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You mean Blizzard isn't allowed to make money off their own game? lol..you people will argue about anything. Putting more money into the company that has made a game which has turned into a huge esport? How dare they!
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I don't think it's fair that people bash blizzard for things like this. they freakin' developed the game, they deserve to be able to control how other people make money off of it. How would you feel if you spent years creating a game and then people go and create tournaments for it and make tons of money for themselves? I mean, it's not like they should get all of the money, because a lot of time and effort goes into creating and running tournaments that admins should be rewarded for, but lets not forget that the entire game of starcraft was invented and developed by blizzard...
or maybe think of it this way. You spend a decade writing a book and make money by selling the paperbacks in bookstores. Then some jackasses simply read your awesome story and sell audio books. Sure, they had to do all the recording and distribution, but you wrote the story! The audiobook people should have to pay the author or create a deal. this is how IP works, people. creators should be rewarded for the things they create and this is what the rules try to protect.
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On January 16 2012 11:57 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2012 11:42 hmunkey wrote:On January 16 2012 10:54 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 10:31 imjorman wrote:On January 16 2012 10:08 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 10:01 m4inbrain wrote:
I don't think so! Because they all bought legitimate copys of the respecting program and own therefore the right to create revenue with it.
Thats where you are wrong, sir. Completely wrong. You dont have any rights to create revenue with Starcraft 2. You should read the End User License Agreement, before clicking "yes, i agree". Im actually a bit shocked that so many people think because they own "a" license, they can do whatever they want to. Did you even read "what" license you paid for? Be honest? This is a problem that essentially exists with no other medium, though. When I buy a USB drive, it's my USB drive. I don't buy a license to use the USB drive. Likewise, when I buy a copy of Sc2, I should be buying the data as-is for my own purposes (provided they are not illegal and I don't present the game as my own creation; I should be able to resell it, if I so wish) because I own the disc it is coded into. This notion that I can own the physical medium of a product without owning the "idea," and that this "idea" entitles the publisher to all sorts of extended rights is just one giant middle finger to the consumer. Blizzard can make an agreement that says I merely own a license to their program, but I'm pretty sure that, at least from an intuitive point of view, I actually do own my Sc2 CD. At best, Blizzard owns Battlenet and can govern my use of it. That said, as far as Blizzard is required to do anything, an MLG is equivalent to playing customs with your friends. It requires no additional effort from Blizzard, uses functions that are already built into the game which was already purchased. They have no grounds on which to demand more, much in the same way that the makers of frisbees don't charge me if I buy one of their frisbees and then host an ultimate frisbee tournament. Know why? Because I already bought the frisbee; I don't need to pay twice so I can use it publicly. If it really had anything to do with maintaining the game, I might buy it, but it doesn't. Suppose Blizzard takes 10%. Then as per the guy above me, that's what, 300k? Chump change. That's about 5000 sales. When's the last time you heard of a game selling 5000 in a year and being successful? Exactly, because it's nothing. This has everything to do with Blizzard maintaining the power to basically blacklist any tournament it has a spat with. I disagree with you on a lot of different levels here. Just because you "feel" entitled to be able to make money off of SC2 doesn't mean you actually are. The difference between Starcraft and the frisbee analogy you used was that when you purchased the frisbee you didn't agree to the condition that your frisbee usage was only for noncommercial uses. When you accepted the EULA, you agreed to it. If you don't like that, your more than allowed to return the game to the store and get your money back. Such agreements shouldn't be standard nor legal, much in the same way that waivers indemnifying establishments do not protect them against negligence. Separating the game from the license to play is a major error and should not be a valid legal concept. I'm well aware that under the current law, I am considered to own a simple license to play Sc2. I'm saying that such a thing is completely nonsensical and exists for the sole purpose of corporate moneygrubbing. It has nothing to do with protecting intellectual property in any sense in which it deserve to be protected. They're legal to prevent people from buying a game and creating their own version based on the one they purchased. If I buy SC2, make some modifications, and sell it as a new game, this is illegal under current law as I don't own SC2 to begin with. If the law was changed how you wanted, this would change and the game industry would become a cesspool of people copying eachother with slight changes. Tired of the CoD engine being reused every year? Imagine if every FPS by every company used it. And of course this ignores the fact that no company will ever want to invest the money into building a new engine or original game ever again since it would cost them millions of dollars at which point everyone would just steal their work. All software follows this plan and has always followed this plan unless it's open source, in which case you can take whatever you want. Where have I advocated stealing products and selling them? I'm merely advocating broadcasting myself playing a game which I legally purchased and own. I have made no modifications; the license is mine before and after the broadcast; I am using the game completely legally. If I wish to offer a prize for whomever beats me, Blizzard has essentially no business asking for a cut.
Well, the problem is: you dont. If you like it or not, you A: dont own the game, you did not purchase the game. B: you are not using the game completely legally if you make money from it.
And actually, you dont have to pay anything to blizzard if you just "give away money if someone beats you". You have to pay if you MAKE money. A percentage of your earnings.
Im flabbergasted that someone actually dont get the principal or even call it "bad". If you make money with stuff i invented (and, now the interesting part: with stuff i dont want YOU to make money with, but me, because im a company with investors and stuff), i want my share.
How the hell has a thought-process to work to get the kinda borked logic you show? You didnt even get the facts straight (at least by judging your example - missing the fact that you can give away as much money as you want, you just cant earn any), are you just here to bash Blizzard because you lost some games in a row, or what?
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On January 16 2012 13:36 m4inbrain wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2012 11:57 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 11:42 hmunkey wrote:On January 16 2012 10:54 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 10:31 imjorman wrote:On January 16 2012 10:08 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 10:01 m4inbrain wrote:
I don't think so! Because they all bought legitimate copys of the respecting program and own therefore the right to create revenue with it.
Thats where you are wrong, sir. Completely wrong. You dont have any rights to create revenue with Starcraft 2. You should read the End User License Agreement, before clicking "yes, i agree". Im actually a bit shocked that so many people think because they own "a" license, they can do whatever they want to. Did you even read "what" license you paid for? Be honest? This is a problem that essentially exists with no other medium, though. When I buy a USB drive, it's my USB drive. I don't buy a license to use the USB drive. Likewise, when I buy a copy of Sc2, I should be buying the data as-is for my own purposes (provided they are not illegal and I don't present the game as my own creation; I should be able to resell it, if I so wish) because I own the disc it is coded into. This notion that I can own the physical medium of a product without owning the "idea," and that this "idea" entitles the publisher to all sorts of extended rights is just one giant middle finger to the consumer. Blizzard can make an agreement that says I merely own a license to their program, but I'm pretty sure that, at least from an intuitive point of view, I actually do own my Sc2 CD. At best, Blizzard owns Battlenet and can govern my use of it. That said, as far as Blizzard is required to do anything, an MLG is equivalent to playing customs with your friends. It requires no additional effort from Blizzard, uses functions that are already built into the game which was already purchased. They have no grounds on which to demand more, much in the same way that the makers of frisbees don't charge me if I buy one of their frisbees and then host an ultimate frisbee tournament. Know why? Because I already bought the frisbee; I don't need to pay twice so I can use it publicly. If it really had anything to do with maintaining the game, I might buy it, but it doesn't. Suppose Blizzard takes 10%. Then as per the guy above me, that's what, 300k? Chump change. That's about 5000 sales. When's the last time you heard of a game selling 5000 in a year and being successful? Exactly, because it's nothing. This has everything to do with Blizzard maintaining the power to basically blacklist any tournament it has a spat with. I disagree with you on a lot of different levels here. Just because you "feel" entitled to be able to make money off of SC2 doesn't mean you actually are. The difference between Starcraft and the frisbee analogy you used was that when you purchased the frisbee you didn't agree to the condition that your frisbee usage was only for noncommercial uses. When you accepted the EULA, you agreed to it. If you don't like that, your more than allowed to return the game to the store and get your money back. Such agreements shouldn't be standard nor legal, much in the same way that waivers indemnifying establishments do not protect them against negligence. Separating the game from the license to play is a major error and should not be a valid legal concept. I'm well aware that under the current law, I am considered to own a simple license to play Sc2. I'm saying that such a thing is completely nonsensical and exists for the sole purpose of corporate moneygrubbing. It has nothing to do with protecting intellectual property in any sense in which it deserve to be protected. They're legal to prevent people from buying a game and creating their own version based on the one they purchased. If I buy SC2, make some modifications, and sell it as a new game, this is illegal under current law as I don't own SC2 to begin with. If the law was changed how you wanted, this would change and the game industry would become a cesspool of people copying eachother with slight changes. Tired of the CoD engine being reused every year? Imagine if every FPS by every company used it. And of course this ignores the fact that no company will ever want to invest the money into building a new engine or original game ever again since it would cost them millions of dollars at which point everyone would just steal their work. All software follows this plan and has always followed this plan unless it's open source, in which case you can take whatever you want. Where have I advocated stealing products and selling them? I'm merely advocating broadcasting myself playing a game which I legally purchased and own. I have made no modifications; the license is mine before and after the broadcast; I am using the game completely legally. If I wish to offer a prize for whomever beats me, Blizzard has essentially no business asking for a cut. Well, the problem is: you dont. If you like it or not, you A: dont own the game, you did not purchase the game. B: you are not using the game completely legally if you make money from it. And actually, you dont have to pay anything to blizzard if you just "give away money if someone beats you". You have to pay if you MAKE money. A percentage of your earnings. Im flabbergasted that someone actually dont get the principal or even call it "bad". If you make money with stuff i invented (and, now the interesting part: with stuff i dont want YOU to make money with, but me, because im a company with investors and stuff), i want my share. How the hell has a thought-process to work to get the kinda borked logic you show? You didnt even get the facts straight (at least by judging your example - missing the fact that you can give away as much money as you want, you just cant earn any), are you just here to bash Blizzard because you lost some games in a row, or what?
But what if I lose money doing something that indirectly makes you money with the stuff you invented? Like say run a very expensive unprofitable tournament that has acts as a huge advertisement for how awesome your invention is and keeps fans interested in your invention not moving on to others so you can sell future expansion inventions and invention marketplaces inside your invention later?
Or what if the tournament just breaks even or is nonprofit with everything being reinvested into the next one?
Are you still upset about that? Because there are these other inventors over there (riot and valve) that are willing to pay millions for that exact same advertisement you get for free yet really don't want to happen.
Yet maybe you should tax the tournaments so that they fail faster and you get no benefit at all from them after that!
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On January 16 2012 15:22 coolcor wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2012 13:36 m4inbrain wrote:On January 16 2012 11:57 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 11:42 hmunkey wrote:On January 16 2012 10:54 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 10:31 imjorman wrote:On January 16 2012 10:08 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 10:01 m4inbrain wrote:
I don't think so! Because they all bought legitimate copys of the respecting program and own therefore the right to create revenue with it.
Thats where you are wrong, sir. Completely wrong. You dont have any rights to create revenue with Starcraft 2. You should read the End User License Agreement, before clicking "yes, i agree". Im actually a bit shocked that so many people think because they own "a" license, they can do whatever they want to. Did you even read "what" license you paid for? Be honest? This is a problem that essentially exists with no other medium, though. When I buy a USB drive, it's my USB drive. I don't buy a license to use the USB drive. Likewise, when I buy a copy of Sc2, I should be buying the data as-is for my own purposes (provided they are not illegal and I don't present the game as my own creation; I should be able to resell it, if I so wish) because I own the disc it is coded into. This notion that I can own the physical medium of a product without owning the "idea," and that this "idea" entitles the publisher to all sorts of extended rights is just one giant middle finger to the consumer. Blizzard can make an agreement that says I merely own a license to their program, but I'm pretty sure that, at least from an intuitive point of view, I actually do own my Sc2 CD. At best, Blizzard owns Battlenet and can govern my use of it. That said, as far as Blizzard is required to do anything, an MLG is equivalent to playing customs with your friends. It requires no additional effort from Blizzard, uses functions that are already built into the game which was already purchased. They have no grounds on which to demand more, much in the same way that the makers of frisbees don't charge me if I buy one of their frisbees and then host an ultimate frisbee tournament. Know why? Because I already bought the frisbee; I don't need to pay twice so I can use it publicly. If it really had anything to do with maintaining the game, I might buy it, but it doesn't. Suppose Blizzard takes 10%. Then as per the guy above me, that's what, 300k? Chump change. That's about 5000 sales. When's the last time you heard of a game selling 5000 in a year and being successful? Exactly, because it's nothing. This has everything to do with Blizzard maintaining the power to basically blacklist any tournament it has a spat with. I disagree with you on a lot of different levels here. Just because you "feel" entitled to be able to make money off of SC2 doesn't mean you actually are. The difference between Starcraft and the frisbee analogy you used was that when you purchased the frisbee you didn't agree to the condition that your frisbee usage was only for noncommercial uses. When you accepted the EULA, you agreed to it. If you don't like that, your more than allowed to return the game to the store and get your money back. Such agreements shouldn't be standard nor legal, much in the same way that waivers indemnifying establishments do not protect them against negligence. Separating the game from the license to play is a major error and should not be a valid legal concept. I'm well aware that under the current law, I am considered to own a simple license to play Sc2. I'm saying that such a thing is completely nonsensical and exists for the sole purpose of corporate moneygrubbing. It has nothing to do with protecting intellectual property in any sense in which it deserve to be protected. They're legal to prevent people from buying a game and creating their own version based on the one they purchased. If I buy SC2, make some modifications, and sell it as a new game, this is illegal under current law as I don't own SC2 to begin with. If the law was changed how you wanted, this would change and the game industry would become a cesspool of people copying eachother with slight changes. Tired of the CoD engine being reused every year? Imagine if every FPS by every company used it. And of course this ignores the fact that no company will ever want to invest the money into building a new engine or original game ever again since it would cost them millions of dollars at which point everyone would just steal their work. All software follows this plan and has always followed this plan unless it's open source, in which case you can take whatever you want. Where have I advocated stealing products and selling them? I'm merely advocating broadcasting myself playing a game which I legally purchased and own. I have made no modifications; the license is mine before and after the broadcast; I am using the game completely legally. If I wish to offer a prize for whomever beats me, Blizzard has essentially no business asking for a cut. Well, the problem is: you dont. If you like it or not, you A: dont own the game, you did not purchase the game. B: you are not using the game completely legally if you make money from it. And actually, you dont have to pay anything to blizzard if you just "give away money if someone beats you". You have to pay if you MAKE money. A percentage of your earnings. Im flabbergasted that someone actually dont get the principal or even call it "bad". If you make money with stuff i invented (and, now the interesting part: with stuff i dont want YOU to make money with, but me, because im a company with investors and stuff), i want my share. How the hell has a thought-process to work to get the kinda borked logic you show? You didnt even get the facts straight (at least by judging your example - missing the fact that you can give away as much money as you want, you just cant earn any), are you just here to bash Blizzard because you lost some games in a row, or what? But what if I lose money doing something that indirectly makes you money with the stuff you invented? Like say run a very expensive unprofitable tournament that has acts as a huge advertisement for how awesome your invention is and keeps fans interested in your invention not moving on to others so you can sell future expansion inventions and invention marketplaces inside your invention later? Or what if the tournament just breaks even or is nonprofit with everything being reinvested into the next one? Are you still upset about that? Because there are these other inventors over there (riot and valve) that are willing to pay millions for that exact same advertisement you get for free yet really don't want to happen. Yet maybe you should tax the tournaments so that they fail faster and you get no benefit at all from them after that!
your logic applied to other IP situations:
author writes play
production companies put on play without paying author
???
seriously? why does it matter that the production company might lose money on the play? the fact is that their using something that someone else spent time and money on creating. you can't just exploit other people's ideas for making your own money, otherwise, creativity in the industry and market would shut down. thats the whole point of these rules...
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I think that we bash the person who we feel is trying to take the money away from the system. If the money isn't in the players hands, then we get upset because we feel that it isn't going to somewhere supporting eSports. Blizzard put a lot of effort, time and resources so that the game could be the best it could possibly be, and are continuing to put money into the game so it can be even larger with the expansions and balance patches.
They do make a profit when they release a game (or expansion), but what about what happens when people take their game and start turning it into business and content, e.g., someone streaming their games, or uploading videos on youtube, or running tournaments, suddenly they aren't seeing anything return to them, except maybe additional screen time (i.e. people who didn't originally purchase the game and are picking it up simply because they saw it being played).
They have to take a cut somewhere, it is their intellectual property and they deserve something from it. We all tend to hate on Blizzard because it already has so much money already (Typical Robinhood syndrome, rich = bad). We don't know where this money goes, so we naturally assume it isn't assisting our cause. This really turns into a nasty debate; I really feel Blizzard deserves a cut, and I don't know how much, obviously not enough to strangle a tournament into disbanding, but enough that they can say, 'Hey, we did a good job with StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, down at MLG they really enjoyed it! In HotS we have to add more cool features so it looks even more amazing on the big screen!'
I think if a tournament falls on bad times because they were taxed for their prize pool, or for whatever reason, then I think it was poor tournament planning in the first place. You should be able to have a strategy and meetings with sponsors and advertisers to carefully go over all the numbers and then determine the most effective course of action.
Blizzard isn't evil, I think we tend to think they are because they take a realistic, slow, logical approach to game design and that doesn't sit well with impatient people who want the best at this very instant.
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On January 16 2012 15:38 LXR wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2012 15:22 coolcor wrote:On January 16 2012 13:36 m4inbrain wrote:On January 16 2012 11:57 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 11:42 hmunkey wrote:On January 16 2012 10:54 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 10:31 imjorman wrote:On January 16 2012 10:08 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 10:01 m4inbrain wrote:
I don't think so! Because they all bought legitimate copys of the respecting program and own therefore the right to create revenue with it.
Thats where you are wrong, sir. Completely wrong. You dont have any rights to create revenue with Starcraft 2. You should read the End User License Agreement, before clicking "yes, i agree". Im actually a bit shocked that so many people think because they own "a" license, they can do whatever they want to. Did you even read "what" license you paid for? Be honest? This is a problem that essentially exists with no other medium, though. When I buy a USB drive, it's my USB drive. I don't buy a license to use the USB drive. Likewise, when I buy a copy of Sc2, I should be buying the data as-is for my own purposes (provided they are not illegal and I don't present the game as my own creation; I should be able to resell it, if I so wish) because I own the disc it is coded into. This notion that I can own the physical medium of a product without owning the "idea," and that this "idea" entitles the publisher to all sorts of extended rights is just one giant middle finger to the consumer. Blizzard can make an agreement that says I merely own a license to their program, but I'm pretty sure that, at least from an intuitive point of view, I actually do own my Sc2 CD. At best, Blizzard owns Battlenet and can govern my use of it. That said, as far as Blizzard is required to do anything, an MLG is equivalent to playing customs with your friends. It requires no additional effort from Blizzard, uses functions that are already built into the game which was already purchased. They have no grounds on which to demand more, much in the same way that the makers of frisbees don't charge me if I buy one of their frisbees and then host an ultimate frisbee tournament. Know why? Because I already bought the frisbee; I don't need to pay twice so I can use it publicly. If it really had anything to do with maintaining the game, I might buy it, but it doesn't. Suppose Blizzard takes 10%. Then as per the guy above me, that's what, 300k? Chump change. That's about 5000 sales. When's the last time you heard of a game selling 5000 in a year and being successful? Exactly, because it's nothing. This has everything to do with Blizzard maintaining the power to basically blacklist any tournament it has a spat with. I disagree with you on a lot of different levels here. Just because you "feel" entitled to be able to make money off of SC2 doesn't mean you actually are. The difference between Starcraft and the frisbee analogy you used was that when you purchased the frisbee you didn't agree to the condition that your frisbee usage was only for noncommercial uses. When you accepted the EULA, you agreed to it. If you don't like that, your more than allowed to return the game to the store and get your money back. Such agreements shouldn't be standard nor legal, much in the same way that waivers indemnifying establishments do not protect them against negligence. Separating the game from the license to play is a major error and should not be a valid legal concept. I'm well aware that under the current law, I am considered to own a simple license to play Sc2. I'm saying that such a thing is completely nonsensical and exists for the sole purpose of corporate moneygrubbing. It has nothing to do with protecting intellectual property in any sense in which it deserve to be protected. They're legal to prevent people from buying a game and creating their own version based on the one they purchased. If I buy SC2, make some modifications, and sell it as a new game, this is illegal under current law as I don't own SC2 to begin with. If the law was changed how you wanted, this would change and the game industry would become a cesspool of people copying eachother with slight changes. Tired of the CoD engine being reused every year? Imagine if every FPS by every company used it. And of course this ignores the fact that no company will ever want to invest the money into building a new engine or original game ever again since it would cost them millions of dollars at which point everyone would just steal their work. All software follows this plan and has always followed this plan unless it's open source, in which case you can take whatever you want. Where have I advocated stealing products and selling them? I'm merely advocating broadcasting myself playing a game which I legally purchased and own. I have made no modifications; the license is mine before and after the broadcast; I am using the game completely legally. If I wish to offer a prize for whomever beats me, Blizzard has essentially no business asking for a cut. Well, the problem is: you dont. If you like it or not, you A: dont own the game, you did not purchase the game. B: you are not using the game completely legally if you make money from it. And actually, you dont have to pay anything to blizzard if you just "give away money if someone beats you". You have to pay if you MAKE money. A percentage of your earnings. Im flabbergasted that someone actually dont get the principal or even call it "bad". If you make money with stuff i invented (and, now the interesting part: with stuff i dont want YOU to make money with, but me, because im a company with investors and stuff), i want my share. How the hell has a thought-process to work to get the kinda borked logic you show? You didnt even get the facts straight (at least by judging your example - missing the fact that you can give away as much money as you want, you just cant earn any), are you just here to bash Blizzard because you lost some games in a row, or what? But what if I lose money doing something that indirectly makes you money with the stuff you invented? Like say run a very expensive unprofitable tournament that has acts as a huge advertisement for how awesome your invention is and keeps fans interested in your invention not moving on to others so you can sell future expansion inventions and invention marketplaces inside your invention later? Or what if the tournament just breaks even or is nonprofit with everything being reinvested into the next one? Are you still upset about that? Because there are these other inventors over there (riot and valve) that are willing to pay millions for that exact same advertisement you get for free yet really don't want to happen. Yet maybe you should tax the tournaments so that they fail faster and you get no benefit at all from them after that! your logic applied to other IP situations: author writes play production companies put on play without paying author ??? seriously? why does it matter that the production company might lose money on the play? the fact is that their using something that someone else spent time and money on creating. you can't just exploit other people's ideas for making your own money, otherwise, creativity in the industry and market would shut down. thats the whole point of these rules...
I'm not arguing the destruction of all copy-write laws I'm saying this is a unique situation that it is not necessarily in a game companies best interest to tax tournaments.
Putting on a play would give the exact same experience the author could provide. That is why it hurts the author because nobody will go see it from him again and he should stop it if they profit or not. Yet if competing authors were willing to pay that production company millions to put on that show maybe the author should consider letting them do it for free if they want due to the indirect benefits the competing authors seem to see in it.
Watching people play a video game does not replace buying a video game. (If so let's plays on youtube would have millions of views from the millions of game sales they replace) Nobody will say I was planning to buy sc2, but I watched mlg so there is no reason to do that that anymore, it has givin me the same experience as playing it myself. Having huge events dedicated to how awesome your game is and how awesome the people playing your awesome game is can only benefit a video game, in fact riot and valve feel the benefits are worth over a million dollars of marketing expense!
Do you think relic is thinking about how glad they are about all the money they aren't losing because nobody wants to put on 100 thousand dollar tournaments for dawn of war 2 streaming to 100 thousand people leading to bar of wars popping up all over the world where new people will constantly be exposed to the game and how much people like it and current fans stay interested. (it must be awesome if all these people are cheering for it like a sport) Threads and news stories constantly popping up on general gaming sites and even mainstream media about these incredibly unique successful events constantly getting their game in front of people who have not bought it yet, for zero marketing expense.
Or are they glad their game was never on south korean tv for hours a day until everyone in the country knew about it as an awesome rts, where coincidentally the game sold to 10% of the countries entire population. What company would want that to happen?
A movie company should shut down a bar or steam showing their game for free it can only decrease sales, a game company should not shut down barcrafts or tournament streams that do not pay them it can only increase sales due to not replacing the experience of buying the game, only directly advertising how awesome that experience is.
Obviously it is better for blizzard if they can get both huge esports and tournament fees, but taxing unprofitable tournaments seem like a good way to make sure they never get to the point and are risking destroying all the potential benefit the tournaments can give them, or at least limit it's potential growth and reach.
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On January 16 2012 16:33 coolcor wrote:
a game company should not shut down barcrafts or tournament streams that do not pay them it can only increase sales due to not replacing the experience of buying the game, only directly advertising how awesome that experience is.
Obviously it is better for blizzard if they can get both huge esports and tournament fees, but taxing unprofitable tournaments seem like a good way to make sure they never get to the point and are risking destroying all the potential benefit the tournaments can give them, or at least limit it's potential growth and reach.
They take 10% of the profit for tournaments over $5k.
If you have an unprofitable tournament then guess what Blizzards 10% cut of your zero dollars comes out to?
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whether Blizzard is or not entitled to 'extorting' money out of tournaments is a matter of opinion, the fact is that they do it because they can, and as long as they can they will seek profit from all means possible.
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On January 16 2012 10:54 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2012 10:31 imjorman wrote:On January 16 2012 10:08 Shiori wrote:On January 16 2012 10:01 m4inbrain wrote:
I don't think so! Because they all bought legitimate copys of the respecting program and own therefore the right to create revenue with it.
Thats where you are wrong, sir. Completely wrong. You dont have any rights to create revenue with Starcraft 2. You should read the End User License Agreement, before clicking "yes, i agree". Im actually a bit shocked that so many people think because they own "a" license, they can do whatever they want to. Did you even read "what" license you paid for? Be honest? This is a problem that essentially exists with no other medium, though. When I buy a USB drive, it's my USB drive. I don't buy a license to use the USB drive. Likewise, when I buy a copy of Sc2, I should be buying the data as-is for my own purposes (provided they are not illegal and I don't present the game as my own creation; I should be able to resell it, if I so wish) because I own the disc it is coded into. This notion that I can own the physical medium of a product without owning the "idea," and that this "idea" entitles the publisher to all sorts of extended rights is just one giant middle finger to the consumer. Blizzard can make an agreement that says I merely own a license to their program, but I'm pretty sure that, at least from an intuitive point of view, I actually do own my Sc2 CD. At best, Blizzard owns Battlenet and can govern my use of it. That said, as far as Blizzard is required to do anything, an MLG is equivalent to playing customs with your friends. It requires no additional effort from Blizzard, uses functions that are already built into the game which was already purchased. They have no grounds on which to demand more, much in the same way that the makers of frisbees don't charge me if I buy one of their frisbees and then host an ultimate frisbee tournament. Know why? Because I already bought the frisbee; I don't need to pay twice so I can use it publicly. If it really had anything to do with maintaining the game, I might buy it, but it doesn't. Suppose Blizzard takes 10%. Then as per the guy above me, that's what, 300k? Chump change. That's about 5000 sales. When's the last time you heard of a game selling 5000 in a year and being successful? Exactly, because it's nothing. This has everything to do with Blizzard maintaining the power to basically blacklist any tournament it has a spat with. I disagree with you on a lot of different levels here. Just because you "feel" entitled to be able to make money off of SC2 doesn't mean you actually are. The difference between Starcraft and the frisbee analogy you used was that when you purchased the frisbee you didn't agree to the condition that your frisbee usage was only for noncommercial uses. When you accepted the EULA, you agreed to it. If you don't like that, your more than allowed to return the game to the store and get your money back. Such agreements shouldn't be standard nor legal, much in the same way that waivers indemnifying establishments do not protect them against negligence. Separating the game from the license to play is a major error and should not be a valid legal concept. I'm well aware that under the current law, I am considered to own a simple license to play Sc2. I'm saying that such a thing is completely nonsensical and exists for the sole purpose of corporate moneygrubbing. It has nothing to do with protecting intellectual property in any sense in which it deserve to be protected.
So what is stopping someone from buying a game, then burning it to infinity and reselling it at slightly cheaper price? Assuming people prefer the same product at a cheaper rate, the new guy gets all the money leaving Blizzard with the debt from the initial development investment.
Digital products have the issue of not being tangible while at the same time being obscenely easy to reproduce once initially made. If a piece of software costs a company 1 million to develop, and for arguments sake 0 to distribute, how can they be sure they will get paid for their work and not some other guy who grossly undercuts them or uses their product to make a fortune without having to deal with any real manufacturing cost? The guy who is redistributing it could go anywhere from free to a penny below the original sale price as long as he has the better deal, its all profit to him.
Digital law is really troublesome I agree, but it is way too naive (I feel) to package full content rights with the product like you would a car or something.
Supply and Demand. Supplier wants to sell for infinity bucks, and Demand Dude wants everything for free. In the case of Digital content, the demand side has an inherent and disproportionate amount of power over the product. If you could buy one thumb drive, and subsequently have the ability to only do whatever you want with the thumb drive, but create infinite amounts of the same thumb drive in seconds without any cost incurred, why would anyone honestly buy a thumb drive when they could find the one guy who did buy it and take one..then copy it themselves.
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Of all the real life examples in this thread, the only one that was relevant was the play concept. All the other ones were poorly thought out. A musician's song does not obviously reflect the program it was related in. Looking at an advertisement you can't tell whether it was edited in Photoshop, Indesign or MS Paint.
With a game it is obvious, and I think you guys need to give Blizzard credit for allowing the scene to blossom while still wanting to make money from it. As a Blizzard lifelong gamer and shareholder I think this represents the smartest business model in eSports because it's a "help me, help you" attitude; the smaller tournaments can work unhinged as well as streamers who can support themselves off streaming, but the major ones will feed Blizzard a good income stream, and in return Blizzard will continue to support the eSports scene, by developing the expansions, patching it and advertising it.
Im sorry but IEM Kiev, Dreamhack, MLG and GSL all receive "free" advertising within the SC2.exe via the news feed, Blizzard doesnt have to do it, but because everyone profits together for the major tournaments it's in their best interests that the eSports scene is successful, if they made no money from it aside from box sales, which tournaments dont really affect as much as you think(most of the people who watch already own, dont kid yourselves), then there would be no incentive for Blizzard to support the eSports scene because it would just be a drain on their finances. I think this business model is much more sustainable than any other eSport game because it doesn't rely on spending millions on prize pools by the host company to create a "flashy" headline but instead allows all parties to take their fair share of the proceeds and this could carry on until the end of time.
There is no incentive to support a game if a KesPa-like situation occurs. Most of the posters hating on Blizzard probably didn't play Blizzard games at the time, yes they got 10% of SK owning a copy of SC:BW and it was the highest selling PC game of all time but until the lawsuit KeSpa didnt pay them a ****ing cent out of the money they made, and in the end KesPa supports itself merely through sponsors which is an unsustainable business model.
Think of it musically; hip-hop producers(including myself as I recently received a C&D from a record label telling me to remove the sample from one of my tracks or to risk lawsuit) have always had a problem with "sampling": taking chunks of audio from other songs and re-working them into new pieces of music. The argument of the producers is much like the arguments I see here against Blizzard; "well we created something new and made new people interested" "your just a big greedy corporation". The fact is that we need to protect people's intellectual rights or else innovators, artists and programmers will have no will to create anything new because stealing from others would just become the status quo.
Keep doing your thing Blizzard, MLG/GSL had millions of viewers from YOUR game, you deserve your cut, keep the games coming!
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Don't like it make your own RTS with all the freebies you want like LAN, no recurring fees, etc and let us know how it goes. Places like Piratebay and newsservers made it so companies must have these restrictions to make money off 40 million dollar development games these days. Sux but not the end of the world.
The two factors of pirating and high devolpment costs compared to past make it so companies have to resort to other means besides actual game sales to get them in the black. MMO's do it through recurring fees. SC2 is choosing to do it via tournaments - just be lucky they don't charge us for bnet per month.
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