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On November 01 2011 10:42 Snaphoo wrote:
That depends on a lot of things like venue jurisdiction (where will the dispute be ajudicated?) and contracts. I'm not sure if players sign contracts with tournaments, but most such contracts require that you agree that the venue for any case will be in a place of the tournament's/business's choice, generally in the same country as the venue or a place with a very favorable legal environment for big business.
Just a few things: You don't NEED a choice of laws clause. Without one, it simply would default to the jurisdiction in which the event was held. Or if both parties are American citizens, you could sue in either your jurisdiction or theirs.
On November 01 2011 10:42 Snaphoo wrote:
But this is all moot-- the legal costs of such an action would dwarf the prize money. $200/hour for a decent American lawyer, conservatively, would lend itself to about 25 hours total of representation before moving past the $5K mark, which is on the very high end of tourny prizes. 25 hours is not likely to be enough time to work on an international contract dispute.
Right now SC2 prizepools are small potatoes in the grand scheme of the business world, and public relations campaigns are probably the best way to get this sort of issue settled.
As I noted a few posts up, this is not entirely the case, as most civil law countries do loser pays and even under the "American rule", some states do practice fee shifting. Also, $200 bucks an hour for a lawyer? That's a little high for something as simple as this. You don't need a lawyer who charges you that much. That's biglaw fees. I get billed out at $25/hr, and my supervisors (barred attorneys) get billed out at $35/hr.
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i'm just curious to anyone who's a progamer and can answer this, but does this only apply in europe and in united states? i feel that apart of why sc is so big in korea is due to the fact it's based on reputations of the company to uphold their values of paying and more importantly the fact of mutual respect to the players and each other in business. it's the reason why there's a large pool of professional gamers who can honestly say, hey i can drop school and pursue gaming as a career because i am certain, if i'm good, i will be paid. you can also see this in almost all faucets of korean esports culture, where they have some sort of authoritative community if one progamming manager doesn't live up to the standards, he gets the boot kind of like the TSL incident.
while this type of thing in america is really a formality. the main focus of sponsors seem to be paying for utilities and the fact the tournament promotes their name and everything else is secondary.
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As long as tournaments can get away with not paying for a longer period of time, they will continue to do so.
The players will have to be more demanding towards the tounaments in order to make something change in this regard.
Like contacting earlier, asking for deadlines, continuing to ask for them while gradually becoming more demanding until finally demanding payment until a deadline they impose themselves and even going for a last resort lawsuit.
I don't think, that any tournament hosts reputation is able to survive a lawsuit regarding payment of prize money, so if it ever gets close to a player threatening it, they will most likely pay.
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On November 01 2011 02:24 VPGeneralHans wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 02:20 RoyalCheese wrote:On November 01 2011 02:18 VPGeneralHans wrote:On November 01 2011 02:16 zachMEISTER wrote:On November 01 2011 02:13 Carmac wrote:
For anyone asking:
Intel Extreme Masters is on schedule with prize money payouts. 2010/2011 is paid out. Next event to get paid out is the Cologne Global Challenge (either paid out or until 3 months after the event, which is in November). Guangzhou & New York Global Challenges will be paid out within 3 months of the respective event dates. Corporate Responsibility right there. Pat on the back Carmac. ....he said 2010/2011 is on schedule, not that they are paid out. What is the schedule like 1.5 years He said 2010/2011 is paid out .... You are right, I misread it. But there is a dispute then cuz several players said they haven't
Hes talking about for IEM, which im sure he isnt lying about, IEM is one tournament run by ESL, they have many other smaller or regional tournaments as well. Many of the people complaining about ESL where complaining about either their EPS league not being paid out yet, or a go4sc2 cup run by ESL or something of that sort.
Im sure IEM is paid out, its also ESL's most prestigious league though with the most sponsors so they would receive the most backlash for not having paid out for IEM.
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On November 01 2011 10:56 DMII wrote:
As long as tournaments can get away with not paying for a longer period of time, they will continue to do so.
The players will have to be more demanding towards the tounaments in order to make something change in this regard.
Like contacting earlier, asking for deadlines, continuing to ask for them while gradually becoming more demanding until finally demanding payment until a deadline they impose themselves and even going for a last resort lawsuit.
I don't think, that any tournament hosts reputation is able to survive a lawsuit regarding payment of prize money, so if it ever gets close to a player threatening it, they will most likely pay.
Yea it would totally suck to have a huge check for winning a lan sitting around your house for 3-6 months knowing that your going to have to actually wait a long time to get that money.
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I wonder how long blizzcon takes to pay their prize money  (im sure its not a problem for them , but just curious)
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I'll just throw out a warning here to all the people who are crying for a "governing" body.
If there is a governing body, it may start out innocently enough. But over time as more situations occur, more rules are written, and creative aspects of the industry goes away.
The way it is right now, is completely wild west. Which at this point in time is a really good thing. E-sports is such a young industry that we haven't even explored half of the possibilities. Putting a governing body on top of that would essentially lock it in place either now or down the road when the rules take over, and it would kill innovation.
Also, most of the teams, players and other parties are resposible adults who can take care of themselves. The few who aren't are the ones who need our help getting what is theirs, or adversely a slap on the wrist for not doing what they promised. Making rules to "protect" these few, will hurt the majority in one way or the other later. We can instead, as a community, help them on an individual basis (like this thread has done to some extent).
Giving advice is more powerful than you think. Many who are "stuck" don't see all the options available to them. Just showing them the options really gets things moving. I'm sure Darkforce wouldn't have posted here if it wasn't for Cloud, who suddenly made it OK to do so. 
An example of what we DONT want
FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association - International Federation for Association Football) originally started out as an organization to oversee the increasing amount of international games being played. Create a standard rule book (at this point different countries had different rules), arrange international matches, arrange world cups (or initially olympic tournaments), and so on.
Very understandable goals and stuff. However, look at what it is now. It is so completely controlling that they are even making up rules that there is no need for, and have nothing to do with the actual game. Rules about transfers, rules about economy (!) of clubs (through continental federations), rules concerning the age of the players (come on...). All these rules have been triggered by something, and because the countries have agreed to follow FIFA (yes, a governing body requires you to "read the terms of use and license agreement"), they must adhere to them. It doesn't mean they agree with them. In fact, I would bet that through the years, every member country has voted against at least one rule that is not about the actual game. But if they leave FIFA (which they are free to do) they cannot play international matches anymore, because all the other countries are prohibited from playing you.
We do not want a governing body that controls everything. But it is what you get. No matter how noble the founding principles are, they will find a way to control things that they really have no business controlling.
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I do have a suggestion of how to create some "order" without authority. I will post it in a new thread when all this has died down. I don't want your opinions to be tainted by this. It is something I have thought about for a really long time (months! would you believe it? that's a fraction of a year!) and that this thread triggered me to put on paper.
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tl;dr: why are you in this thread if you're not reading it? it is a long thread...
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On November 01 2011 10:55 BluePanther wrote:
As I noted a few posts up, this is not entirely the case, as most civil law countries do loser pays and even under the "American rule", some states do practice fee shifting.
Yeah that's a really good point.
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Maybe a little database on TL where each pro winning a tournament could go on and write down what prize money they won and from what tourny... writing "pending" if the cash is not received yet and writing down the date that they got paid if they got it.
Maybe NASL, ESL, IEM, etc will hurry up a bit to clear their depth if each TL followers can easily see that they don't pay their runner-up in time... and pro player will know what to expect beforehand. That should help a bit, without having to boycott anything.
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On November 01 2011 10:42 Snaphoo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 10:22 R3demption wrote:On November 01 2011 00:54 eXigent. wrote:
I personally would seek legal methods regarding the bigger sums of money. Threatening to take these companies to court in a case where you will 100% win, they will have no choice other than pay you now, or risk going to court and damaging their companies name. I feel as though they think they can push gamers around because we do not have anyone backing us legally. I would most certainly persue that route if someone owed me 2000 euros. Could someone explain to me the legal processes and complications that could arise from sueing a company cross-country/continent. For instance if I wish to sue a european tournament for not paying up and I reside in America would that entail complications with diplomatic immunity ect. This is all hypothetical as I am just always curioius about law. That depends on a lot of things like venue jurisdiction (where will the dispute be ajudicated?) and contracts. I'm not sure if players sign contracts with tournaments, but most such contracts require that you agree that the venue for any case will be in a place of the tournament's/business's choice, generally in the same country as the venue or a place with a very favorable legal environment for big business. Diplomatic immunity is not an issue in your hypo; it applies in situations involving diplomats or other high officials (e.g. to French Ambassador to the U.S. while in the U.S.); a contract dispute involving parties in different countries is not an unusual occurrence and is pretty bread-and-butter contract law. Usually such matters are decided wherever the incident in question occurred for evidentiary reasons, though arguments can be made by good lawyers for why it should be held in (your example) the US. Say, for example, because that is where the original false representation was made and seen by the player (e.g. by seeing an ad for the tournament or getting an e-mail invite to the tournament while the player was in the US). But this is all moot-- the legal costs of such an action would dwarf the prize money. $200/hour for a decent American lawyer, conservatively, would lend itself to about 25 hours total of representation before moving past the $5K mark, which is on the very high end of tourny prizes. 25 hours is not likely to be enough time to work on an international contract dispute. Right now SC2 prizepools are small potatoes in the grand scheme of the business world, and public relations campaigns are probably the best way to get this sort of issue settled. -- Just a note this is not legal advice as I'm a law student and not a licensed attorney. If you ever consider such an action you should consult a lawyer about your chances before making a decision.
Thank you for the detailed post. I think the general consensus is that legal fees would be too high to warrant a lawsuit. I now feel bad for these players who are owed for unreasonably long times because if they can not go through the law to resolve their matter that is clearly unjust, then what other avenues are they supposed to persue? In the old days if someone didn't pay up they were labeled as a cheat and a liar and got the shit knocked out of them.
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I must be naive. But I would think when you sign the tourney rules/contract there would/should be prize winning details. Like an exact date of when you get paid, on the other hand. It's your obligation to make sure that there are such terms in place. And if there isn't, either
a) request one in writing
b) don't compete
I know you're all gonna say "Tons of tournies don't have contracts, etc"
I know, that's your risk. But as far as something as big as an IEM I personally just assumed that info would be in the players contract. Hence why I must be naive. This shit happens all the time in every kind of sport/promotion. Boxers and mma fighters probably getting the worst of it.
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Heh. So this is eSports. funny, it's no better than our government.
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Read through about 50 pages so far, all I can say is I hope this gets hammered out. Would some sort of owners coalition be out of the question? Then a Players Union on top of it?
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On November 01 2011 09:09 SpikeStarcraft wrote:
I think it is blizzards responsibility to ensure a common standard for tournament organization.
E-Sports is still very young and its not easy to raise money for tournaments. I understand its hard and payments get delayed. It happens.
But you need a procedure how to deal with it. So Blizzard should demand some basic regulations to get a tournament license.
1. Tournament Management has to inform winner of the tournament in a given time frame of payment procedure
2. Payment has to be fulfilled within x days. If payment gets delayed more than that u got to pay interest for it. Deadline is x month.
3. If you violate the rules, you're licence can be withdrawn / you wont get a new license for next year.
Details of this agreement arent that important. Its mainly about a regulation everyone can rely on.
Maybe someone should write a letter with those basic demands to blizzard, signed by as many progamers as possible. Imo thats the way to go.
LMAO! Is this guy serious?
Why the hell should Blizzard be responsible for handling payments between completely unrelated parties who profit by throwing events based on their product.
That's like saying Spalding should solve the NBA lockout because it's their basketball.
That was just a hilariously poor idea.
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On November 01 2011 11:02 Arkless wrote:
I must be naive. But I would think when you sign the tourney rules/contract there would/should be prize winning details. Like an exact date of when you get paid, on the other hand. It's your obligation to make sure that there are such terms in place. And if there isn't, either
a) request one in writing
b) don't compete
I know you're all gonna say "Tons of tournies don't have contracts, etc"
I know, that's your risk. But as far as something as big as an IEM I personally just assumed that info would be in the players contract. Hence why I must be naive. This shit happens all the time in every kind of sport/promotion. Boxers and mma fighters probably getting the worst of it.
By them merely advertising a prize pool and you playing in the tournament with the expectation of receiving a prize, they have entered into a legally enforceable contract. Just fyi. There is no need for a "paper" contract.
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On November 01 2011 11:02 R3demption wrote:
Thank you for the detailed post. I think the general consensus is that legal fees would be too high to warrant a lawsuit.
In the U.S. they might be, but as BluePanther pointed out, in civil law countries (i.e. Europe) it's usually "loser pays." And since the organizations who are in breach of contract would pretty much always lose, lawyers would take on the work without upfront payment. So it's maybe not as bleak as I originally thought.
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What I have gotten from this is that the US tournaments(NASL, MLG, IPL), are pretty decent at prize payouts(though there is some question about IdrAs IPL payout, that IPL has vowed to investigate and appears unaware of it). The large EU tourneys are slower at paying out but seem reliable.
The EU daily ESL tournaments appear to be unreliable. NA doesnt really have a daily tourney scene on the scale of Europe, but Playhem is apparently reliable.
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On November 01 2011 08:08 csn_JohnClark wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 07:11 FlyingDJ wrote:
Well, this thread pretty much shows how most have not been around for a long time.
It's clear that most StarCraft 2 players have not been exposed the the delays in paying out prize money because they were rarely part of major esports tournaments before the release of that game. Ask someone who's been playing before 2009. That was when ESL was held in high regard because they paid out, even if it took a long time. Not a thing you could take for granted.
Now with money being thrown at SC2 like there's no tomorrow, everyone here is suddenly going crazy about how delays cannot be and how apparently players starve when they're not being paid on time. A couple of years ago you would have ended up with no tournaments at all had you decided to boycott those who had delayed payout in prizes. That's what this has always been like. Does it need to change? Probably, but it's not going to happen over night. ESL is one of the only tournaments that made it through the recession that followed 2008, and they don't get the amounts of venture capital that MLG carries around these days.
Instead of posting about it on a forum, the players might consider actually forming some kind of organisation to help in those matters. Doesn't seem too much work to me. And even if not, they could just boycott the tournaments they think do not pay out prize money on time. What's that, there are almost none left then? Oh well...
It's such a hypocrisy that everyone is always applauding insane prize pools and players tend to follow the sums instead of the reputation yet at the same time, any delay is totally unacceptable. Do you honestly believe most of the current tournaments have a sustainable business model that returns their investment? just now getting to this post.. but very well said!
are you retarded? Always defending posts that defends this system. And like iNControl said, players have past experiences in other games too. A lot of events are just trolling the players by waiting so long to pay them. And you, as a manager (i suppose) of CSN you're defending this...rofl
A player organization won't change a shit since it would be formed of players anyway. TL is a place to get shit out...like other medias...i don't understand why people like feel offended. I know CSN is doing it right but still why the approval?
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On November 01 2011 11:00 Athox wrote:
I'll just throw out a warning here to all the people who are crying for a "governing" body.
The way it is right now, is completely wild west. Which at this point in time is a really good thing. E-sports is such a young industry that we haven't even explored half of the possibilities. Putting a governing body on top of that would essentially lock it in place either now or down the road when the rules take over, and it would kill innovation.
I agree. I made a a spur of the moment suggestion, but I'd love to hear what you've got in mind.
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On November 01 2011 09:09 SpikeStarcraft wrote:
I think it is blizzards responsibility to ensure a common standard for tournament organization.
E-Sports is still very young and its not easy to raise money for tournaments. I understand its hard and payments get delayed. It happens.
But you need a procedure how to deal with it. So Blizzard should demand some basic regulations to get a tournament license.
1. Tournament Management has to inform winner of the tournament in a given time frame of payment procedure
2. Payment has to be fulfilled within x days. If payment gets delayed more than that u got to pay interest for it. Deadline is x month.
3. If you violate the rules, you're licence can be withdrawn / you wont get a new license for next year.
Details of this agreement arent that important. Its mainly about a regulation everyone can rely on.
Maybe someone should write a letter with those basic demands to blizzard, signed by as many progamers as possible. Imo thats the way to go.
How is that the way to go, especially considering most of what isnt paid is from small online cups which have virtually nothing to do with blizzard (blizzard doesnt make any money off of them). I highly doubt they could / would do anything about it and i highly doubt they want to get involved in the politics of E-sports in this way.
Its a problem for organizers and their sponsors to figure out and fix, as now that it is known and if players actually speak out about it and give a certain tournament a bad name it could be very detrimental to that organization.
Go to the Eswc website and look at their statements they are still trying to get rid of the bad reputations that goes along with the eswc name when it comes to payouts.
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On November 01 2011 11:08 Destructor wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 11:00 Athox wrote:
I'll just throw out a warning here to all the people who are crying for a "governing" body.
The way it is right now, is completely wild west. Which at this point in time is a really good thing. E-sports is such a young industry that we haven't even explored half of the possibilities. Putting a governing body on top of that would essentially lock it in place either now or down the road when the rules take over, and it would kill innovation.
I agree. I made a a spur of the moment suggestion, but I'd love to hear what you've got in mind.
I like that idea. I think my proposal was rather similar. The hard part would be getting some noteworthy teams to work with you in setting up and agreeing on a system. It doesn't need to be a "union" in the sense that it's a closed shop. But some sort of person who will look at the contracts and paperwork and give a "stamp of approval" to their methods would go a LONG way to giving players some peace of mind. I used to be a top WoW player, and never went to a competition because 1. I didn't have a personal sponsor, and 2. the money was sketchy. Had I been assured of it, I definitely would have gone. I completely understand tate "peace of mind" for the players is the primary goal, and I think this accomplishes it in the best way without becoming a dictating agency similar to a FIFA or a KeSPA. The goal is simply to protect the players, not moderate the events rules, formats, or creativity.
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EPT
