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On October 13 2011 16:44 coolcor wrote:I just want to say a couple things about common arguments in this thread. Show nested quote +Why would Blizzard continually pay money into putting in a support staff (eg. Dustin Browder, now whether you think he's useful is a different story) if they're not getting any revenue outside of a one-time purchase fee? Show nested quote +is unreasonable to expect a modern company to support a game after launch without some way for them to continue to receive income. People who do are, frankly, insane. For the same reason they supported broodwar, warcraft 3 and diablo 2 for years after release? Or that riot supports their rts games after release(DOW2 is a modern game and is still patched) Valve just released a free dlc co-op campaign with voice acting for portal 2 so I don't think it is fair to say we have to chose between tournament fees or no support companies seemed to have figured out a reason to support games without it. People also keep saying stuff like this. Show nested quote +Because without Blizzard they wouldn't be hosting the event at all.
They did the work of creating the game that you are using to make money off of. It is not just tournaments that are making money on starcraft though. Destiny, Husky and Day9 are all making enough to live without another job and they couldn't do that without blizzard so blizzard should demand some percent of ad revenue and if they don't they are being an irresponsible business that are not maximizing profit to their shareholders. Should blizzard start charging all the casters and players who make money off of streaming or youtube videos? And of course the streaming and video sites themselves also make a profit off of this content. Oh and the also pro teams and websites like team liquid don't forget about them. Also Microsoft should start charging blizzard(plus every other business ever) a percent of revenue if they use or sell windows software to try and make a profit. We don't even know if the tournaments are profitable the IGN guy said that MLG shouldn't brag about raising investment money because that means they are losing money. They might all just be hoping for future growth to make them profitable and that might not come.Would blizzard lower or eliminate fees for a tournament that loses money?
Riot and Valve have both implemented micro-transactions into their games and are making a killing, so those are poor examples.
I believe Blizzard not only continually updated WC3, Diablo 2 and others for the fans but also to form and grow a strong user base, which from the looks of it, has definitely worked.
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On October 13 2011 16:56 ICarrotU wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2011 16:44 coolcor wrote:I just want to say a couple things about common arguments in this thread. Why would Blizzard continually pay money into putting in a support staff (eg. Dustin Browder, now whether you think he's useful is a different story) if they're not getting any revenue outside of a one-time purchase fee? is unreasonable to expect a modern company to support a game after launch without some way for them to continue to receive income. People who do are, frankly, insane. For the same reason they supported broodwar, warcraft 3 and diablo 2 for years after release? Or that riot supports their rts games after release(DOW2 is a modern game and is still patched) Valve just released a free dlc co-op campaign with voice acting for portal 2 so I don't think it is fair to say we have to chose between tournament fees or no support companies seemed to have figured out a reason to support games without it. People also keep saying stuff like this. Because without Blizzard they wouldn't be hosting the event at all.
They did the work of creating the game that you are using to make money off of. It is not just tournaments that are making money on starcraft though. Destiny, Husky and Day9 are all making enough to live without another job and they couldn't do that without blizzard so blizzard should demand some percent of ad revenue and if they don't they are being an irresponsible business that are not maximizing profit to their shareholders. Should blizzard start charging all the casters and players who make money off of streaming or youtube videos? And of course the streaming and video sites themselves also make a profit off of this content. Oh and the also pro teams and websites like team liquid don't forget about them. Also Microsoft should start charging blizzard(plus every other business ever) a percent of revenue if they use or sell windows software to try and make a profit. We don't even know if the tournaments are profitable the IGN guy said that MLG shouldn't brag about raising investment money because that means they are losing money. They might all just be hoping for future growth to make them profitable and that might not come.Would blizzard lower or eliminate fees for a tournament that loses money? Riot and Valve have both implemented micro-transactions into their games and are making a killing, so those are poor examples. I believe Blizzard not only continually updated WC3, Diablo 2 and others for the fans but also to form and grow a strong user base, which from the looks of it, has definitely worked.
Yea I was just going to bring up the in game transactions point for this guy but you beat me to it. Thanks for that.
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The only source for the 50% number is Totalbiscuit who, if you read his twitter, seems to go out of his way to skew everything Blizzard does negatively. I take anything he says with a grain of salt.
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On October 13 2011 09:32 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2011 09:00 jinorazi wrote:On October 13 2011 08:19 aksfjh wrote:On October 13 2011 07:53 jinorazi wrote:On October 13 2011 07:45 Kipsate wrote:On October 13 2011 07:36 jinorazi wrote:On October 13 2011 06:11 Plansix wrote:On October 13 2011 04:07 jinorazi wrote:On October 13 2011 03:44 Plansix wrote:On October 13 2011 03:12 jinorazi wrote:
[quote]
i'm sorry if i sounded like an ignorant douche to be lectured about the obvious.
i'm glad blizzard keeps up with the old games, and frankly, its because people still play it and it doesn't exactly compare to say, games like age of empires 2 which no one plays anymore, there is no need for maintaining it. granted, blizzard dont need to but they do because, perhaps, they care - about their image or about their customers.
i'm just sayin, with the release of sc2, my view towards them did change a bit for the worse but that doesn't mean i hate em by any means. it just feels unfortunate but in the end its just business so it is what is but can't help myself to say something when people are chanting for paid name change - and blizzard is more than happy to do so. its something like this that bothers me. The reason for the paid name change it to keep people from changing their name over and over. It makes it more difficult for other players to report people when they can't do so by simply saying "player X is an ass-hat". It has other benfits as well, but mostly it keeps people locked to one idenity and allows them to address cheating/harrassment. Xbox live does the same thing, for the sole reason that a pay-wall prevents people constently switching their names. And I don't feel you're are ignorant. I do think people hold Blizzard to an unreasonable standard. They have shown time and time again that they do care about the community, want SC2 to explode and are willing to support tournments all over the world. Esports is huge, people are making a living playing Starcraft and compeating in huge tournments. Everything is amazing and no one is happy. blizzard's claim (and advocates) regarding paid name change along with lack of LAN and no cross region play has been debunked by the community by providing better alternatives and more reasonable motive behind why blizzard did what they did with sc2. (id like to keep this short, explaining those will create a long post, pm if you'd like to hear those) Wait, I am confused. You stay that their claims have been debunked by the community providing alternatives. So the community has said "It would be better THIS way" and that makes Blizzards reasoning invalid. How the hell does that work exactly? I go into buy milk and they say it is $2 and I inform them "Look, Ive done the math and I know why our charging $2. Let me provide the reasonable alternative of $1, because what you are looking for isn't acceptable". That doesn't sound like something that would fly in the real world. I would never argue that they don't want money and I am sure there is a bit of "Yeah, well we know they want this to be free, but we are charging for it." But still, I want money, so do they. They arn't charging me monthly or expecting me to pay per game. as you've said, people will abuse the system if it were allowed, however there is absolutely no need to charge money for name change. allow one free name change per month or per season, a reasonable timeframe. people will BM, pretend to be other players, hack/cheat, whatever and all that will be done by the minority. why should everyone else pay for name change when it should be free (as it always has been pre-wow)? unlimited name change did no harm in the past, why all of a sudden does it cause harm now? blizzard will do what they want and no ordinary person have control over it. i'm just sayin, why try to have the cake and eat it too? thats how i see it in my eyes and i'm just stating my opinion(shared with others) that it shouldn't be that way. From a business point of view, if there is demand for a name change and people are willing to pay for it.. Then why should you have it be free? exactly. thats my point, i dislike the fact that people are willing to pay extra for things that i feel, should be included as it has in the past. and its a little glimpse of hope from me that blizzard will look past such thing and give something back to the community. Millions of people play SC2 literally dozens of hours a month. They paid a 1 time fee of $50-60 for that HUGE chunk of time, and for an experience that is always being worked on by a design team. To contrast, people spent $50-60 on Portal 2, a game that people likely never even played for more than 20 hours. You can argue that things like name changes should be free, but you're already getting a LOT out of a game that you paid very little for considering how much time is invested. Don't get mad when they try to capitalize on the great deal you're getting. i'm not sure where you're getting at, since starcraft is "more bang for the buck", its ok to pay more for extra features? might as well charge monthly fee to maintain their servers, right? you talk as if they had no idea they would continue to work on the game long after its release, and they forgot to include that extra cost with the final retail cost of the game. sc2 isn't complete, game wise and battle.net wise. there's still flaws and more features to be introduced. while you might be happy with the current state, i see a lot more room to grow and i expect to see them in the upcoming future. in the end (last expansion), getting a sc2 account will be close to $100(original + 2 expansions) unless some new rates are introduced (battlechest). but for those of us right now, we've spent 60 for original game and spend $20-$30(no idea how much they'll be, not free obviously) for each expansion. It is unreasonable to expect a modern company to support a game after launch without some way for them to continue to receive income. People who do are, frankly, insane. My firm commonly refuses to offer legal advice pasted after a case is resolved. Our clients do not like it and expect to receive support after the case is over, but that is not how our firm works. Also $100 is a small price to pay for the amount of support and entertainment I have and will received through SC2. It is the best $60 I have spent in about 5 years. And they aren't nickle and dimeing us as much as they could. They could charge for maps or per season. I am sure there a bunch of suits at Activision who are pushing for this all the time and Blizzard just won't do it. Once again, we got a great game, massive support for Esports. We have people flying all over the world to play SC2 in front of huge, screaming crowds. Everything is amazing and no one is happy because Blizzard is making money and won't give us the ability to pirate their game...I mean LAN.
This is a good post. The only people in here that are anti-Blizzard are the naive children that have real sense of the real corporate world and how businesses run. Heck these kids don't have any real concept of running because they're simply too narrow-minded to look at everything from someone else's perspective
Blizzard have done things wrong but they've done much more right.
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On October 13 2011 17:24 Cataphract wrote:
The only source for the 50% number is Totalbiscuit who, if you read his twitter, seems to go out of his way to skew everything Blizzard does negatively. I take anything he says with a grain of salt.
I follow TB alot, and i totally disagree that he skews everything blizz does negatively.
Its strange to me how many people have this mentality of "Well its a corporation, why should they ever forgo profit where profit can be obtained?" May I just present the idea that money isnt everything, even if you are a corporation, whose main goal it is to make money. I mean, a few people do weigh every little thing they do with their life in money. But most people, I feel, choose a profession or a certain market because they care about that particular thing that they do. Because they care about the product itself, and the value it has that goes beyond the simple dollar value.
In this case, Im sure there are many blizz employees who care alot about having an impact on the future of esports.
If your sole, your very only ambition with a product is to make money, then I believe that products only end value will be the profit it makes you. Thats a poor description of Starcraft, the sport.
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On October 12 2011 20:55 ThyHate wrote:
That's the difference between Blizzard and Riot...
Great game / Great esport support. Pick One.
You dont think riot is taking ad revenue for all these tournament that they are forking over money for? I would be surprised if they didnt.
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Half the ad revenue makes no sense whatsoever.
20% maybe 30% is definitely pushing it IMO.
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On October 13 2011 18:02 zhurai wrote:
Half the ad revenue makes no sense whatsoever.
20% maybe 30% is definitely pushing it IMO.
Makes tons of sense for a tournament with large ad revenue. That's money. Corporation out there to make money. They have the power through EULA and others to force it legally.
For smaller tournament, sub 5k prizes for example, makes no sense (You are discouraging fan-led ventures for very little revenue gained). Hence, no contracts for them.
If this was onerous, you'd hear some rebellion from big name providers (MLG drops SC2, for instance). Corp. are in it to make money. Not abide by people's petty notions of how much profit is too much profit for other people.
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On October 13 2011 12:09 FairForever wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2011 09:04 qyk05328 wrote:On October 13 2011 08:47 familyguy123 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
If I buy a ball and play football with it, do I have to pay monthly fee to Nike for using it? Would Nike require half my ad revenue on any games played with it?
.... the answer to that question is obviously no, but this is so incredibly off key i don't know where to start. first, you don't need to pay for the use of nike's football beyond the initial cost, and neither do you for sc2. there's no parallel, unless youre describing the use of nike footballs in NFL or other revenue-generating games, in which case i would assume the answer is yes. i know for a fact Spalding charges the NBA and if Nike were to have a monopoly (which I'm not sure it does...) it would charge them too. but even if that weren't the case, it's not because nike is fulfilling some moral or legal obligation to football fans or players. it's just plain unenforceable. were it to be the case nike could ENFORCE this (like blizzard could enforce playing fees), then you can be sure as hell they would too, if it made business sense for them. the only reason why blizzard doesn't for sc2 (even though it set a precedent with WoW) is that its a different business model. WoW is for the addicted and compulsive player, sc2 is going to be an eSport and needs a wide audience to gain traction in terms of tournament viewership, along with which comes more copies sold / ad revenues. you can be sure as hell if sc2 were the same combination of addicting / unsuitable for mass viewership as WoW, theyd follow a subscriber model too.. but they don't. it's never about their moral obligation to you, and neither is it with Nike. in fact, if you want to talk moral obligation, hell LEGAL obligation, Blizzard is legally and morally obligated to maximize its shareholders' profits. + Show Spoiler +that obligation to those whose livelihoods depend on it (i.e. blizzard employees with stock options), or the equity owners who took risk in ownership of the business, ought to be compensated first and foremost. unless of course, pissing you off clashes with the customers' preferences in a way that threatens its own bottomline, but its never about you NOR SHOULD it be If you start liquidating all the company assets that too would increase the short term profits for the shareholders, but in the long term would be devastating for the company. In the same way, burning your clients goodwill by milking respected franchises dry would eventually ruin the company. However, by that time the higher management would have cached their options and left, only the shareholders would pay the bill. Would this be the responsible and moral way of conducting business or should we look beyond the next quarter profits? I think you can look all around you and see where this business model leads. Show nested quote +This is bs. Why?
Because you're crazy if you think that MLG or IEM or whatever isn't going to prominently display SC2, the biggest and most popular RTS game at the moment. Blizzard can do this and maximize shareholder value in the long run because people are willing to pay.
Why can't Riot do this? If Riot did this companies wouldn't bother with LoL (in fact, some of them have to get paid in order to display the game). So this is smart strategy from Blizzard, since they've built up the brand enough that they can charge others to use it.
So this doesn't hurt long-term profitability while benefiting short-term profits. Doesn't sound like it hurts. You may not be happy with it but people (including new customers, once they're older) are still going to buy Warcraft IV and SC3. I don't know of anyone who wouldn't buy those games because Blizzard charges a fee to tournaments. Show nested quote +
The only argument is if these tournaments then choose not to host SC2, then marketing suffers, and less people buy SC2. But I doubt that would happen because Blizzard knows that these tournaments do make a profit off of showing SC2. Obviously I haven't taken all the fixed costs into account, but MLG only gives out 14k in prize money... they make $70 or whatever from each player pass alone. Then take into account the real money makers (spectator passes and sponsorship) and they've probably pulled a profit, even after taking into account the fees they owe Blizzard.
Yes, they will, just like they'll be buying the next guitar hero. Oh wait! They actually milked it dry for a few years and then laid off all the developers. You can talk all day about your omniscient "rational managers" and how they know what's best for the company, but all evidence suggests that this is a very short-sighted approach and in the long term hurts everybody.
To think that the same fate doesn't await Blizzard because they have some special place in Bobby Kotick's heart is simply naïve. In fact, everything so far suggests that it's already happening, only in slow motion.
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On October 13 2011 16:38 TBO wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2011 16:28 terranghost wrote:On October 12 2011 22:10 MarKeD wrote:On October 12 2011 21:33 FaKeSC2 wrote:
If Blizzard doesn't get revenues from tournaments, they have no incentive to balance and support the game for the next 10-15 years.
Shouldn't they owe it to consumers? What did I actually pay for with this game? I doubt many buy starcraft 2 for the single player (lol), if we're paying full price for pretty much what is 3 games, of which the multilayer is the main reason for purchasing the game should be balanced and supported. The fact is blizzard could afford to do this quite easily, valve updated tf2 for many years for free, and at no point was in anywhere near as expensive as Starcraft 2. The fact is Blizzard-Activision is a souless corporation, out to make as much money as they possibly can. It's just sad to me that there aren't really any games that can compete with starcraft 2, so they get away with it. Here lies your problem what is stopping others from making a game that competes with starcraft2. How much profit is too much profit? Keep in mind that Corporations and businesses make money in the form of profit? Workers make money in the form of salaries. I sure as hell wouldn't want someone coming up to me saying that I'm soulless for making money from where I work and that I now earn too much money from working so I have to start getting less. So why should we treat corporations that way? What they do with their product is their right. If you don't like it you can boycott the game apparently if they are soulless and evil you will get plenty of people to rally alongside you. Would you rather them take some profit from tournaments or give us a monthly fee like WOW does. You must of been one of those people who gets to the terms and conditions and just pushes accept. I mean who cares what it says I just wanna play. Well if you read and thought they were soulless and didn't want to take part with this evil capitalism. Then let me put here the first paragraph of the terms and conditions. THIS SOFTWARE IS LICENSED, NOT SOLD. BY INSTALLING, COPYING OR OTHERWISE USING THE GAME (DEFINED BELOW), YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO INSTALL, COPY OR USE THE GAME. IF YOU REJECT THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT WITHIN THIRTY (30) DAYS AFTER YOUR PURCHASE, YOU MAY CALL (800) 757-7707 TO REQUEST A FULL REFUND OF THE PURCHASE PRICE.They are even willing to give anti-capitalism guys a refund how nice. It might be a technicality but you can very well host a major tournament without ever buying SC2 / Accepting the EULA. It's not the EULA/TOS which is important here but general copyright laws (and in Germany the UWG might be also of interest) It's definitely fair for Blizzard to get a share but is it really fair that the players (who produce the content in the end) don't get their share too? Blizzard might have created the game but it's the players and their intellectual work put in a match who are the reason why people watch it and by taking the alleged 50% Blizzard is as much exploiting the players as companies making money off Starcraft II would be if they didn't pay their share to Blizzard. if Blizzard get 25% and the participating Teams/Players the other 25% e-Sport could really enter a golden era - which in the long run would even profit Blizzard again.
This is precisely what I wanted to say with the ball analogy. It's the players' skill that should be rewarded most because they actually generate the product that people come to see. Pretty much everybody has already bought the game, why go to an event if the primary reason was to see Blizzard's content? They could just stay home and play the single player all day, I'm sure it will be at least 50% as fun.
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On October 13 2011 16:38 TBO wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2011 16:28 terranghost wrote:On October 12 2011 22:10 MarKeD wrote:On October 12 2011 21:33 FaKeSC2 wrote:
If Blizzard doesn't get revenues from tournaments, they have no incentive to balance and support the game for the next 10-15 years.
Shouldn't they owe it to consumers? What did I actually pay for with this game? I doubt many buy starcraft 2 for the single player (lol), if we're paying full price for pretty much what is 3 games, of which the multilayer is the main reason for purchasing the game should be balanced and supported. The fact is blizzard could afford to do this quite easily, valve updated tf2 for many years for free, and at no point was in anywhere near as expensive as Starcraft 2. The fact is Blizzard-Activision is a souless corporation, out to make as much money as they possibly can. It's just sad to me that there aren't really any games that can compete with starcraft 2, so they get away with it. Here lies your problem what is stopping others from making a game that competes with starcraft2. How much profit is too much profit? Keep in mind that Corporations and businesses make money in the form of profit? Workers make money in the form of salaries. I sure as hell wouldn't want someone coming up to me saying that I'm soulless for making money from where I work and that I now earn too much money from working so I have to start getting less. So why should we treat corporations that way? What they do with their product is their right. If you don't like it you can boycott the game apparently if they are soulless and evil you will get plenty of people to rally alongside you. Would you rather them take some profit from tournaments or give us a monthly fee like WOW does. You must of been one of those people who gets to the terms and conditions and just pushes accept. I mean who cares what it says I just wanna play. Well if you read and thought they were soulless and didn't want to take part with this evil capitalism. Then let me put here the first paragraph of the terms and conditions. THIS SOFTWARE IS LICENSED, NOT SOLD. BY INSTALLING, COPYING OR OTHERWISE USING THE GAME (DEFINED BELOW), YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO INSTALL, COPY OR USE THE GAME. IF YOU REJECT THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT WITHIN THIRTY (30) DAYS AFTER YOUR PURCHASE, YOU MAY CALL (800) 757-7707 TO REQUEST A FULL REFUND OF THE PURCHASE PRICE.They are even willing to give anti-capitalism guys a refund how nice. It's definitely fair for Blizzard to get a share but is it really fair that the players (who produce the content in the end) don't get their share too? Blizzard might have created the game but it's the players and their intellectual work put in a match who are the reason why people watch it and by taking the alleged 50% Blizzard is as much exploiting the players as companies making money off Starcraft II would be if they didn't pay their share to Blizzard. if Blizzard get 25% and the participating Teams/Players the other 25% e-Sport could really enter a golden era - which in the long run would even profit Blizzard again.
The 25% / 25% deal would be great but it would be nigh on impossible to enforce in practice. How do you distribute the money among a 1024/512/256 player field? Is it Blizzard's or the organizers responibility? It would mean a crap ton of administrative work for a few buck in many cases. How about if a player drop out in ro128, he should get his share of the pool since he contributed to the content. There are a million different scenarios that would make this a nightmare to administrate.
And again, the 50% is from a guy who heard it from a guy but this was later shut down by a guy who's been in direct talks with Blizzard.
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Have anyone found a legit source on the cut Blizzard makes? all I see here is speculation...
50% of ad-revenue makes no sense to me, it's absurd.
I agree that Blizzard needs to make money to keep supporting the game, but I don't think it's that much...
off-topic: I see people here saying that LoL get more viewers than SC2 in tournaments... I don't believe it. would like to see any source to confirm that... doesn't make sense to me.
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On October 13 2011 19:06 ilbh wrote:
Have anyone found a legit source on the cut Blizzard makes? all I see here is speculation...
50% of ad-revenue makes no sense to me, it's absurd.
I agree that Blizzard needs to make money to keep supporting the game, but I don't think it's that much...
off-topic: I see people here saying that LoL get more viewers than SC2 in tournaments... I don't believe it. would like to see any source to confirm that... doesn't make sense to me.
In most tournaments LoL got more viewers, a stream link was embedded into the intro to the game and the stream embedded into their website. Advertising straight from the source.
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On October 13 2011 19:04 Longshank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2011 16:38 TBO wrote:On October 13 2011 16:28 terranghost wrote:On October 12 2011 22:10 MarKeD wrote:On October 12 2011 21:33 FaKeSC2 wrote:
If Blizzard doesn't get revenues from tournaments, they have no incentive to balance and support the game for the next 10-15 years.
Shouldn't they owe it to consumers? What did I actually pay for with this game? I doubt many buy starcraft 2 for the single player (lol), if we're paying full price for pretty much what is 3 games, of which the multilayer is the main reason for purchasing the game should be balanced and supported. The fact is blizzard could afford to do this quite easily, valve updated tf2 for many years for free, and at no point was in anywhere near as expensive as Starcraft 2. The fact is Blizzard-Activision is a souless corporation, out to make as much money as they possibly can. It's just sad to me that there aren't really any games that can compete with starcraft 2, so they get away with it. Here lies your problem what is stopping others from making a game that competes with starcraft2. How much profit is too much profit? Keep in mind that Corporations and businesses make money in the form of profit? Workers make money in the form of salaries. I sure as hell wouldn't want someone coming up to me saying that I'm soulless for making money from where I work and that I now earn too much money from working so I have to start getting less. So why should we treat corporations that way? What they do with their product is their right. If you don't like it you can boycott the game apparently if they are soulless and evil you will get plenty of people to rally alongside you. Would you rather them take some profit from tournaments or give us a monthly fee like WOW does. You must of been one of those people who gets to the terms and conditions and just pushes accept. I mean who cares what it says I just wanna play. Well if you read and thought they were soulless and didn't want to take part with this evil capitalism. Then let me put here the first paragraph of the terms and conditions. THIS SOFTWARE IS LICENSED, NOT SOLD. BY INSTALLING, COPYING OR OTHERWISE USING THE GAME (DEFINED BELOW), YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO INSTALL, COPY OR USE THE GAME. IF YOU REJECT THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT WITHIN THIRTY (30) DAYS AFTER YOUR PURCHASE, YOU MAY CALL (800) 757-7707 TO REQUEST A FULL REFUND OF THE PURCHASE PRICE.They are even willing to give anti-capitalism guys a refund how nice. It's definitely fair for Blizzard to get a share but is it really fair that the players (who produce the content in the end) don't get their share too? Blizzard might have created the game but it's the players and their intellectual work put in a match who are the reason why people watch it and by taking the alleged 50% Blizzard is as much exploiting the players as companies making money off Starcraft II would be if they didn't pay their share to Blizzard. if Blizzard get 25% and the participating Teams/Players the other 25% e-Sport could really enter a golden era - which in the long run would even profit Blizzard again. The 25% / 25% deal would be great but it would be nigh on impossible to enforce in practice. How do you distribute the money among a 1024/512/256 player field? Is it Blizzard's or the organizers responibility? It would mean a crap ton of administrative work for a few buck in many cases. How about if a player drop out in ro128, he should get his share of the pool since he contributed to the content. There are a million different scenarios that would make this a nightmare to administrate. And again, the 50% is from a guy who heard it from a guy but this was later shut down by a guy who's been in direct talks with Blizzard.
No, this quote comes from a guy who has single-handedly created three separate, 5000 dollar tournaments with his own money and who couldn't expand the prize pool for fear of Blizzard getting the lion's share of his only source of revenue. This puts him in the best position to speak about this matter, and thanks to Blizzard's NDA we won't get any better so we have to work with it.
And the guy who shut down the thread most likely didn't want for TL to burn any bridges with Blizzard, seeing how dependent TL is on having good relations with them. Which actually comes to show you how much you should respect TotalBiscuit for having the balls to say what he thinks instead of being a little corporate bitch like everybody else.
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Stop bringing up that Blizzard makes money through WoW and that they should just gauge their WoW-playing customers more to pay for SC2, I hope you see how ridiculous that is.
You honestly should want Blizzard to make money from e-sports: it incentivizes them to keep supporting the scene and have staff for multiplayer development and tournament support. It might be that Blizzard will neglect us anyway and then either the game will die or a different organization will take over, which will still have to be supported in some way and will have most likely less power to make changes than Blizzard given how battle.net is set-up, so I'm not sure if it's something you should want.
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On October 13 2011 19:40 qyk05328 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2011 19:04 Longshank wrote:On October 13 2011 16:38 TBO wrote:On October 13 2011 16:28 terranghost wrote:On October 12 2011 22:10 MarKeD wrote:On October 12 2011 21:33 FaKeSC2 wrote:
If Blizzard doesn't get revenues from tournaments, they have no incentive to balance and support the game for the next 10-15 years.
Shouldn't they owe it to consumers? What did I actually pay for with this game? I doubt many buy starcraft 2 for the single player (lol), if we're paying full price for pretty much what is 3 games, of which the multilayer is the main reason for purchasing the game should be balanced and supported. The fact is blizzard could afford to do this quite easily, valve updated tf2 for many years for free, and at no point was in anywhere near as expensive as Starcraft 2. The fact is Blizzard-Activision is a souless corporation, out to make as much money as they possibly can. It's just sad to me that there aren't really any games that can compete with starcraft 2, so they get away with it. Here lies your problem what is stopping others from making a game that competes with starcraft2. How much profit is too much profit? Keep in mind that Corporations and businesses make money in the form of profit? Workers make money in the form of salaries. I sure as hell wouldn't want someone coming up to me saying that I'm soulless for making money from where I work and that I now earn too much money from working so I have to start getting less. So why should we treat corporations that way? What they do with their product is their right. If you don't like it you can boycott the game apparently if they are soulless and evil you will get plenty of people to rally alongside you. Would you rather them take some profit from tournaments or give us a monthly fee like WOW does. You must of been one of those people who gets to the terms and conditions and just pushes accept. I mean who cares what it says I just wanna play. Well if you read and thought they were soulless and didn't want to take part with this evil capitalism. Then let me put here the first paragraph of the terms and conditions. THIS SOFTWARE IS LICENSED, NOT SOLD. BY INSTALLING, COPYING OR OTHERWISE USING THE GAME (DEFINED BELOW), YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO INSTALL, COPY OR USE THE GAME. IF YOU REJECT THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT WITHIN THIRTY (30) DAYS AFTER YOUR PURCHASE, YOU MAY CALL (800) 757-7707 TO REQUEST A FULL REFUND OF THE PURCHASE PRICE.They are even willing to give anti-capitalism guys a refund how nice. It's definitely fair for Blizzard to get a share but is it really fair that the players (who produce the content in the end) don't get their share too? Blizzard might have created the game but it's the players and their intellectual work put in a match who are the reason why people watch it and by taking the alleged 50% Blizzard is as much exploiting the players as companies making money off Starcraft II would be if they didn't pay their share to Blizzard. if Blizzard get 25% and the participating Teams/Players the other 25% e-Sport could really enter a golden era - which in the long run would even profit Blizzard again. The 25% / 25% deal would be great but it would be nigh on impossible to enforce in practice. How do you distribute the money among a 1024/512/256 player field? Is it Blizzard's or the organizers responibility? It would mean a crap ton of administrative work for a few buck in many cases. How about if a player drop out in ro128, he should get his share of the pool since he contributed to the content. There are a million different scenarios that would make this a nightmare to administrate. And again, the 50% is from a guy who heard it from a guy but this was later shut down by a guy who's been in direct talks with Blizzard. And the guy who shut down the thread most likely didn't want for TL to burn any bridges with Blizzard, seeing how dependent TL is on having good relations with them. Which actually comes to show you how much you should respect TotalBiscuit for having the balls to say what he thinks instead of being a little corporate bitch like everybody else.
Just wow. On the topic of burning bridges...
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On October 13 2011 05:51 darkest44 wrote:That is utterly ridiculous and disgusting if true or even anywhere close to true. They are already getting incredible free advertising for their game, not to mention every player/caster/observer in the tournaments have already paid them $60 for their game copy so they can log in and play in the tournament and they still need to take half the ad revenue from these much smaller companies running tournaments? Starcraft games would not sell half as well without esports around it and the game would die out far sooner without esports instead of still sell copies 5-10 years later like BW did. Blizzard has become such a scumbag greedy company since joining Activision and bobby kotick. This company already makes hundreds of millions of dollars a month from WoW subscriptions alone, forget about game sales and all the other stuff, the last thing they need to do is stick their greedy hands in the pockets of struggling companies 1/100th the size running tournaments, trying to grow esports while blizzard does jack all except run the yearly blizzcon tourney. Disgusting.
To even include WoW in a discussion about SCII is utterly ridiculous and disgusting. They have NOTHING to do with eachother. And blaming a company for wanting to make money off their own product, even though they're making money from something completely different is just.. well i'm sure you can tell how stupid that is yourself.
It's obvious that you don't know why a corporation is even started in the first place.
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On October 13 2011 17:10 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2011 16:56 ICarrotU wrote:On October 13 2011 16:44 coolcor wrote:I just want to say a couple things about common arguments in this thread. Why would Blizzard continually pay money into putting in a support staff (eg. Dustin Browder, now whether you think he's useful is a different story) if they're not getting any revenue outside of a one-time purchase fee? is unreasonable to expect a modern company to support a game after launch without some way for them to continue to receive income. People who do are, frankly, insane. For the same reason they supported broodwar, warcraft 3 and diablo 2 for years after release? Or that riot supports their rts games after release(DOW2 is a modern game and is still patched) Valve just released a free dlc co-op campaign with voice acting for portal 2 so I don't think it is fair to say we have to chose between tournament fees or no support companies seemed to have figured out a reason to support games without it. People also keep saying stuff like this. Because without Blizzard they wouldn't be hosting the event at all.
They did the work of creating the game that you are using to make money off of. It is not just tournaments that are making money on starcraft though. Destiny, Husky and Day9 are all making enough to live without another job and they couldn't do that without blizzard so blizzard should demand some percent of ad revenue and if they don't they are being an irresponsible business that are not maximizing profit to their shareholders. Should blizzard start charging all the casters and players who make money off of streaming or youtube videos? And of course the streaming and video sites themselves also make a profit off of this content. Oh and the also pro teams and websites like team liquid don't forget about them. Also Microsoft should start charging blizzard(plus every other business ever) a percent of revenue if they use or sell windows software to try and make a profit. We don't even know if the tournaments are profitable the IGN guy said that MLG shouldn't brag about raising investment money because that means they are losing money. They might all just be hoping for future growth to make them profitable and that might not come.Would blizzard lower or eliminate fees for a tournament that loses money? Riot and Valve have both implemented micro-transactions into their games and are making a killing, so those are poor examples. I believe Blizzard not only continually updated WC3, Diablo 2 and others for the fans but also to form and grow a strong user base, which from the looks of it, has definitely worked. Yea I was just going to bring up the in game transactions point for this guy but you beat me to it. Thanks for that.
To be fair Riots LoL is a free game to play and you can unlock every single thing in the game aside from character skins for free. The micro transactions are either for lazy people or people who want to style up there champion and it works.
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Online tournaments over $5000 do have to give a portion of the ad revenue, Offline tournaments do NOT have to give any revenue ( i believe )
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Don't forget they sold some millions of copies of SC2 and now everyone will buy HoTS and the next expansion and all the knew players that will get into SC2 because of streams, tournaments and events will buy not one but 3 games(even if they in the future will have a nice package and a lower price) it will mean that in the end of the SC2 life they will have sold millions of copies for every version and to that will add the revenue they get from events and tournaments..
I believe people should get a licence and market blizzard/activision brand but for the sake of the "sport" they shouldn't get nothing from the tournaments and events that on the big picture will spread their game and increase it's longevity to the fullest..
Do you guys think that BW would still sell or at least sell for so many years if it wasn't a esport? It's because of BW, that they created this rules, because they knew they would be able to milk the cow even further, but in my opinion this will be another hiccup in the growth of "SC2" and esports.
So yeah for once.. this actually kills esports!
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EPT
