On June 10 2015 16:45 Cascade wrote: I feel it's fair. If you don't pay, why do people feel so entitled to HQ stream? >_>
They try their best to earn money of their product, and they seem to think that they will earn more from the paying viewers than they will lose on advertisement from the leaving non-paying viewers. With ad-block and all, I really don't think a free viewer is worth much more than what they pay for the bandwidth. I think a paying viewer is worth a lot of free viewers at least, especially if you subtract the bandwidth costs, so even if they lose 100 free viewers for every new subscriber, I think they will gain from the switch.
"But all the other tournaments are free!" Yeah, maybe they don't have the attraction to get many paying viewers. As a few posters have said, GSL is the most prestigious tournament (or so many think), so many people are ready to pay to see it, even with other "lesser" tournaments available for free. Which is why this move is an option for GSL, but probably not viable for any other tournament, as very few would actually pay for it. It's not a matter of the other tournaments being nice and passionate about SC2, it's just not a good move for them to shut out free views.
Precisely.
The sense of entitlement here is beyond belief. I am truly disappointed in my own species right now. With the amount of free viewers they have, you're correct. Free viewers probably cost them more than they earn from ads. Subscription is the only way. Ad-block is a large contributor to this, but you can't prevent it. People think they deserve access to high production quality content in HD free of charge.
It's depressing. People don't see how incredibly immoral that is.
I just wish they offered those videos on youtube, I loathe the twitch player and their vod system is terrible.
On June 10 2015 16:50 TheWinks wrote: When selling a product, make that product look as awful as possible and more people will buy it!
I subscribed to almost every season until the nightmare that was the switch to twitch and likely won't do it again at this rate.
No, make the completely free version low quality so people will be more tempted to actually pay for the content they consume.
Utter madness isn't it?
It's not so much entitlement as it is the fact that every person with a half-decent gaming PC and internet connection can stream to Twitch in 720p. This is not 2010 anymore, when those tools were still relatively rudimentary.
To play the devil's advocate, why would a low-quality stream tempt viewers to subscribe? For all I know it could mean that the GOM is just too incompetent to set up a stream with better quality (considering GOM's history I can't blame those people).
The following two things are also pretty much facts of life: 1) people like free stuff, and once something free has been given they will not take kindly to seeing that being taken away 2) people hate advertisements, and the mere existence of adblock means that the Internet has gone too far in drowning people in them. The Internet with adblock is a completely different place compared to the internet without adblock.
I use adblock, and have been for the past five or seven years. I cannot stand advertisements (it's the biggest reason why I don't watch TV at all anymore). I do subscribe to websites that provide useful, in-depth content on the stuff I really care about, but that's usually not entertainment.
It isn't about internet or computer infrastructure/hardware. This is about sustainable business model and who pays for what.
There are only two options. No one gets anything for free. You're either paying through ads or through a subscription. Now, when ads are insufficient to cover costs, the model does not work. For ads to be effective you need a lot of viewers, which GSL doesn't seem to have. (Not tens of thousands, you usually need hundreds of thousands of viewers for ads to return anything).
So, what other option is there? Please, tell me, how are they supposed to earn a profit or even cover costs without subscriptions? The product they deliver is great. GSL videos are awesome. Maybe you can improve that a bit more but realistically, that isn't the solution at all. Subscriptions are the only possible way for them to continue operating, and if too few people subscribe to them, they'll have to shut it down. That's terrible, and not their fault at all given the product is good.
The fault lies squarely with this atrociously entitled child-like generation I have to deal with. That no one is willing to pay for anything online. Everyone's using adblock and pirating their favorite music/tvshows/movies/games. That will fundamentally alter how the future of the internet looks, and people don't realize this isn't sustainable at all.
On June 14 2015 19:11 Caladan wrote: Who cares anymore, really? I haven't watched GOM in a long time and this will for sure keep me from doing it again in the foreseeable future.
This isn't 2010 anymore. In every aspect. SC2's future lies somewhere else, in community-organized, crowdfunded or non-profit fun events.
You have no idea what this costs. If you don't like GOM's style, that's fine and there is nothing wrong with that. But community organized, what does that even mean?
Low quality non-premier online casts? Those are boring and there are plenty of them around.
If you want the high quality professional cast in-person tournaments like WCS, IEM and GSL, you have to accept that either they need a lot of ads and a lot of viewers to makeup the cost, or they need subs. People seem to have no clue how much it costs to rent a building and hire a bunch of people for production and casting + the equipment and hardware for the show, it's a damn fortune.
I'm not surprised people don't appreciate it though. Just one more thing people take forgranted.
You don't need any MBA master or any career to understand why this is a bad move, just a few hundreds (or thousands) hours watching twitch streams to understand why people sub to streams.
Check any stream with a few thousands of viewers, the ratio of subs per hour is usually higher than in the GSL stream.
They tested the free stream vs pay wall for quality stream already, and from their own analysis they made more money while using a pay wall. We have a dedicated stream for a game that is not necessarily in the best state after all...
On June 15 2015 23:16 Deathstar wrote: They tested the free stream vs pay wall for quality stream already, and from their own analysis they made more money while using a pay wall. We have a dedicated stream for a game that is not necessarily in the best state after all...
I guess that's their reasoning. It's not very future minded and I think, IF there were to be a third player they might risk Blizzard dropping them as well. Can't imagine Blizzard being happy about this low quality advertising.
A funny thing is, btw, that the current low seems better than the previous medium. So did they actually test it properly lol
On June 15 2015 23:16 Deathstar wrote: They tested the free stream vs pay wall for quality stream already, and from their own analysis they made more money while using a pay wall. We have a dedicated stream for a game that is not necessarily in the best state after all...
They made more money in the short run. Is it wise in the long run? I'm no expert on organizing tournaments nor on brand reputation or anything close to that (thus my opinion is probably worthless huehuehue), but the hit they take from this policy in regard to brand reputation/prestige/etc seems really bad to me.
On June 15 2015 23:16 Deathstar wrote: They tested the free stream vs pay wall for quality stream already, and from their own analysis they made more money while using a pay wall. We have a dedicated stream for a game that is not necessarily in the best state after all...
They made more money in the short run. Is it wise in the long run? I'm no expert on organizing tournaments nor on brand reputation or anything close to that (thus my opinion is probably worthless huehuehue), but the hit they take from this policy in regard to brand reputation/prestige/etc seems really bad to me.
Plus what did they actually test? It's entirely possible they tested "If we worsen the free quality we get a sudden influx of subscribers" I didn't see much subscriptions happen when they did it the second time.
On June 14 2015 18:13 BreakfastBurrito wrote: If they want to be profitable, the answer is make a better product, not cut cost at the expense of all of your viewers seems like they just don't care about sc2 anymore...
Look at the current state of SC2 compared to other games and what it used to be. It's not GOM's fault that SC2 isn't popular anymore and nothing they will do will make their production quality any better. Making higher quality free will not attract a significant amount of viewers because no SC2 content will.
No one should blame GOM for trying to cash out on what little time SC2 has left until the new expansion revitalizes the scene for a short time.
On June 14 2015 18:13 BreakfastBurrito wrote: If they want to be profitable, the answer is make a better product, not cut cost at the expense of all of your viewers seems like they just don't care about sc2 anymore...
Look at the current state of SC2 compared to other games and what it used to be. It's not GOM's fault that SC2 isn't popular anymore and nothing they will do will make their production quality any better. Making higher quality free will not attract a significant amount of viewers because no SC2 content will.
No one should blame GOM for trying to cash out on what little time SC2 has left until the new expansion revitalizes the scene for a short time.
I don't think the numbers we're talking about justify the use of cash out etc. I think GOM headquarters just told them to at least make it not lose money or they'll pull the plug.
This decision was made because we believe it’s better to have GSL than not to.
Pretty sure they can't pull the plug on the foreigner stream due to contract with blizzard, at least as long as they want to be affiliated with WCS. Nevertheless, it's a fair assumptions that it's not up to them to lose money on their projects if they can help it.
On June 16 2015 01:21 cheekymonkey wrote: Pretty sure they can't pull the plug on the foreigner stream due to contract with blizzard, at least as long as they want to be affiliated with WCS. Nevertheless, it's a fair assumptions that it's not up to them to lose money on their projects if they can help it.
Pull the plug for next year, if certain conditions aren't met. I take it they work wit 1 year contracts but not sure of course.
Gom lost me as a customer when they switched their vods from a dedicated gomtv website to twitch. God awful organization and half the time the vods don't work on twitch.
Proleague and SSL are great because they post VODs on their YouTube channel eSportsTV hours after it airs. I am never awake to watch any of the Korean stuff live anyways, so I love that I get to watch it when I wake up. If Proleague and SSL can operate without a subscription service I'm sure GSL can as well. GSL is just trying to squeeze more money out of the operation. If you think GSL would disappear if there wasn't a subscription service you don't understand their business.
GSL is the most prestigious SC2 tournament and if they just would scrap this silly agenda of trying to convince fans that buying a subscription service to the GSL is supporting SC2 and keeping GSL around and spend just HALF of the time they spend on that crap on finding more sponsors they would easily be bringing in more money and have no problem making their desired margins without forcing fans to pay to watch their tournament.
It's pretty simple. Focus on the consumer and you'll get more viewers which will make you more enticing to sponsors which is where you'll get the real money. I don't understand why that's a hard concept to grasp because it has such a history of success.
I honestly hate the entire business plan of the GSL because it doesn't have the fans or viewers at the forefront. I'll never pay for the GSL which means I'll basically never watch it which sucks because I love Artosis and Tasteless and thoroughly enjoy watching them cast the GSL. I just refuse to support an eSports system that is not fan focused. Those of you who pay for the GSL are directly contributing to this backwards-thinking business plan and I encourage you to stop it and force them to change their business model.
what saddens me the most tbh is that its such a shortsighted vision that it cant be viable in the future imo.
I can't say for such business, but in case with F2P mmos it's actually the usual practice to milk remaining customers hard before finally closing down service.
We don't know details, we don't know when their contract with Tastosis expires, we don't know if they actually wanna continue and if yes, for how long. Maybe their bosses decided that LoTV won't have major impact on the game's state (and it actually won't, not for more than 2-3 months after its release anyway) and decided to get at least a bit more money while they still have it running.
And I wouldn't blame them for that if it happens. Looking into the streamers list for the last month I see they had 12.5k viewers on average. By today's standards it's way too low for such stream. Basically their stream, which costs money to produce, salary to casters etc has less viewers than a bunch of random guys streaming random games from their home PCs. Less subs too, in some cases way less subs if we talk about popular streamers (Lirik, Soda, Forsen, bunch of MOBA streamers etc). So they may actually think if it's even worth it at this point.
That's an incredibly stupid decision. Seeing as how 90% of the people who didn't subscribe probably are teenage kids who wouldn't/couldn't pay it anyway.
I would pay if I was in a more time zone friendly area to watch GSL regularly. Unfortunately the games start at 5:30 am here.
At least now I know not to bother to stay up late for the really big games if they're gonna be in potato quality.
On June 16 2015 09:29 G5 wrote: Proleague and SSL are great because they post VODs on their YouTube channel eSportsTV hours after it airs. I am never awake to watch any of the Korean stuff live anyways, so I love that I get to watch it when I wake up. If Proleague and SSL can operate without a subscription service I'm sure GSL can as well. GSL is just trying to squeeze more money out of the operation. If you think GSL would disappear if there wasn't a subscription service you don't understand their business.
GSL is the most prestigious SC2 tournament and if they just would scrap this silly agenda of trying to convince fans that buying a subscription service to the GSL is supporting SC2 and keeping GSL around and spend just HALF of the time they spend on that crap on finding more sponsors they would easily be bringing in more money and have no problem making their desired margins without forcing fans to pay to watch their tournament.
It's pretty simple. Focus on the consumer and you'll get more viewers which will make you more enticing to sponsors which is where you'll get the real money. I don't understand why that's a hard concept to grasp because it has such a history of success.
I honestly hate the entire business plan of the GSL because it doesn't have the fans or viewers at the forefront. I'll never pay for the GSL which means I'll basically never watch it which sucks because I love Artosis and Tasteless and thoroughly enjoy watching them cast the GSL. I just refuse to support an eSports system that is not fan focused. Those of you who pay for the GSL are directly contributing to this backwards-thinking business plan and I encourage you to stop it and force them to change their business model.
You love Artosis and Tasteless casting, but you encourage people to stop paying their salary?
It seems some people have very optimistic view on how much money you earn from people watching your stream for free. It'd be fun to get some actual number, how much GOM earns from twitch ads, including per viewer, and how much from subscribers. But I guess there is no reason for them to release those.
I used to subscribe, from the BW days to the early SC2 days.
Subbing to just 1 channel isn't expensive and I'd imagine that it's not considered expensive for most people. It's the fact that there are so many twitch channels out there and tournaments and events and players that all want you to sub and it can very quickly add up.
The logical response to that might be - well don't sub to everyone then, choose one or two and limit yourself to just that. But, if I was to limit myself to just one sub, then how could I choose between GSL and other channels? How do I know which one would benefit most from my money?
Of course I love starcraft and want to see it succeed and be popular and generate income for players and organisers etc. but what part of the scene should my small amount of disposable income go to? Should I give my money to my local scene? Should I put it in the Korean scene? Should my money be going directly to Blizzard in the hopes that they put more attention/resources to it?
On June 16 2015 18:02 jtype wrote: I used to subscribe, from the BW days to the early SC2 days.
Subbing to just 1 channel isn't expensive and I'd imagine that it's not considered expensive for most people. It's the fact that there are so many twitch channels out there and tournaments and events and players that all want you to sub and it can very quickly add up.
The logical response to that might be - well don't sub to everyone then, choose one or two and limit yourself to just that. But, if I was to limit myself to just one sub, then how could I choose between GSL and other channels? How do I know which one would benefit most from my money?
Of course I love starcraft and want to see it succeed and be popular and generate income for players and organisers etc. but what part of the scene should my small amount of disposable income go to? Should I give my money to my local scene? Should I put it in the Korean scene? Should my money be going directly to Blizzard in the hopes that they put more attention/resources to it?
That's where I'm at right now.
Put your money in whatever you enjoy the most. Don't put money into something just to save it because you want it to succeed. That would be artificial and it won't last. It would be sad if GSL went away, but if very few people enjoy it, then it should go away. That opens up the possibility for other organizations to step up their game and move into that slot and deliver what the customers want.
By subscribing to the product you enjoy the most, it is likely that others will enjoy that same thing and the thing you enjoy the most will probably survive. And that's what should survive because that's what people actually want to see.
So if your favorite thing in SC2 is watching players play at the highest level of individual leagues and/or you enjoy the banter of Tastosis more than more serious casters, then GSL would be a good place to put your money. If instead you enjoy watching local players duke it out, then support your local SC2 organizations. Or if you just really like one player, then support that player and his stream, and if he doesn't stream then put the money in the most likely place to see him.
On June 16 2015 18:02 jtype wrote: I used to subscribe, from the BW days to the early SC2 days.
Subbing to just 1 channel isn't expensive and I'd imagine that it's not considered expensive for most people. It's the fact that there are so many twitch channels out there and tournaments and events and players that all want you to sub and it can very quickly add up.
The logical response to that might be - well don't sub to everyone then, choose one or two and limit yourself to just that. But, if I was to limit myself to just one sub, then how could I choose between GSL and other channels? How do I know which one would benefit most from my money?
Of course I love starcraft and want to see it succeed and be popular and generate income for players and organisers etc. but what part of the scene should my small amount of disposable income go to? Should I give my money to my local scene? Should I put it in the Korean scene? Should my money be going directly to Blizzard in the hopes that they put more attention/resources to it?
That's where I'm at right now.
Put your money in whatever you enjoy the most. Don't put money into something just to save it because you want it to succeed. That would be artificial and it won't last. It would be sad if GSL went away, but if very few people enjoy it, then it should go away. That opens up the possibility for other organizations to step up their game and move into that slot and deliver what the customers want.
By subscribing to the product you enjoy the most, it is likely that others will enjoy that same thing and the thing you enjoy the most will probably survive. And that's what should survive because that's what people actually want to see.
So if your favorite thing in SC2 is watching players play at the highest level of individual leagues and/or you enjoy the banter of Tastosis more than more serious casters, then GSL would be a good place to put your money. If instead you enjoy watching local players duke it out, then support your local SC2 organizations. Or if you just really like one player, then support that player and his stream, and if he doesn't stream then put the money in the most likely place to see him.
Yea, I mean that's obviously mostly correct. The issues I have with that are, a) I don't really have one channel that I enjoy the most. It's true in most areas of my life but I vary rarely have a single favourite... anything... if that makes sense. I like lots of different things for lots of different reasons. And, b) I don't agree that just because something's not popular that it should fail.
Hey everyone! I feel like the gsl is worth the money but ofc I hate to pay. Honestly I would say that if the gsl collapses all of pro level sc2 will fall. I love the gsl as I have been their a million times and I love the people. 8 dollars is a lot but its not any worse than a single burker king meal. I made a video about it and I hope you will check it out. I said a lot more than this.
EPT
seems like they just don't care about sc2 anymore... 
