it seems ridiculous to pay a subscription for something we will rarely use. Maybe they don't understand that?

To anyone who thinks Blizzard is responsible...
You have no backing for believing that. None whatsoever. Blizzard has never been mentioned, nor do they have anything to gain for charging such a ridiculous amount for the world to see e-sports. If you can tell me what they have to gain, I will give you a cookie, but you have nothing...
Blizzard is an English, western company. They have something to gain ($$$) from seeing e-sports expand to the west. Making it so 98% of the hardcore (much less the casual) audience cannot afford to see the games does not benefit them in any way shape or form. They will not make money off of this, because no one will buy it. They will not kill brood war from this, because it would just squelch SC2, which would not benefit them. Brood war will just live longer, but Blizz will not earn profits from that.
So how will Blizz earn money from this? What exactly makes you think that this is the work of Blizzard/Satan/Activision?
This is GOMTV being Ignorant, Stupid, Xenophobic or some retarded mix of all 3 (which is what I think it is).

On September 02 2010 12:42 errol1001 wrote:
junkacc, are you aware that they did this during gom season 3 too? Everyone was similarly upset about the pricing then, too. IIRC it was pretty much the same, except that now they have completely taken away the free options.

Seems like someone looked at the results of gom season 3 and said 'people are just watching the free versions, so let's get rid of the free versions!'... and knocked up the price some to boot. It's probably going to be the same this time around - low quality stream, and very low quality stream if you can't handle the low quality stream. and most people in the US can't even stream the very low quality stream reliably...

There were also issues with the VODS too, I think. Audio out of sync, again not so good quality, probably other things..

I graduated and now have plenty of disposable income.. but I do not want to encourage this.

On September 02 2010 12:26 junkacc wrote:


You have no backing or evidence for your assertions either. Given the spat between KeSPA and Gretech, I don't think KeSPA influences anything.

On the otherhand, have you ever wondered why Blizz sold rights to SC2 for $1 and now this comes along? I think you are the one who is zenophobic, since you think Gretech/Gom are stupid asking for such ridiculous prices. Oh those asians, how dumb. Maybe Gretech/Gom did the math taking into account Blizzard's cut, and found this is the price that makes profits for them.

On September 02 2010 13:54 Zanez.smarty wrote:



I will ignore you accusing me as a racist considering you lack any reasoning for it...
You seem to have a good idea what Blizzard's cut is on this. So care to enlighten us?
I see KESPA having far more to gain than Blizzard for charging such a ridiculous amount.
Not that it is likely either of them are responsible. We are all looking for people to point fingers at, and in all honesty until we have more information it seems like the only person/group we can blame is GOM... Blizz has nothing to gain from these prices, KESPA has been fighting with these people for ages... there has always been issues with getting decent streams for eSports outside of Korea for reasons unknown.
So I have given my possible explanations for such a ridiculous price. It seems your theory is that Blizzard is charging them something unholy to stream it to us in the west, but with some kind of convoluted financing method that allows them to stream Korean versions in Korea for free... This kind of thought seems to be coupled with the idea that Blizzard has some paralytic fear of profits, considering the poll... Trust me, Blizzard knows how to make a profit... in fact, I believe they are very very good at it... and anyone with any remote understanding of economics understands that high prices =/= high profits.
Trust me, both Blizzard and GOM understand the concept of how to make money. They both know that if you put the price this high you will lose a considerable chunk of money. They have gigantic financial divisions who's SOLE PURPOSE is to find out how to maximize profits, and no one on earth would make a price plan like this in order to maximize profits... There is some other reason behind this...
If Blizzard is charging GOM a HUGE amount of money for the streaming rights (which would be stupid because...) then GOM would be stupid to charge this amount of money to view the stream (because this price plan is no in place to maximize income). This destroys eSports, costing Blizzard a ton of money, and vaporizing GOM outside of Korea.
Yeah that sounds like a good idea.

Mark my words, something funny is going on behind the scenes... This is not about greed, because very little money will be flowing... this is about something else.

On September 02 2010 13:54 Zanez.smarty wrote:



I will ignore you accusing me as a racist considering you lack any reasoning for it...
You seem to have a good idea what Blizzard's cut is on this. So care to enlighten us?
I see KESPA having far more to gain than Blizzard for charging such a ridiculous amount.
Not that it is likely either of them are responsible. We are all looking for people to point fingers at, and in all honesty until we have more information it seems like the only person/group we can blame is GOM... Blizz has nothing to gain from these prices, KESPA has been fighting with these people for ages... there has always been issues with getting decent streams for eSports outside of Korea for reasons unknown.
So I have given my possible explanations for such a ridiculous price. It seems your theory is that Blizzard is charging them something unholy to stream it to us in the west, but with some kind of convoluted financing method that allows them to stream Korean versions in Korea for free... This kind of thought seems to be coupled with the idea that Blizzard has some paralytic fear of profits, considering the poll... Trust me, Blizzard knows how to make a profit... in fact, I believe they are very very good at it... and anyone with any remote understanding of economics understands that high prices =/= high profits.
Trust me, both Blizzard and GOM understand the concept of how to make money. They both know that if you put the price this high you will lose a considerable chunk of money. They have gigantic financial divisions who's SOLE PURPOSE is to find out how to maximize profits, and no one on earth would make a price plan like this in order to maximize profits... There is some other reason behind this...
If Blizzard is charging GOM a HUGE amount of money for the streaming rights (which would be stupid because...) then GOM would be stupid to charge this amount of money to view the stream (because this price plan is no in place to maximize income). This destroys eSports, costing Blizzard a ton of money, and vaporizing GOM outside of Korea.
Yeah that sounds like a good idea.

Mark my words, something funny is going on behind the scenes... This is not about greed, because very little money will be flowing... this is about something else.

On September 02 2010 14:10 junkacc wrote:


You are the one who brought racism into this in the first place. Care to elaborate why you think this is zenophobia? You say GOM is influenced by zenophobia and then go on to say GOM knows how to make money so it doesn't make sense... so then you blame KeSPA. See any contradiction in that? WTF is with people like you who have zero reasoning skills. How hard is it to understand KeSPA has NO INFLUENCE IN THIS WHATSOEVER CONTRACTUALLY OR BY AFFILIATION.

I think I'll stop right here. Your arguments speak for themselves on how misinformed you are. I will leave it up to other readers to gauge if your logic stems from racism/lack of understanding or not.

On September 02 2010 14:16 Go0g3n wrote:


I'm sorry, but this is BS (no offense). GOM already used to offer a paid subscription for higher quality stream and VODs for StarCraft TG Sambo 3, - a logical step in an absolutely standard practice in pay-per-view switch process:

1. Offer media content for free via another broadcaster (MBC) with commercials and all the rest of it.
2. As the audience grows over the course of several years, - offer a premium package (HQ stream, VODs, special event casting).
3. As a perspective audience is established, - switch to a 100% paid service with a number of different packages and options available.

All of this is absolutely standard and has been done by almost every single paid cable television provider all over the world. It's even easier for Gretech as they are the exclusive rights holder and broadcaster of Starcraft II in Korea.

As for the financial side of it, I would be surprised if Blizzard didn't charge Gretech a considerable negotiable fee for unlimited broadcasting rights, the same KeSPA (OGN/MBC) used to pay Blizzard over the course of 10 or so years.

But this is not about profits, obviously... Look at the number of people who are going to pay for this stream! The poll is on the front page of this thread.
If this were about profits, they would charge something like 20$ for both streaming and vods, because more people would buy it, meaning more money would come in.
1723 people in the poll.
53 people spending 50$ would get them $2650
1000 people spending 5$ would get them $5000
It is likely that they will earn far more money by charging less money for their service.

On September 02 2010 15:19 Go0g3n wrote:


1. It's never about instantaneous profits and never will be.
2. Korean broadcasters in the end only care about Korean viewership in millions, not foreigner Internet viewers in thousands (tens of thousands at the very best), it's more of a courtesy or an experiment.
3. A TL.net poll (bottom right corner) shows 3% Yes and 11% Posslble, - numbers likely to increase if any of the foreigners makes it into top 16 or further and follows it up with some good games in earlier rounds. 15% out of 4000 is already 600x50$ (or even 600x20$), which is more than enough to pay 5 people (2 casters, director, technicians) a monthly wage, support the thing and build on it.

On September 02 2010 15:24 Zanez.smarty wrote:


Instantaneous Profits are one thing, but they must surely know this will damage their future profits from the west as well. So why don't they care about the west? Why is Korea all that matters with esports?

On September 01 2010 22:42 TanX wrote:
Being a university student I can safely say that there is no way in hell that I am able to pay that much for a replay! 5 bucks a series or something would be possible, but 20 bucks a pop, and 30 bucks vods? forget it.

Good thing the internet is free if you search long enough!

On September 02 2010 15:24 Zanez.smarty wrote:


Instantaneous Profits are one thing, but they must surely know this will damage their future profits from the west as well. So why don't they care about the west? Why is Korea all that matters with esports?