Axiom announces GOG.com as a new sponsor - Page 4

On August 02 2014 09:46 TotalBiscuit wrote:


Wut. Not having any DRM doesn't mean the game is free, it just means it doesn't have crap like Uplay or always-online requirements.



The majority of Korean players are not paid a salary. Most of those that are happen to be on foreign teams. The top KeSPA koreans are paid salary, those considered B-teamers are not. What remains of the ex-eSF teams are for the most part also not paying salaries. Most teams are also not providing many flights for players due to the expense, some Koreans have paid for their own flights to go to events. I don't know whether or not teams are also taking prize money, I'd imagine not but it's not something I've been able to get anyone to talk about. I do know that some foreign teams take a small percentage of prize money.

For the last couple of years we've taken no prize money from players, paid for the house and all the expenses that come with that, catering, flights and player salaries. This has resulted in the team being hugely expensive to run. The experiment was to see whether it was possible to make that work. I still think it is but as with any startup, the money sunk into it to bring it into the black has been significant and we're not in the black right now, we're still running deep in the red.

I'd say with the sponsorship we have now. If we paid no salary and took a small cut of prizemoney, we could sustain a team of 8 players, pay for the house and all related expenses (since that's the capacity of the house without getting uncomfortable) and fly 1-2 players to an international event every month. We didn't want to be like that. Unfortunately the scene shrank since we started rather than grew so the challenge of breaking even while still treating our players in the way we feel they should be treated is now much more difficult.

Hopefully that should give you some idea of the reality of this whole thing.