IEM World Championship to be Winner Takes All for $100,000…

On January 28 2014 19:34 Dingodile wrote:

I am sure many people like this "take all" if it was 15k€. But 100k is just unfair.

On January 28 2014 21:24 Lorch wrote:
You guys make it sound like IEM paying for travel + hotel means these Progamers who don't come 1st have nothing to loose. That is so not true, and sadly we don't have enough players who take stops from traveling to practice for most people to get this. Traveling to ANY tournament pretty much means that you loose about a week of practice and for most of these guys you also fucking with your sleeping rhythm. TBH if I knew my chances of getting 1st were very slim and I had enough honor to not agree to some splitt I would probably deny participation in this. I'd much rather use that one week to practice to get into the money at another tournament. I mean I always thought dreamhack was bad for only paying out top 8 (I think), but this is just beyond terrible. Besides who does WCS really provide for? In Korea it means that most players only have a chance to play in individual tournaments 3 times a year and most of the mainstays in code s are actually on teams that pay them a decent salary, I'd say the old 5+ seasons per year GSL did a better job at allowing koreans to do this full time (especially esf/ex-esf who often don't have much of a salary) than what WCS KR is doing. WCS NA is full of Koreans on foreign teams (aka those with some of the best salaries in the business anyways), so basically the argument off "WCS now provides for the players" only holds true for EU, where both Premier and Challenger are full of EU players. Still even there a decent amount of the prize money from last year went to people like MC or MVP who already made a ton in star 2.

I usually try to watch these IEMs as there are usually enough Koreans to make this worth watching (if it's not somewhere in Asia as those times are just beyond terrible for Europe), but I think I'll just not tune into this one as I don't really enjoy seeing a bunch of my favorite players wasting their time.

On January 28 2014 22:03 Darkhoarse wrote:

What is up with everyone saying things like, "it will make players play 150%" or "we'll see the best matches yet". Do people really think we haven't seen anyone truly playing their best because we haven't had a winner take all tournament? Every competition thus far has been a farce because the finalists didn't try as hard knowing they would still get some money in the end by this logic.

On January 28 2014 20:05 Zinnwaldite wrote:
Too much negativity,, should be a fun thing, as long as it does not become common practice.

On January 28 2014 23:43 Wingblade wrote:


It's dumb statements like this that hurt SC2 more than anything, you're boycotting a tournament because of their one off format to make some level of excitement when they are typically great at prize distribution? You care way too much for the little guy who won't even be at the tournament... It's a finale that's pretty much going to be all-Korean anyways, and most likely top tier players who are doing just fine already money wise. Sure San isn't doing amazing but most of his winnings have been won recently, it's certainly not the horror story some people have tried to claim.

"Voting with your wallet" has to be the dumbest philosophy ever. Don't bring it here.

On January 29 2014 00:06 ZenithM wrote:

I think the problem is that the scene may be a bit money-tight already, so people (read: players) are frustrated that a nice bunch of e-Sportz dollaz goes to one person instead of supporting multiple players.

On January 29 2014 00:12 Lorch wrote:


First of all I'm not boycotting all of IEM, I'm just not watching this one tournament. I care way too much about the little guy? Well guess what I couldn't care less about how popular sc2, I have watched/played and followed games that were smaller than foreign BW, I care about the competition and the guys who trade their 20s for a shot at this. I don't see any level of excitement in "hey this one guy is gonna get a lot of money, while everyone else would have been better of practicing". The last few IEM World Championship final thingies had atleast 50/50 Korean/Foreigner, sometimes even more foreigners, so your statement of "all korean" is pretty much bs. Even Blizzcon wasn't all Korean. And the dumbest philosophy ever is Hitler's adoption of Darwinism. Your "wallet" or how others may say your viewership is pretty much the only way fans can really voice their opinion in eSports. Nobody is gonna give much of a fuck about reddit/tl threads, though if tournament organizer X sees a drop in viewership they will realize that they did something wrong. It's really the same as it is in the videogame industry, Activsion doesn't care that COD has been the same game for like 7 years now as long as it sells well.

On January 29 2014 00:31 qotsager wrote:



"Voting with your wallet", as you call it, is mostly the only way a consumer has to voice his opinion. what's dumb about that? what you mean is: "i don't think this format is bad, so everyone else should share that opinion and let esl do their thing."
but imagine someone is not fine with that idea, even though it may be a one time event. what is that person going to do to show his disagreement besides not watching? be angry on TL? not sure if that matters in the end.
say, a lot of people think the concept is not very good in general, but might be fun if it is done once. so they watch the tournament. what iem sees, is that the viewership is as high as usual, probably higher, because, well, the winner takes 100k bucks. so if this works out for iem viewershipwise, i wouldn't be too surprised to see it again in the future. better show that you oppose the idea the first time.

On January 28 2014 23:31 Treemonkeys wrote:


How is it unfair when players can just not attend? That makes absolutely no sense. I swear, sometimes I think the TL community is the worst enemy of SC2.