Eclypsia cheating on stream audience - Page 16

Hi all,

My nickname is Ruurk, i'm Eclypsia's developing manager. This post is a response to team-aAa allegations.

I'm writing this today because i think it's time for me to communicate with you and put some lights on our practices that you judged doubtful.

Everything started in April 2012, everyone of you remember that we thought("I" thought) of making Eclyspia's coming out a false April foul, our newly recruited players (less than two weeks) would say they didn't get paid by Eclypsia. Of course, given the fact that they were very new recruits and the date of the claim (April the 1st), we were convinced that the community would have laughed and say "lol, nice joke, that's an April Foul etc... Sadly for us, a lot were fouled and believed it and called the joke unethical. We truly are sorry, we simply wanted to make you laugh, we are gamers before everything else like you (T/N: the community).

Furthermore, i would like to remind you that all our players were informed and Welmu (the one who made the false claim) still is with Eclypsia, i think he is happy to be with us and he didn't have any issue with us up to now.

This April foul case being closed...we hired a Head Manager or Communication Manager, as you want to call him, called Retox who was from E-Sahara before, Blast etc... The work load was heavy to try to earn the community back so he talked to me about a meme contest that would have shown we have self derision. This was our biggest fail and Retox was fired. It was not only because of this but it was the main cause.

About the SC2 players who parted ways with us, we had a deadline (6 months to Korea) but they didn't want to wait. They were in a hurry, i can understand that (T/N: might be more "impatient" than "in a hurry but it's not very clear), and decided to resign. We agreed on that, everyone was paid and we all were happy about the patnership. Beside, Eclypsia lost a computer in this case that was never returned by the person concerned.

For the Dota 2 team, Mystress sold us 5k live viewers and 10 hours of stream daily for a € 5.5k salary. Only having 40 viewers, the whole thing turned to be a drama et she thought that given our image "they (T/N: the players?) had us by the balls" has she said. We didn't yield. The players and Mystress went to an other team where they rised the same issues but it was Eclypsia public image that took the hit.

While that was happening, Eclypsia decide to redirect itself. The basic business was to pay streamers a salary, make them stream several hours a day and create a video game oriented TV. This was a resounding failure given that the players wanted to get the money their stream was generating. Sadly at this point Eclypsia didn't have any sponsor so we couldn't compete with the salary our competitors offered.

Therefore, with SarenS (eSport manager) and others, we revised our business plan. Three major axis emerged: The Teams, the Stream and the News Portal.

We rearranged our budgets, favoring the News Portal and the webTV while maintaining the Teams without overspending on the transfert market.

The budget was mainly allocated to the WebTV and that went great. We created good formats like the Dual Fighting (an SC2 showmatch with 100€ in cash prize), the LOL Strategy Cup (a showmatch KOTH) and the Flash eSport.

Our operations (T/N: for lack of a better work in my mouth, sorry) became profitables. In fact, for 100€ invested we had 150 to 160€ in return, not really enough to profit because of the salaries but we were rather happy with it, it was the first time we did have a profitable return on our investments.

And then...

Pomf & Thud, from Iron Squid, arrived with a budget and a project that resulted on a lot of people resigning from us, the news writers resigned, our streamers too, it was an hecatomb.

Millenium, entrenched on the french market for so long, didn't feel a thing compared to us, already 1st on every games queries on Google for several years meanwhile aAa has a loyal community.

We didn't have much choice. We either had to scounge on other's cake or bake one for ourself so we looked all over the internet and said:

ESport is a passion for gaming competition, it's also following the news and all about videogames.

So we had this idea: instead of trying to steal our competitors audience we should try to find an external public, a new audience. A public not yet interested by eSport altogether but already playing videogames.

Like the trailers and ads on TV or before a movie at the theater, we thought about who we would like to aim for:

-Music? Cinema? News? too heterogeneous.
- Video game sites? Too many competitors, seems impossible...

We then thought about our web colleagues, browser games and humoristic website's owners. The publics having a lot in common, it looked like it would works. The first tests were conducted and it was a success, our webtv animators gathered a lot more "likes" on facebook and the website itself had a 300% increase in registration per day compared to the average day. We had found our future audience.

It's costing us tens of thousands euros every month in advertising and doesn't make Eclypsia the most profitable team in the world, simply the one that is investing the most for its visibility. Is that a crime? I don't think so.

Some, on reddit or whatever, said the stream was "hidden". (T/N: I can't properly translate the following because i don't know how to translate that kind of expression from french to english, bear with me and try to understand^^) Know that if you don't see the streams, eSport passionates (T/N: sarcasm of course), it's because you are using Adblock and that is killing eSport much more than what we are doing...

Without Adblock, the stream is autoplayed and automuted (meanwhile announcements have sound), this option is available on Dailymotion and Twitch (check Home page).

You called it a false public?

I don't think so, i think it's a new public, a rising public, how many will eventually become our audience? I don't know that, 10%, 20%? Yet it would already be great. Because that is costing us much more than what we earn from that, i don't think our sponsors will complain about that.

Bandwidth and the slowing of a third party website?

I hear about how much bandwidth those embeded streams take, everyone of them are in iframes. They don't have the priority while the page is loading. On the other hand, there is a "stop" button that effectively stop the loading of the embeded stream, any flash ads and banners take as much bandwidth and can't be stopped.

How Eclypsia passed this sleight of hand?

We bought advertising spots like there is on every websites. Instead of having a banner on this spot, it's an embeded stream, an idea, a simple idea. We did it with the agreement of our diffusion platform and our sponsors.

The sponsors now?

I hear that this kind of thing will lower the global CPM (T/N: not sure what it means, sorry if it's a french acronym :'( ) and lower the stream's revenue. First you have to know that Eclypsia bought those advertising spots already occupied by advertisers, at a high price. Those same spots occupied by advertisers won't be available anymore on the concerned websites, only through Eclypsia and its provider. The sales volume of Eclypsia certainly becomes substancial but extremely deficient.

On the other hand, i think that this volume pool can only makes eSport more credible.

An example for a better understanding:

Like for the PSG (T/N: The biggest Paris soccer team), regrouping so many star players under the same jersey certainly boosted the PSG's stadium attendance, certainly boosted the sales of their jerseys too but also the attendance of all the local stadiums receiving the PSG for a single game.

More in our perspective, EG follows the same principle with Stephano and all the star players they added in their roster, they managed to convinced sponsors like Monster Energy and others because of that. Instead of favoring the team part, Eclypsia choosed to invest its money on media. A different strategic choice, that's all.

I think most of the point is made and we have to end it on a positive note.

Mind openness is not a skull fracture.

Opening the market to a bigger potential public can only make eSport grow, we are passionates before everything else, i myself was a high level gamer on several games, i'm still active on SC2 and Shootmania. Do you think we want to kill the market? At the contrary, we are trying more than ever to open it to a scale that sadly seems to scare you. Believe me, those viewers will soon be at your doors because today they find out about Eclypsia but tomorrow, if they like what you're doing, our games, our passion, they will seek more. Rub your hands instead of crying.

I'm available for the community and wish better time at your side.

Eclypsia already found a sponsor that will be announced soon. By the way, we are thanking our sponsor by advance for the support.