FireCake's opinion on the decline of StarCraft 2

Hello everyone, Firecake here.

I am going to talk about the e-sport death of Starcraft 2.

Anybody that has already heard about SC2 in one way or another knows it very well: the game is running out of steam.
In addition, news recently came out about the world best SC2 pro teams to quit SC2 competitive scene for good.
The Proleague in Korea is also shutting down. This simply was one of the best SC2 tournaments in the world.
I was a SC2 pro player for several years and a lot of my viewers asked me what is my point of view on the topic but also if I will continue playing SC2 competitively, what is the future of SC2, why did the game collapsed ?
This video is here to answer all these questions.
Furthermore, I do really want to set the record straight about SC2. Why? Because a lot of nonsenses have been said about SC2 and I think that the game deserves way better than that.
I tried here to make a well-founded video, with plenty of points, to be able to well address the subject. I hope you will enjoy the video and that you will learn stuff.

First of all, to well address the subject, what is the so called e-sport death of SC2?
We are obviously going to talk about what happened in Korea, with the disbanding of the world best SC2 teams and the end of Proleague but first of all I would like to focus on of the whole SC2 e-sport context and background to well understand how things go.
Four years ago, so in 2012, there were a lot SC2 tournaments going on. They were organized by many different organizers like Redbull, TSL … There were just many of them.
Four years later we notice that some tournaments managed to remain active, a lot disappeared, and only two new tournaments/organizers came up into the scene, that are Kespa Cup and SSL.
They aren’t even actually new since GSL which was split from 5 to 6 seasons a year to now only 2 seasons a year, plus 1 season of Kespa Cup and 2 seasons of SSL a year.
So actually, there is no new SC2 tournament and there is no new organizer.
This is very serious because 4 to 5 years ago, SC was a very flourishing e-sport game to the extent that new e-sport tournament organizers like Dreamhack or ESL simply took off thanks to SC. That is how powerful SC was back in the days.
But now, it is the exact opposite effect that is happening. Rumour has it that Blizzard, the game editor, is forced to pay organizers to make them host SC2 tournaments that they do not want to host since they wouldn’t get a decent number of viewers from of it.
This is a big deal because tournaments organizers are in the best position to know if SC2 is alive or dead. Why? Because these guys invest huge amounts of money in SC2. Millions are needed to create a SC2 tournament.
If these guys stop hosting SC2 tournaments, it’s because they are fully conscious thanks to statistics that the game is not booming anymore, that the game is dead.
It goes even further. Here are some examples. Nowadays tournaments are ‘discount’ tournaments. Dreamhack is a tournament existing for years, there were SC2 DH back in 2012 and there still are now in 2016.
In 2012, all 32 matches were performed on stage with the two players fighting, and all series were casted. This year, only the last six series of the tournament were performed on stage. All the other matches were played backstage without seeing the players at any time.
It is even worse than that. Why? Because at DH Leipzig in early 2016, something huge happened: only one match was played on stage. A single one. It was the final, and it took place at 11am on a Sunday.
Viewers had to be very much pumped to watch it… (#passion)
Why did the final take place at this moment? Because the most important e-sport tournament for this DH was the CGSO one. The CSGO staff wanted their final to take place in the afternoon and SC2 to clear the way for the ‘big fish’.
This feeling is so real that I perfectly remember CSGO casters making fun of SC2 pro players while they were waiting for the CSGO tournament to start.
If I find again the video I will show it to you because it is really extraordinary.
[VIDEO]
SC2 is also losing a lot of its popularity. This can be easily noticed by looking to the stats provided by Google Trends. Google Trends is a tool that allows the analysis of the number of Google searches performed on a given subject through time.
What will interest us is SC2. If we look at this graph, we see that the game fame went down with years. The peaks match with each release of SC2 expansions. The SC related search number plummets with time.
You are going to tell me that it is perfectly normal: when a new game is out, there is a huge hype which is progressively going down. Actually for an e-sport game it should be the opposite since the game is wanted to last not only several months, the time for players to buy it and finish it, but years. People are wanted to be interested by the game and to play it for years.
Now let’s look at the Google Trends graph for League of Legends, which is a very efficient e-sport game, and let’s compare it to the SC2 one. It is very interesting because it is almost the opposite graph.
In its early days, LoL was nothing, with a very tiny viewership but its audience grew up and up in number and never ceased increasing while SC2’s kept decreasing.
In the beginning SC2 was dominating LoL but now the trend it totally reversed. LoL was built on very solid foundations and was able to gather a huge fan base while SC2 was losing its with years.

Pro players wages changed a lot too. Unfortunately, I can’t give you detailed data because every pro player signed a non-disclosure agreement with his team about it.
We often talk about salaries when between pro players. The average salaries expected when being a SC2 pro player back in 2011-2012 were 5 figures salaries. In other words if you were a top SC2 player in 2011-2012 you could have earned up to 10k, 15k, 20k€ a month. (NDR: Firecake is talking about foreigner players’ salaries, for Korean players’ salaries, see TL post)
Nowadays, world best SC2 players only earn less than 1k€ a month.

There’s audience too. Audience is very important. It plummeted both on Twitch and Youtube. If we look at the evolution of SC2 streamers statistics this year, we notice that their audience was divided by 3. This is huge.
I witnessed it myself; Yogo (French SC2 streamer) witnessed it too. We are both SC2 streamers. We streamed about 10 to 20hrs a week of SC2 this year, each week, and our viewer number was at least divided by 3.
If you look at Twitch top watched games, you see LoL etc, but where is SC2? Four years ago, SC2 was in top 3. Nowadays, good luck finding SC2 on Twitch! It is like playing “Where is Wally?” It’s about the same difficulty level.
SC2 is top 20, top 30, and sometimes even behind “social eating” streams… And I’m not even kidding.
In addition, SC2 suffered a lot from the loss of extremely talented casters. I think about people like Day9, HuskyStarcraft. People like this made me play SC2. Plus, they are great human beings.
I am very disappointed to have never had the luck to meet Day9. They really were extremely talented casters who did a lot for SC2. Yet they left.

Now that you have considered all of this, we can finally speak of the reason I made this video that is the end of Proleague and of the five best SC2 teams.
This news is completely crazy because Proleague is a 13 year old tournament. It is important to notice that e-sport as we know it is something pretty recent. Not the fact of doing video games tournaments but the fact that structures, tournaments, professional players come into consideration.
Proleague is 13 year old. This was an incredibly stable tournament. A lot of organisations did not last that long. Proleague is 13 year old. This is huge. And it stops doing SC2 tournaments. This is unbelievable.
The worst thing in all of that is that yet all of this means nothing. It means absolutely nothing. Why so? Because there are other SC2 tournament to make up for the loss of Proleague.
In this case, we lose players, the best players in the world. We lose INnoVation, a GSL winner, we lose Zest who won so many tournaments, we lose soO, the guy who became so famous thanks to his numerous second place finishes, we lose a lot of players.
This is the one true bad news for SC2, because it will influence a lot SC2 viewers. Why? Because these players have many fans. If these players stop playing, their fans will be disappointed as they will have no one else to cheer for. Hence, fans disappear to.
Some will say that new players will rise but actually there is not that much of new SC2players.
As a competitor, the main reason I play SC2 is to beat the world best players. If these players leave, the overall skill level will drop.
What if I tell you that the SC2 tournaments you’re watching in 2016 are not the highest skilled ones? That the pro player skills were far better before? Do you still feel like watching SC2 tournaments?
This question is very important. This will illegitimate SC2 as an e-sport game.
I want to digress for a moment, to show you an article written by Stuchiu. Stuchiu is a “behind the scene man” that made a lot for the game. He wrote many articles about SC2. He highlighted some of the best players. He has a good knowledge of the SC2 scene.
He wrote an article about the lack of skill in current SC2 competitions compared to the old ones. Link is in the description.
So, we have a lot of players in Korea, the best ones, who left. They are unable to keep competing because they don’t have team anymore. Ok.
Traditional Korean tournaments, for example GSL, the most prestigious of them, need 32 players to be run. Actually it’s more 64 players because there is Code S and Code A, but let’s say 32 players.
Now that most of Korean pro players left, is GSL still able to happen with at least 32 pro players, with no casual players or no full time players in it?
This challenges the relevancy of SC2 e-sport. There are not even enough players to make tournaments. Rumour has it once again that there will not be any GSL in 2017. Yes it’s only a rumour but it tarnishes the reputation of GSL.
If this rumour is only a rumour, the first GSL would do would be to deny it. But GSL hasn’t done it yet. This does not stand for a proof but this is scary.

Could this downfall have been anticipated? The answer is yes.
Considering all I have already said, less tournaments, less organizers, less viewers; why all this leads to a SC2 collapse? It’s pretty simple.
In e-sport the key is viewer number. The only thing that does really matters is audience.
How does a tournament work? For a tournament to happen, a lot of money is needed. Where does all this money come from? Sponsors.
Sponsors are very famous keyboards, computers brands… that give money to structure, tournament, and players to get good advertisement. Sponsors look for the maximum people to see their products.
If there are less viewers, sponsors will invest less money in the game which will lead to less tournaments. The key in e-sport is audience. This is the only thing that matters.
We need viewers and we need a lot of them for e-sport to do well. But who are these viewers? Who watches SC2 tournaments?
The answer is pretty simple. They are either SC2 players looking for new strategies or former SC2 players, able to understand the game and why what pro players do is impressive and hence, to enjoy the show.
Is it possible to watch SC2 tournaments without ever having launched a game? Theoretically yes, it is possible, but actually, most of SC2 viewers are also SC2 players.
Hence, when I say “the key is audience”, actually the key are the players.

So for e-sport to be healthy, viewers are needed. But who are they? They are players. So the number of players has to be maximised.
In the past, SC2 was a successful game. A very successful game. Now it isn’t anymore. Why?
There are two main possible reasons: SC2 evolved to something bad or SC2 did not evolve at all. It has missed the boat. SC2 should have known changes that never happened.
I am now going to discuss the numerous reasons to SC2 downfall but keep in mind there is not a unique reason to this situation.
Why did SC2 collapsed? It did because of a combination of failed stuffs.
Four years ago, Destiny, a famous SC2 streamer, published a Reddit article entitled “Starcraft 2 will be dead before Legacy of the Void if Blizzard doesn't change its course”, Legacy of the Void being the last SC2 expansion pack.
This article is in English but I urge you to read it. I find this article instructive and interesting to read because it draws the same conclusions as I just did.
It assesses that SC2 is not doing well on some points and that if this situation keeps going this way, the game will come to a standstill. Actually four years later all I am saying is that the game did collapsed. It really did.
Destiny also brings solutions in his article and we had to wait for four years for Blizzard to implement them.
Why is the number of SC2 players decreasing? For Destiny, the game is simply not attractive at all to new players.
Let’s imagine you are just starting SC2. First you will be a bit lost and what you will want to do is to find some content about how to play, what are the main strategies, what are you doing wrong, why are you losing? Etc…
Then try to Google “SC2 legacy of the void tutorial”, try to find resources on the internet, you will find nothing.
Maybe if you are lucky you will find HOTS/WOL build orders that will be of no use for you.
You just cannot learn the game by looking for help on the internet.
Now let’s we look at what LoL is doing. There are hundreds of playable heroes on LoL that can be played at top, mid, bot or jungle. There are a lot of characters and a lot of ways to play them but just chose any of them, for example playing top with Trundle, just Google “Trundle top build” and you will find many diversified tutorials.
This is something very important since it will incite the player to improve and keep playing.
Another thing that LoL does way better than SC2 is inciting players to play.
Yes I know, it is completely crazy, players have to be incited to play.
Experience rewarding at the end of each LoL game, no matter if you win or lose, is something pretty new but damn efficient. These experience points will allow you to buy skins, abilities, ingame graphical assets. This incites very much LoL players to keep playing to keep unlocking skins and so on.
Whereas in SC2, if you win, you win, and if you lose, you lose. That’s all.
But now, four years after Destiny’s post, it is very interesting to see that Blizzard finally agreed to add ingame skins to unlock, Nova DLCs, emotes, …. A lot of small contents to unlock.
Let me stop you there. Skins are awesome but they are not free! Plus you can only unlock them by paying. This leads me to talk about the last huge negative point about SC2: we are fooled by Blizzard. We are Blizzard cash cows. Why?
I had to pay Wings of Liberty. The basic SC2 game. About 40-60€. Fine. Then there’s HOTS. Same thing, about 40-60€. Then there’s LOTV. Same thing, about 40-60€. Then there is Nova DLCs, 10-20-30€. Ok. Then, skins, 4-5€ each skin which makes 40€ total.
The amount of money spent on SC2 is unacceptable.
LoL is a free game and you only need to play it to unlock skins and the whole game content.
I personally think that if Blizzard really wanted to revive SC2 e-sport, they would fulfill this absolute need that is making SC2 a free to play game. It is simply unthinkable that SC2 is not F2P already. It prevents of lot of potential new players from starting the game. This however is what the game needs to keep surviving as an e-sport game.
Unfortunately, let’s be honest, Blizzard does not seem to like free to play policy.
Even Overwatch was announced to be a F2P but in the end, it was not released as a F2P. Hence I do not think SC2 will ever be a F2P, or it will be Blizzard last resort, to come in at least 2 to 3 years.
Hence this will not be what will make the game survive.
Before exposing what is to me the main reason to SC2 collapsing, that is gameplay issue, I would really like to stress that SC2 collapsed because of many different reasons.
As an example of a minor reason, when the game was released in 2010, there was no ingame chat. It means there was a stupid guy at blizzard who thought “yeah, we can sell an AAA rating game without ingame chat”.
This is mind blowing. A game made by Blizzard, one of the best videogames companies in the world, is not finished, with no ingame chat.
To me this is a very minor mistake but it remains an aberration. This kind of minor mistakes did not help SC2 at all.
However, there are other reasons, fake ones. I would like to demolish them before I keep going, to continue on healthy basis.
Among the fake reasons I really do not like, there is “SC2 is a 1v1 game and 1v1 cannot succeed in e-sport”. I would like to remind you that SC2 was flourishing four years ago, and it was already 1v1 at this time… This argument is invalid.
E-sport may have changed and multiplayers game may be in a leading position but I can name you 1v1 games that are doing well, for example Hearthstone, versus fighting games like Street Fighter or Super Smash Bros.
Also, and I know some will argue and I agree with them, there are cell phone games tournaments like Clash Royal. It may be a game at the very limit of e-sport however Clash Royals tournaments gather a lot of people. Hence the audience for 1v1 does exist.
Another fake reason, SC2 would be a too fast game. Same thing, four years ago SC2 was already a fast game and was doing very well. Plus since then, others fast games like CS:GO, other FPS are doing very well. The audience for fast games does exist too.
Finally, the last fake reason I hate the most, “SC2 is dying because of the 12 workers start”. I just cannot stand this point for many reasons.
First of all, SC2 collapsing started before Legacy of the Void. Hence if there a problem in the game, it has to be something else as the main reason. So this is just a minor reason. Plus I would like to stress that it is wrong. People saying that the 12 workers start makes the game too fast is a total aberration.
The game seems faster in LOTV thanks to new units which are available very early in the game and that incite players to keep harassing their opponent.
I reference to adept for Protoss. This unit is available very very very early in the game and is almost always profitable. Hence as a Protoss the first unit you want to pop out is adept.
Same thing as Terran with reaper. This is an existing unit since WoL but it was given grenades since LotV which make it extremely powerful and always profitable in the early game.
That much profitable that in Blizzcon, the world biggest SC2 tournament that took place two weeks ago, reapers were used in each single game of the grand finale ByuN vs Dark. In two or three games, depending on what you call mass reaper, ByuN did a mass reaper and won.
These new units coming in very early in the game give this high speed impression.
Ravagers, even if they are less used by now, can also be named for Zergs as early available pressure unit.
Hence the 12 workers start is not responsible at all of the SC2 downfall. The game became too fast and less strategic-oriented because of the new units.
Last thing. Let’s imagine the 12 workers start has been here since WoL. And that only now in LotV we would be switching to 6 workers to start the game.
I am deeply convinced that people would argue that “it was better in HotS and LotV when there were 12 workers”. Except that it is stupid thinking and not at all the core or the problem.
To some extent we could say that the biggest deal with switching from 6 to 12 workers is that casual players are forced to learn the basics of the game once again.
In any game, having to learn the basics again should not be an issue but it is in SC2 because of the lack of tutorials.
I personally think that the worker change is a bad change gameplay-wise. It will not lead to a downfall of SC2 on its own but it is pretty bad because there is no tutorial available to learn the game again. Hence players have to learn the game again but they are unable to do so.
Let’s now deal with to me the biggest issue that led SC2 to collapse, I mean gameplay.
SC2 is a RTS game, strategies are used to defeat the opponent. Ok.
My point is that SC2 had balance issues. I do not mean that one strategy is stronger than others but that some strategies were overused. Actually the using rate of strategies is not an issue, the issue is not to change this.
If you look at all the LotV balance patches that came out, almost no change can be noticed. Now, let’s look at the same thing for the same amount of time for LoL. All the changes that were performed in one year. This is insane. It makes us wonder who is actually working on SC2!
Anyway, I think that at some moment in SC2 history, some changes should have been done but they did not happen.
For example, the broodlord/infestor era. I’m convinced that people that already knew back SC2 in 2010/2011 know exactly what I’m referring to. They may even be still traumatized from it.
We went through a time where all Zerg players were only using one strategy: broodlords infestators combo. This strategy was way too strong. It was stronger than any other Zerg army composition. This is a first huge issue since it put aside strategy. There is on OP strat, the rest is shit. But also, this army composition was very strong against any race.
As a consequence, only this strategy was seen in tournaments. Maybe sometimes the Zerg player struggled to reach this army composition but the whole game was about getting broodlord infestors.
It caused a lot of troubles since viewers but even players got sick of it. It took one year to Blizzard to change things. They waited HotS.
It has to be understood that in the beginning, this army composition was very interesting. I am sure that many people remember that one 50 min Stephano vs KiWiKaKi game, where Stephano was making infestors broodlords but KiWiKaKi managed to win in the end using two mothership vortexes.
A lot a people remember this game and enjoyed it. And it is deserved since it was brand new but from this point, players and viewers saw broodlord infestors every game. Each game there was only broodlord infestors. The first games you find it funny but in the end, it becomes so lame.
Blizzard did nothing for too long back in the days.
The same issue is encountered in 2013-2014 until 2015 with swarmhosts.
I am sure some of you are laughing since I was one of the guys who polluted the game with this strategy.
What were SH? This unit enabled Zerg players to camp in very long games and to win on long term. This unit creates free units to attack. The idea behind that is to stay at home and to destroy costly enemy units with SH free units.
At some point trading like this for a long time will make the opponent starving. But for this style to be successful, the game has to last very very long because only very few costly units are taken to the opponent each time a fight happens and this process has to be repeated again and again.
This is boring. The idea of winning thanks to resource balance is interesting: it was brand new in SC2. I trade better than you every time we meet until I win since we gather almost the same amount of resource, except that the result were very long, boring and repetitive games.
I play the longest game in the SC2 history versus MaNa. This was a crazy game. The average duration for a SC2 game is about 20 minutes for the longest games. This very game I played against MaNa lasted something like 3 hours. A really long time.
This is the longest SC2 game ever. I used swarmhost in this game and viewers loved it. This is very important to notice. I remember that the number of viewers went from 5000 viewers to 10000, then 15000, then 20000 and up to 30000 viewers. 30000 viewers watched this totally boring strategy.
Once you have watched it for 30 minutes you perfectly get what is happening. Yet the game lasted 3 hours and viewers loved it.
However, after that a lot of players started to do the same thing, I think about Korean players like Life, a wonderful player.
As a result, viewers and players ate SH games over and over. This was so boring and it took Blizzard one and a half year to take care of the situation.
They waited the situation to become totally unbearable to do something.
Now, on LotV,I would say that this is a better situation since players tend to use varied army compositions, but some units are still causing troubles.
Ultralisk, once popped out, make marines useless. Adept is unbearable. Liberator is a low micro, very powerful unit. There are still a lot of issues and in a year, Blizzard almost changed nothing.
To me, this is the biggest weakness of SC2. The game is interesting, deep, but after some time playing it, optimal strategies are found and are always played, with only very small differences between the games.
Hence players/viewers feel like they keep doing/watching the same thing over and over again. This, to me, make SC2 a boring game to play. And if the game is boring for players it also is for viewers.
As a conclusion, I am not going to lie to you, I think that SC2 e-sport is completely over.
Let’s imagine you’re a pro player and you want to keep being a fulltime SC2 pro player, playing in tournaments, etc…. What are you going to do? Looking for a team and sponsors because you need them to go to tournaments, earn a salary to live for the day, etc….
You’re going to look for the SC2 teams that may interest you, you’re going to get personal endorsements.
You are going to contact them like: “I am a SC2 pro player, I am really motivated and I would like you to endorse me and to give me money. I return you will be able to enjoy my fame: I have thousands of Twitter followers, fans in tournaments, Hence if you put a logo of your company on my jersey, a lot of people are going to see it”.
This is this kind of talk you’re going to have with teams and sponsors and in return, they will give you money and allow you to go to tournaments.
But what are they going to ask you? “Your project is amazing and interesting, let’s give it a try! What is the next tournament you’re going to compete in?”
“I don’t know, I just don’t know”.
No tournament is announced yet. I don’t know it WCS, DH or IEM will take place next year.
Of course I can try to lie to them, but they’re not stupid, so what I am actually really asking to them is something more like “hey buddy, could you give me money so that I can represent your brand in tournament I’m totally not sure that will happen”.
So ok, the actual SC2 situation is not fun. SC2 e-sport is probably dead. However, the title of my video is “The e-sport death of SC2”, not the actual game.
What does this mean? It means that you can still play SC2 campaign, coop mode or multiplayer just like nothing ever happened. Blizzard even announced they will add more coop missions in the future. You will still be able to have fun on SC2. I myself do stream it and I enjoy it.
What is really going on on SC2? SC2 is just completely old-fashioned. And so what?
I would like to end this video on a good note. I think that SC2 will remain for many as a wonderful game that requires a lot of mastery. I think that many people show huge respect to one of the first e-sport game, that requires a lot of skill.
It has nothing to do with games like Clash Royale, or maybe even HS where a lot of luck, of RNG comes into consideration.
SC2 has that much of an aura that it managed to reach Deepmind.
For those who do not know, Deepmind is the company that created AlphaGo. AlphaGo is the AI that beat the world best go player. This is wonderful news, I am not going to discuss it more.
Now Deepmind is challenging SC2. What do they want to do? They want to develop a SC2 AI able to defeat all SC2 players in the world. Just this. Just this.
Why is it so awesome? I will monitor closely if they manage to do so. This would be unbelievable.
Above all, it just shows the amount of respect Deepmind has for SC2. They said it themselves. The game is interesting and strategically deep enough, playing it requires a lot of things, it is a real time game which demands constant thinking, constant focusing.
For them, the game is perfect for an AI to challenge it.
I am personally going to monitor it closely.
You may not see me anymore in SC2 tournaments since I do not think it will be possible to compete in tournaments next year, but if the chance is given to me to make an AI able to beat the world best SC2 players, I will join it for sure. I find this idea wonderful.
One can even imagine AI versus AI SC2 tournaments. I do not know if you even realize the new strategies that we could witness. It would be different.
Anyway, I think that SC2 e-sport is other but there is another future for SC2, not a dark one. Let’s see what will come out of this, but I am really looking forward to seeing it.

I hope you enjoyed the video, this is the first of its kind I do. If you did enjoyed it, I would be nice of you to like it, maybe to expose your own opinion in the comment section. If you have any question, feel free to ask them to me.
Last thing, feel free to share this video since I think it can be useful to new players entering e-sport. Why so? Because it is often very interesting to know what happened before.
Here we are, I leave you here. See you, take care!