EPTPut down the pitchforks, or lower them, at least. - Page 25
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Arghmyliver
United States1077 Posts
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Ricemagical
270 Posts
On February 15 2012 03:09 Plansix wrote: I would point out that MGL provides almost all of it content for no charge at all. You don't need to watch the event live and can catch the VODs a week later. MGL is also flying the best players from around the world and housing them for the lenght of the event. All and all I think they are putting a lot of money down to run a high quality event and I am willing to risk $20 bucks to see it live. And to be clear, I have subscribed to GSL since season 2. I used to watch it every morning before work live, now I catch the VODs when I can. Alright this has been bothering me quite a bit. It's MLG not MGL if you're gonna argue for a tournament the least you can do is get their name right. Also, ALL the foreign tournaments I can think of atm provide free streams at no charge, and their justification for charging viewers is that they're covering airfare and hotel costs, which was a business decision they decided to make and then forward the costs to the viewers. | ||
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Vertig0
United States196 Posts
I would definitely buy the pass for $10, but $20 is a bit too much- that's about the price of an entire season of GSL! | ||
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OpticalPhonon
Canada72 Posts
However, what's even more insulting to their customers is when Sundance tweets bullshit like this: "I personally (and MLG) have invested more money into the scene than we have earned. By choice. You have a choice as well. Have a good night." The community has shown time and time-again that they're willing to spend money (sending MKP to Orlando, all those Kickstarter documentaries, contributing to TB's shoutcrafts, etc.). To then accuse them of being cheap in order to try and sell them a product -- which many people with Gold memberships thought they'd already paid for -- is unbelievably sleazy. | ||
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Timerly
Germany511 Posts
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
On February 15 2012 03:09 Plansix wrote: I would point out that MGL provides almost all of it content for no charge at all. You don't need to watch the event live and can catch the VODs a week later. MGL is also flying the best players from around the world and housing them for the lenght of the event. All and all I think they are putting a lot of money down to run a high quality event and I am willing to risk $20 bucks to see it live. And to be clear, I have subscribed to GSL since season 2. I used to watch it every morning before work live, now I catch the VODs when I can. Please stop saying MGL. | ||
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YMCApylons
Taiwan359 Posts
"I personally (and MLG) have invested more money into the scene than we have earned. By choice. You have a choice as well. Have a good night." Woah...he said this? Time to stop watching MLG. Plenty of other Western tournaments that don't assume e-sports is sacred cause that deserves money. You're not curing cancer, you're trying to make money entertaining people. I'll live off GSL and other tournaments that actually have business models that don't require charity. | ||
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ShObiT
Dominican Republic39 Posts
<3 MLG I love what they do, I even love sundance for the way he manage MLG but 20 its just too much for 3 days, even knowing that they will be hundreds of games but STILL 3 days.... | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On February 15 2012 03:16 Ricemagical wrote: Alright this has been bothering me quite a bit. It's MLG not MGL if you're gonna argue for a tournament the least you can do is get their name right. Also, ALL the foreign tournaments I can think of atm provide free streams at no charge, and their justification for charging viewers is that they're covering airfare and hotel costs, which was a business decision they decided to make and then forward the costs to the viewers. Sorry about that, I am on lunch break and typing pretty quickly. That is true, they are footing the bill to fly players to their event. They are supporting the teams and players and passing some of the costs on to you. They are making sure the event will have the best SC2 players from around the world. If you don't like it and would rather the teams send who they could, then don't buy the PPV and watch the VODs later. However, if you want to watch it live, you can pay and enjoy the show. | ||
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SomeRandomPerson
2 Posts
MLG are a company, their goal is to make money, if that coincides with a expansion of the sc2 scene then great, but MLG are not the only thing that expands the e-sports scene. Another thing to not forget is that as a customer you vote with your wallet. And from a community stand point that wallet is not endless, if funds are allocated to MLG there will inevatebly be less funds available for other enterprises, like premium streams for other tournaments - perhaps there is still enough money in "our" pockets to cover it all. Maybe there are better organizers out there that can create a better and more sustainable product than MLG can? And, gold members defiantly got the short end of the stick, I find that quite low and an indicator of MLG's standards. | ||
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TheRPGAddict
United States1403 Posts
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Vinx
Canada259 Posts
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darkscream
Canada2310 Posts
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crydee
92 Posts
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Shadow_Dog
Canada427 Posts
On February 15 2012 03:53 crydee wrote: MLG should ditch the high rise office space in NYC and set up somewhere cheaper? Since it doesn't matter where you are or your customers being in NYC is just retarded when it's twice as expensive as other parts in the country. Salaries, space, food and almost everything costs more in NYC. If you cut your costs significantly perhaps this wouldn't be needed at all? I think thats just change considering how much $ they need to fly out all the players from around the world. | ||
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FireWaterFX
United States21 Posts
On February 14 2012 17:08 YMCApylons wrote: Agreed. At face value this is well-within the boundaries of a legally-disputable claim. The question is if "HD Pro Circuit Streams" was ever more precisely defined. Can anyone with a MLG Gold Membership post up the relevant Terms & Agreements that were probably given to you as were purchasing the Gold Pass? It might have been linked in the "receipt" email you would have gotten. If MLG reserved the right to redefine which streams would be offered under the Gold Membership, than you're screwed, because you bought nothing - you should have read the fine print. But if MLG said that Gold Membership entitles you to HD Pro Circuit Streams, than you can go to court, and ask the court to find that MLG Arena falls under that category. The other approach is to show that the advertisements and promotional materials used for the Gold Membership are false and misleading, when compared with what the terms of the Gold Membership actually are. In either case, you might not win, but class-action lawsuits have been won with much less. Using credit-card chargebacks is probably not a good idea. I'm not clear on how credit-card companies handle this type of dispute, but as you are in a legal grey-area, at best, tread carefully. For a few isolated cases, like here, it is likely that the credit card company would simply eat the charge, and put a little note next to your account. Keep that pitchfork up. Hey all, I'm relatively new to the eSports scene but I know a little bit about how Credit Card companies work (through personal, not professional experience). It sounds to me that there are reasonable grounds to dispute membership, especially since this decision to charge for the stream has been recent. They may not have thought through thoroughly what to do with all of their gold/silver members. Back to credit cards. Visa, Mastercard, and Discover are all credit cards. These cards can be paid in full or overtime You can dispute a charge based on the grounds of fraud. They often times will make you wait 60 days, and make you pay the dispute, and if it is found in your favor, you get your money back. American Express is different, because they mostly have Charge Cards, instead of Credit Cards (though they do have credit cards, just not too many). The main difference between a charge card and a credit card, is that with Amex, the card users is the primary customer, with credit cards, the vendor is customer. When you dispute something with amex, they automatically suspend the charge and make you immediately not liable for it while they do an investigation. Amex will also charge said dispute back to the vendor, as they do not take liability for purchases either. The reason this is because many high end customers with Amexs tend to spend more money than people will just cash, so vendors will take the risk. Also Amex has such great rewards that if you have a business that doesn't take it (in certain areas) than its tough to be in business. Every customers has the right to challenge a purchase. Maybe MLG did something fraudulant, maybe they didn't, but that is up to the credit card companies to figure out. | ||
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FireWaterFX
United States21 Posts
On February 15 2012 03:53 crydee wrote: MLG should ditch the high rise office space in NYC and set up somewhere cheaper? Since it doesn't matter where you are or your customers being in NYC is just retarded when it's twice as expensive as other parts in the country. Salaries, space, food and almost everything costs more in NYC. If you cut your costs significantly perhaps this wouldn't be needed at all? They can move across the hudson to Jersey and pay probably half as much rent, and get twice as much space. | ||
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NicolBolas
United States1388 Posts
Want to run commercials? Fine - I actually like muting the commercial and alt-tabbing knowing I'm contributing to the stream while simultaneously NOT being assaulted by advertising. FYI: the advertisers know that lots of peopel do that. It is precisely because of that fact that advertising doesn't pay that much per head. So you're not exactly being part of the solution here. On February 15 2012 03:17 OpticalPhonon wrote: However, what's even more insulting to their customers is when Sundance tweets bullshit like this: "I personally (and MLG) have invested more money into the scene than we have earned. By choice. You have a choice as well. Have a good night." The community has shown time and time-again that they're willing to spend money (sending MKP to Orlando, all those Kickstarter documentaries, contributing to TB's shoutcrafts, etc.). To then accuse them of being cheap in order to try and sell them a product -- which many people with Gold memberships thought they'd already paid for -- is unbelievably sleazy. To be a bit fair to Sundance, there is a difference between charitably helping people out and offering a product for money. You cannot rely on charity. You can't run a business purely on charity. That's why charities are non-profit organizations. The community certainly is willing to help out individuals who are in a bad way, or funding Kickstarter programs, or whatever. But the community seems to have a certain sense of entitlement when it comes to actually getting the product itself (ie: matches). The community seems to believe that matches should be free. I don't agree with MLG charging $20 for this event; I'm with Alex, that should have been $10 or less, with discounts (or free passes) to Gold members. But like Alex, I understand where they're coming from. eSports needs to generate its own money. It's not about growing eSports; it's about eSports being more self-sustaining. Every sport has sponsors, but they also generate revenue directly from ticket sales, charging fees to TV networks for showing sports, etc. eSports needs some way to directly generate revenue. And while merch works to an extent, it's not enough. On February 15 2012 03:53 crydee wrote: MLG should ditch the high rise office space in NYC and set up somewhere cheaper? Since it doesn't matter where you are or your customers being in NYC is just retarded when it's twice as expensive as other parts in the country. Salaries, space, food and almost everything costs more in NYC. If you cut your costs significantly perhaps this wouldn't be needed at all? I don't know about "high rise office space", but there's a reason that a hell of a lot of companies maintain a presence in New York. That's where big business is. Probably 60+% of MLG's sponsors have offices in New York. If you want to hobnob with the big boys in business, you have to have a presence in New York. Period. Yeah, stuff costs more in NY. But MLG would probably lose more money by leaving and either losing sponsors or having to deal with sponsors via long-range travel. | ||
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Thombur
95 Posts
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On February 15 2012 03:17 OpticalPhonon wrote: All of the posts by VirgilSC2 in this thread are quite good and deserve to be read. I totally agree about the bait and switch that MLG pulled and that topic deserves it's own thread. I was going to create a thread on it because I feel if Gold and Silver members banded together and put pressure on MLG, they would be forced to change their policy. We could do so in a multitude of ways (disputing credit card charges as I recommend with my posts on page 4-6 is one way). It is such a slam dunk bait and switch that they pulled, that a class action suit would easily win (they would likely settle long before going to court). Unfortunately, I don't think enough people care about it do anything about it, and I think my thread would just get locked and the discussion would be redirected back here. Maybe I will write it up anyway, I think this is a really big deal because people are getting scammed. As for me personally, I sent MLG an email regarding it, and have already contacted Amex. If MLG doesn't give me a prorated refund or allow me to watch Winter Arena free (as it is part of the 2012 Pro Circuit, again check page 4-6 of this thread) then I'll dispute the charge. I think it will be slam dunk win and I expect to get my $29.99 back, as MLG is refusing to provide the services I paid for. I'll eventually post my results in this thread or whatever. | ||
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