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On November 01 2011 01:43 Bonkarooni wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 01:40 DoomsVille wrote:On November 01 2011 01:22 Zocat wrote: Funny that one the same day where Cloud decides to go public with that carmac posts on his twitter "More likely than not we are witnessing "the SC2 bubble." It's not too overblown but still. Caution is advised." and "Many teams and some leagues will get horny and step out of bounds.". Maybe he should put his own house in order first before saying that kind stuff... Anyone that doesn't realize this is a bubble is idiotic. You have a bajillion tournaments springing up everywhere, small cups/dailies/weeklies. The small cups realized hosting events is cheap. It costs almost nothing to host a GO4SC2. The investment is time/money. The payoff a few months ago was great. You would have thousands watching for less than $500 an investment. And so everyone started copying their model. And this was fine. Everything was working great. But then one day the big companies realized content is cheap to produce. IPL, NASL, EGMC, and even MLG recently found out online tournaments are cheap. They do talk shows, interviews, news programs etc. etc. etc. They cost peanuts compared to large events and they pay off in spades. They broadcast on a very regular basis now and they dwarf over all the small cups/tournaments. You can have big names playing in a playhem/z33k tournament but no one will watch because they'll see some random IPL/NASL/EGMC/MLG broadcast on or some rebroadcast or some talk show. The bubble is starting to collapse. The small events are realizing the viewers aren't there anymore. The Craftcup has already shut down. Most streamers can't get anywhere near the numbers they used to get. And hosting large events is almost as futile because every single weekend there is a major event. TL;DR - There are too many events now. Some of them are going to collapse. It is just a matter of time. Craftcup was always going to collapse, cause they didn't have a decent model/dedicated streamers to show their content Playhem runs daily tournaments, and their viewership is growing slowly but surely. Yeah, there are only so many people who are going to be able to watch a tournament every day, but...there's still enough to make everyone happy. Yeah, a few lesser known tournaments may die, but just because a company goes under doesn't mean "The bubble has collapsed" Why do you think playhem is growing? Do you think it's because they have improved the quality of their production? Do you think it's because they are getting more popular?
Or do you think it's because IPL, MLG and EGMC are in between seasons and aren't pushing content every single day? You're fooling yourself if you think playhem will reach 1k viewers on a day where the EGMC and IPL are running at the same time as the daily. When they have a ton of competition, their numbers drop down to ~500 viewers. Which, unfortunately, isn't enough to sustain a $75 tournament.
EDIT: I should add, I do agree with you about the craftcup. They were poorly organized. Bad example.
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On November 01 2011 01:21 Jh wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 01:17 appe wrote: After having won smaller sums of money from ESL's EMS TF2 tournaments, I feel for you. Even though the money usually ended up in our managers bank account around 12 months or longer after the finals, it's a shitty thing to do. This behaviour would never be accepted in most other industries. If an organization has money to pay out, they need to take a loan and make it THEIR problem. Tournament competitors are (in my very personal and farfetched opinion) a form of the organizers brands. "Oh, player X won $Y in tournament Z. Z is awesome for making my favourite player able to entertain me!". I know this isn't the correct definition, but I sometimes think of it in this way.
The only positive experience I've ever had with prize money is from the Assembly lan in Finland. They actually payed us our prize money INSTANTLY. Organizers could learn a thing or two from them, for sure. I'm with appe here. Luckily my team also had a manager to deal with all of that so we could just focus on playing. I retired in March this year and I'm still waiting for some prizemoney/gear...... derrrppp
Urgh, now I got reminded about UKeSA. Let's not talk about that shall we? :D
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This needs to be made public again and again so that the organizers get a bad reputation if they don't pay as announced. Try to organize a pool of players who had problems with that. you can even make a website where you hint at the bad boys. Hopefully, this will tell them to be more compliant.
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I feel like players should focus on playing and team managers should be focused on things like this - making sure that the player gets paid.
Teams, I would imagine, like EG or Complexity should have the "muscle" to hire lawyers (or even threaten to hire lawyers) for non-payments. I'm surprised that these tournaments don't have contracts or rules that stipulate how long payment period is. Most tournaments (IIRC) have such rules, no?
In any case, as I'm sure that 90% of pro-gamers likely qualify for pro-bono assistance (I recently just did a pro bono case for a client that makes about less than $35k / yr gross), pro-gamers can find people who are willing to fire off a legal letter or two - I bet that'd speed things up.
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On November 01 2011 01:42 FreudianTrip wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 01:37 FabledIntegral wrote:On November 01 2011 01:33 FreudianTrip 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. K so you pay for a lawyer to take them to court and you win. Now pay your lawyer and a 30% tax on the winnings. Congrats you earned 4 Euros and 23 cents. Well you already had to pay the 30% regardless, no? Yes, and? Having been on the inside while a few of the GameReplays HoN tourneys were going on, it isn't just the people running it being incompetent or greedy. Sponsors take a long ass time to pay up sometimes.
Then you should simply include lawyer fees in your argument... I understand what you were trying to say but in that context it shouldn't be included.
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This is a very big shock to me.. I never expected that shit like this was going on.. Teams should have a person that handles these cases. And I'm shure if any of you take ESL to court it'll be the last time they don't pay up. The only reason the prolly don't is because they can get away with it.
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On November 01 2011 01:46 Liquid`HayprO wrote: yeah ive had similar experiences. would be nice if they got more professional. u get dqed for being 15 min late.
Yes I imagine it must sting to get DQed for being 15 mins late or whatever, yet organisations can be 15 months late with payment they owe to you and nothing gets done about it.
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very important topic. I hope this thread gets big so maybe something can change.
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On November 01 2011 01:46 Liquid`HayprO wrote: yeah ive had similar experiences. would be nice if they got more professional. u get dqed for being 15 min late.
That actually is kind of professional, if its a smaller online tournament its not fair to other players to make them sit around and wait, hoping you'll log on in time. If it's a big LAN event well...you should be there anyways, and most LAN events have to keep to tight schedules
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I am sorry that this happens.
Many community figures talk about how events compete with one another for viewers, and I think that this is definitely one of the factors that concerns at least some viewers.
On the other side of the coin though, ESWC probably didn't get nearly enough viewers due to having to compete with Blizzcon. So they already lost the competition for viewers. Maybe ESWC will use that as an excuse to disappear again.
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Btw, I don't know how it is in Europe, but in the US you can file lawsuits without a lawyer (Pro se). It will take a while, but you'll win the case and get your money. I've had to help a friend do this to sue the local police before.
Similarly, you should sue in some cases (ones where you've been waiting a ridiculous amount of time, like a year), to force the organizations to change their ways. If no one does anything about it, they'll just keep screwing you players over. If you start suing, then they will have no choice but to get their shit together.
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This is disturbing to see so many pros weighing in on this thread and confirming the OP's claims. You guys work so hard, it sucks that your tournament winnings take so long to get to you (if they get to you at all).
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On November 01 2011 01:48 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 01:46 Liquid`HayprO wrote: yeah ive had similar experiences. would be nice if they got more professional. u get dqed for being 15 min late. Yes I imagine it must sting to get DQed for being 15 mins late or whatever, yet organisations can be 15 months late with payment they owe to you and nothing gets done about it. This is another of the 50 million reasons why a SC2 Kespa needs to form. Players have to be able to play in proper conditions. They have to be able to change their resolution to 4:3 if they choose to (sorry Axslav ). They need to have some input on how tournaments are run.
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On November 01 2011 01:34 Special Endrey wrote: Still, this is not always the tournament organizers beeing super greedy. Sometimes you as an organizer make a contract with a sponsor and they simply don't pay up in time. So this leaves the organizers in a hole of shit. Becasue they are blamed by the players and the general audience
So this all means that TL should keep a list of tournament organizers and how much money they owe AND of sponsors and how much money they owe.
The fact that the sponsor has not payed the money is not the player's fault and there is a reason the organizer is the organizer, it is his/her responsibility that all should go smooth and if it does not , their head falls.
Please TL, add such a list!!! Please please!
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Problem with ESL and ESWC seems quite well known. The discussion just always passes by after a while, only to be brought up again now and then, like in this thread. And while its a bit sad, i guess its almost expected that small cups have this issue.
Im a lot more surprised about IPL, DH and also that Italian and Norwegian LAN which all have been mentioned here.
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im somehow glad i am buycutting esl they take money to watch hq stream and then they dont pay the price they own the player´s all shuld just buycut all those kind of event
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Unfortunately I've heard of this problem quite a few times, and it is really a shame it keeps happening, though I'm not sure of any good solutions.
On November 01 2011 00:46 ReachTheSky wrote: i personally think if people aren't gonna pay up they should be banned from esports.
Lol? I can't tell if this is a serious post. Ban them from eSports? What?
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On November 01 2011 01:48 Bonkarooni wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 01:46 Liquid`HayprO wrote: yeah ive had similar experiences. would be nice if they got more professional. u get dqed for being 15 min late. That actually is kind of professional, if its a smaller online tournament its not fair to other players to make them sit around and wait, hoping you'll log on in time. If it's a big LAN event well...you should be there anyways, and most LAN events have to keep to tight schedules
He's saying it's hypocrisy since they can take however long to pay out and nothing happens but if someone is 15 minutes late they lose everything.
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has anyone thought of going to games magazines and complaing would be a big scoop I think for some mags to write an article whcih would embarass the sponsers, but could alos mean that sponsers may stop sponsering
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On November 01 2011 01:51 Numy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 01:48 Bonkarooni wrote:On November 01 2011 01:46 Liquid`HayprO wrote: yeah ive had similar experiences. would be nice if they got more professional. u get dqed for being 15 min late. That actually is kind of professional, if its a smaller online tournament its not fair to other players to make them sit around and wait, hoping you'll log on in time. If it's a big LAN event well...you should be there anyways, and most LAN events have to keep to tight schedules He's saying it's hypocrisy since they can take however long to pay out and nothing happens but if someone is 15 minutes late they lose everything.
oh...Fair enough lolol
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