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On January 02 2017 10:20 mnck wrote: Can anyone link me to any thorough explainations of what the fuck happened at EG? Did Twitch buy the brand and ruin it and a bunch of people left out of frustration? How the hell did PPD of all people end up as CEO? I honestly couldn't even believe the news when I read PPD was retiring. The most consistent player of all time in Dota, well above both Puppey and Xiao8.
Has EG been dumped by Twitch (after acquring all the people at the company) and PPD was given the offer to buy it, and being that he seems to have aspirations of having his own esports company, took the opportunity? Also this video seems very off for some reason. Certainly feels like a major transition for the company, and deserves a little more than just some incredibly annoying and scripted quick presentation.
Have to admit that this video is worthy of a 11th grade English presentation. Would have no idea that it was one of the biggest gaming organizations of all time if you didn't already know.
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On January 02 2017 08:56 Clbull wrote: I'm going to play devil's advocate here and defend EG's apathy towards ditching SC2.
I don't see a lot of problematic apathy, seems like half the posts are confused that EG was still technically active in SC2, and the other half posts are people who follow other eSports as well and think this video is just bad in every way and EG is going in a poor direction almost in its entirety (and I agree with that honestly).
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TIL EG still had a SC2 division..... I think that's the biggest news here.
Other than that I agree with most people here: it's pathetic to do a poor video like that to announce that SC2 is out and that people who made EG what it is left. IMO everyone involved deserve more than that.
I have always been a fan of the talents and not the teams and luckily we still have Mr Incontrol to provide SC2 content. No EG tag needed for that :-)
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I mean, everyone knew this was coming. Incontrol had said it a long time ago. They hadn't made a pickup since Jaedong and all their players were basically retired. Huk's been casting Overwatch (with pretty bad reception) and JD is back to BW. Suppy, Throzain and Xeno are just students now. It's sad to see.
A friend reminded me that this is the same organization that started off as a Canadian CS team, so big changes aren't unusual for them really. Just another stepping stone for them.
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Aren't they also winning kabillions of dollars in dota or something? Maybe this PPD guy just doesn't care about these other games and spent the bare minimum of time needed to make this announcement. It's not pretty, but it sounds like very little remains besides the name of the EG that existed when SC2 was just starting.
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United States12224 Posts
On January 02 2017 11:28 mikedebo wrote: Aren't they also winning kabillions of dollars in dota or something? Maybe this PPD guy just doesn't care about these other games and spent the bare minimum of time needed to make this announcement. It's not pretty, but it sounds like very little remains besides the name of the EG that existed when SC2 was just starting.
Yeah pretty much. When Alex Garfield ran the company, it was as a broad esports pro gaming brand. PPD's origins are in Dota (plus he's a millionaire from winning TI) so it makes sense that's where he'd want the most focus. No doubt some of the other games were either no longer profitable or required too much overhead. Some of them seem questionable (Momochi and JWong couldn't pull their weight and turn a profit for the company??) but he probably has the clarity to make a final judgment.
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wait a min... EG still had a sc2 division? They stopped their attention on sc2 since LotV.
When Geoff left, they didn't even say anything about it. It's pretty clear management doesn't give a damn about sc2 or its people who helped build EG. The EG we know no longer exists.
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On January 02 2017 11:37 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2017 11:28 mikedebo wrote: Aren't they also winning kabillions of dollars in dota or something? Maybe this PPD guy just doesn't care about these other games and spent the bare minimum of time needed to make this announcement. It's not pretty, but it sounds like very little remains besides the name of the EG that existed when SC2 was just starting. Yeah pretty much. When Alex Garfield ran the company, it was as a broad esports pro gaming brand. PPD's origins are in Dota (plus he's a millionaire from winning TI) so it makes sense that's where he'd want the most focus. No doubt some of the other games were either no longer profitable or required too much overhead. Some of them seem questionable (Momochi and JWong couldn't pull their weight and turn a profit for the company??) but he probably has the clarity to make a final judgment.
They signed Chris G, so I'm guessing they're looking for FGCers who probably won't come in as pricey. There's a new MvC coming out next year and the current roster will participate there as well I'm sure -- assuming Ricki and k-brad stick around.
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Most of what we knew as EG became GG and got bought by twitch. EG is just an IP twitch probably had no interest in owning the rights to anymore and sold it off to somebody who actually seemed to be interested in running an esports team. This PPD guy probably has no interest in putting a bunch of 'personalities' on the payroll in place of actual players.
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On January 02 2017 07:29 GreenMash wrote: Kinda shitty to have a title "Welcoming 2017" while dropping alot of players lmao.
Exactly what i was thinking. This leaves a probably unwanted sarcastic Impression.
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Don't understand why people are still asking about Thorzain, Suppy and Xeno. They are definitely no longer under contract with EG and most likely just carrying the team name for old times sake.
EG honored their contracts with the last SC2 personalities on their team Huk and Incontrol and with the last 2 contracts ending, of cause their sc2 division goes with it. I would have thought most people would have known by now.
Like what most people said, momochi and Justin Wong leaving are much much bigger surprises. They seem to be doing quite well in SFV this year, so releasing them is a mild shock.
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On January 02 2017 11:12 SetGuitarsToKill wrote: I mean, everyone knew this was coming. Incontrol had said it a long time ago. They hadn't made a pickup since Jaedong and all their players were basically retired. Huk's been casting Overwatch (with pretty bad reception) and JD is back to BW. Suppy, Throzain and Xeno are just students now. It's sad to see.
A friend reminded me that this is the same organization that started off as a Canadian CS team, so big changes aren't unusual for them really. Just another stepping stone for them.
I remember way back when, when EG was a Canadian CS 1.6 team. They were pretty good and one of the best in NA too. They've lasted for a long time and grew quite a bit over the years, but it seems like they're downsizing now and not just with them closing SC2. Going to be interesting if not depressing to see how much further EG will scale down this year if at all.
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I didn't know they still had an SC2 team.
Now that their old sparring partner is gone, I wonder when TL will drop their SC2 team. They do still have one, right?
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On January 02 2017 13:39 Shinespark wrote: I didn't know they still had an SC2 team.
Now that their old sparring partner is gone, I wonder when TL will drop their SC2 team. They do still have one, right? With uThermal, TLO, Mana, and Snute on the team, yeah they definitely still have a team. TL literally built themselves off of Starcraft more than any other team ever since the BW days, and I fully expect them to stay committed even if they're the last team standing.
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SC2 has got to go down as on one of the biggest disappointments in history of gaming.. Man what happened
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On January 02 2017 14:01 nurle wrote: SC2 has got to go down as on one of the biggest disappointments in history of gaming.. Man what happened
Dude gaming has things like Spore and No Man's Sky. Even if you think SC2 is disappointing it's not even in the same ballpark as those.
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On January 02 2017 06:39 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2017 06:34 Garuga wrote: Why is some 15-year old looking fella the spokesperson for a company? I hate mobas with a fiery passion. PPD bought EG after Alex Garfield left using his winnings from TI5 (~$2MM)
Huh? That's false. Twitch gave it to Peter and the Dota 2 team.
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It's an important reminder that when money gets involved, it's because there is something in it for them and not from love of the community or game. They will come and go.
I agree with the earlier posts that Blizzard is ultimately responsible for how SC2 has played out. Even outside of the gameplay, IMO they made choices that made it difficult for 3rd party tournaments and leagues to prosper. They didn't want another BW KESPA but failed to deliver a better alternative.
I think the future of competitive RTS will happen with another company. Even if they started working on SC3 today, Bliz takes 3 or 4 years to put out a product. And the way Bliz designs games now (D3, Hearthstone, HOTS, Overwatch) is much more with the mass market than with hardcore players in mind. I love those games for what they are, but they aren't Broodwar.
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On January 02 2017 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2017 14:01 nurle wrote: SC2 has got to go down as on one of the biggest disappointments in history of gaming.. Man what happened Dude gaming has things like Spore and No Man's Sky. Even if you think SC2 is disappointing it's not even in the same ballpark as those. I agree with you, but seeing Starcraft 2 die out like this still hurts.
I honestly believe that all this happened because Blizzard tried way too hard to make it into an esport. The thing about the esports that dominate the world today is that none of them started out as esports or were even intended to become esports. They simply evolved into esports naturally:
1. DotA - Started out as a very simple Warcraft 3 mod where you controlled just one unit instead of one army. It eventually evolved over the years into the most lucrative esport in the world. 2. LoL - Basically a DotA clone that became successful in its own right. Like DotA, it was not forced into becoming an esport and became one naturally. 3. Counterstrike - Started out as a very simple Half-Life 1 mod. Easy to learn, hard to master. Very accessible but also has a lot of depth. 4. Hearthstone - It's basically a very accessible version of Magic: the Gathering. It was designed to be a casual game that became an esport naturally.
It feels like Blizzard misunderstood what made esports great. They seemed to have assumed that people watch esports to watch people play games much better than they can. While this is true, they failed to realize that people watch games that they themselves like to play, and we here on TL.net are a very small minority compared to the entire Starcraft 2 player base. Outside of TL.net and isolated pockets like /r/starcraft/ and Twitch, almost no one has a positive opinion of Starcraft 2's multiplayer.
Can the game recover? It can, but Blizzard would have to completely change the way they develop it. They have to get off their high horse and start making the game fun to play again instead of simply being "fun to watch."
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My fondest memories of SC2 were from EG jaedong, puma, early idra and of course huk, stephano etc. Seeing EG without incontrol confuses me because to me he was the posterboy.
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