More High Profile Blizzard Esports Staff Set To Leave

On June 03 2019 07:52 Nakajin wrote:
Ouch if Kim Phan leaves too it's another bad oment for us, she has been at the head of the boat for a long time and she seemed like one of the last who had an interest in brand/community protection.

On June 03 2019 12:05 JimmyJRaynor wrote:

Blizzard has been hemorrhaging active users for 2 years. They are down to 32 million active users. It doesn't matter what the esports people do if no new games are coming out and the current games have content that is not keeping the current user base interested.

The way things are going it doesn't matter what Kim Phan does. Stopping the bleeding at Blizzard depends on the teams of game makers building great new games.

On June 03 2019 11:03 digmouse wrote:
At this point, savor whatever you have in this year's WCS.

On June 03 2019 12:19 geokilla wrote:


I disagree. If you look at CS:GO and LoL, both games are still extremely popular to play and watch right now. There's new professional players entering into the scene, there's constant patches to the game (for LoL) where new champions are released or balance is changed, and just overall there's a lot more action from the developers. Whereas with SC2, the only thing that changed from an esports perspective are the map pool.

I can't say much about the other esports since I don't watch or play them, but isn't Dota and Fortnite also extremely popular? I thought they both have a very active and healthy esports scene?

On June 03 2019 12:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote:

how big was Blizzard's esports team in 1999? it didn't exist.

Make the game great like Brood War and the esports will follow.
Make an above average to very good game like Overwatch and people will move on a couple of years after the game is released.

On June 03 2019 12:19 geokilla wrote:


I disagree. If you look at CS:GO and LoL, both games are still extremely popular to play and watch right now. There's new professional players entering into the scene, there's constant patches to the game (for LoL) where new champions are released or balance is changed, and just overall there's a lot more action from the developers. Whereas with SC2, the only thing that changed from an esports perspective are the map pool.

I can't say much about the other esports since I don't watch or play them, but isn't Dota and Fortnite also extremely popular? I thought they both have a very active and healthy esports scene?

On June 03 2019 18:21 MrFreeman wrote:
There is still money to be made in RTS and some interesting RTS games still come out. If blizz implodes, we can just switch to another title.

On June 03 2019 17:35 Pandain wrote:
If Kim is leaving you know something is fucked up

On June 03 2019 18:47 gTank wrote:


Yes, TW games are super popular and well made. Also, I have higher hopes for C&C remastered and WC3 Reforged.

On June 03 2019 18:47 gTank wrote:


Yes, TW games are super popular and well made. Also, I have higher hopes for C&C remastered and WC3 Reforged.

On June 04 2019 00:54 DomeGetta wrote:
Viewership is literally doubling last year - Blizzard is a business - they are going to continue to act like a business - as long as the community stays strong we are going to be fine boys.

On June 04 2019 01:10 Nakajin wrote:


Yes and no, more viewership doesn't necessarily mean a considerably bigger amount of money coming in, and for sure doesn't make running WCS-GSL by themselves a profitable activity, also viewership metric are questionable, I'm gonna try to find the article I read it in, but basically number are generally inflated across the board in esport.

Dosen't mean running a SC2 scene is necessarily a bad idea business wise, but it's certainly something that can go away if you put people in charge with different idea on the role of esport in the company.

Edit: there it is https://kotaku.com/as-esports-grows-experts-fear-its-a-bubble-ready-to-po-1834982843

On June 04 2019 05:11 Shuffleblade wrote:

Well the problem is that the more common knowledge it become the more sponsors get to realize that the views doesnt mean what they were told they meant. The reason the numbers are inflated is because the orgs are courting sponsors, and we all know what happens when there are no more sponsors.

Sure esport wont go away but it can shrink, seeing as how massively big some esports have gotten it can shrink quite significantly.

As to your arguement about skin packs, sure ofc no company would drop that part, unless it also meant increased costs for support, development, tournament costs and so on. It is possible that the actual gains from sc2 isnt near what you think.

On June 04 2019 05:43 Shuffleblade wrote:

Oh my god You really dont understand. I'm not saying they arent making money "on the skin pack", I'm saying they aren't making money on sc2.

If they have decided to support GSL, WCS and have blizzcon + all the price money, +continuous support of sc2. Patch wise and support wise. Either they can go minus minus minus in their budget (only minus) or they could make s skin pack and maybe lose less money on sc2.

It is worth it for Riot for example,, "league of legends", because the amount of money they make on cosmetic in-game items are insane compared to sc2. If they believe the league increases sales they can do it, because running those leagues might lose them money but league of legends as a whole business makes money. SC2 has almost no income but tons of costs, of course sc2 doesn't make money for the company anymore. I would be surprised if they ever broke even (besides when actually selling the games).

If you acutally think SC2 is still making Blizz money we are simply at an impasse, we wont get any farther in these discussions.

On June 04 2019 05:43 Shuffleblade wrote:

Oh my god You really dont understand. I'm not saying they arent making money "on the skin pack", I'm saying they aren't making money on sc2.

If they have decided to support GSL, WCS and have blizzcon + all the price money, +continuous support of sc2. Patch wise and support wise. Either they can go minus minus minus in their budget (only minus) or they could make s skin pack and maybe lose less money on sc2.

It is worth it for Riot for example,, "league of legends", because the amount of money they make on cosmetic in-game items are insane compared to sc2. If they believe the league increases sales they can do it, because running those leagues might lose them money but league of legends as a whole business makes money. SC2 has almost no income but tons of costs, of course sc2 doesn't make money for the company anymore. I would be surprised if they ever broke even (besides when actually selling the games).

If you acutally think SC2 is still making Blizz money we are simply at an impasse, we wont get any farther in these discussions.

On June 04 2019 07:16 Shuffleblade wrote:

Well just answer me this, what are the complex income-expense graph looking like? Because as I very roughly stated, and which the article on kotaku you linked earlier also discuss is that esport right now is simply an "investment" it loses money.

To discuss this we simply must ask ourselves this, besides the skin chests what income does blizzard get from starcraft 2? They had actually sales of wol, hots and lotv, after that its the ghost "dlc" as well as coop commanders thats it. Sales of sc2 physical items shouldn't be a big income and team exclusive shirts like TL shirt for example doesnt go to blizz.

Obviously while streaming starcraft events they get income from commercials but you don't have to be a twitch partner to know how low the income is per viewed add.

So we have the above compared to the wages of all of the starcraft development team, balance team, support team as well as the price money and costs actually making WCS fo example. Costs that will include wages for casters, observers but also all the staff behind the scenes as well as rent for the location.

Ofcourse no one knows Blizzards economy but themselves but its not that hard to put one and two together, especially since its well known that esport in general doesn't make money. Tell me what income from starcraft 2 blizzard that I missed.



There is so much to unpack here, 25 years? The sc2 team has not been running for 25 years, Sc1 is not still being patched and updated and blizzard hasn't supported that scene with prize money in forever. The bw scene which the community themselves drive is not a cost for blizzard, sc2 is.

When Blizz launched sc2 they were hoping on making the next big game and they were hoping to not make the same mistake they did with bw. Which was to let the game get out of their hands, they took away LAN and the plan was to implement a way to continue to make money on SC2 as alive service, just like league has managed to do. However their plan failed, the engine wasn't equipped to handle cosmetics in the same way, it didn't have the same pull as in team games and a lot of people were skeptical due to integrity of the sport. Would skins make it harder to for the opponent to play against "new" skins, it also took several years before computers were expected to be able to handle the increased strain. They never managed to make a model that worked. SC2 was another failed attempt at making the next big thing.

Supporting sc2 has surely been a losing endevour since the trilogy was completed and all the game sales were over. However if Blizzard would choose to make starcraft 3 how would it look for them if they just cancelled all their plans for sc2 just because it underperformed or they failed to plan a working business model around it? Not to mention Blizzard actually had passionate souls to drive sc2 even if it lost them money. Stopping support straight away would be incredibly bad publicity, their chance to make that slamdunk rts would be greatly diminished.

Now we have Blizzard corrupted by their owners cutting needless costs and sc2 is likely a needless cost, the only way justify it is if they want to keep us around to sell a future game. Te better they support starcraft 2 today the more likely the sc2 folloing is to continue onto sc3 or wcs4.

On June 04 2019 07:14 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
I have no problem believing that Blizzard makes money on SC2, even tangentially, or as part of a general plan. Activision would had stopped promoting SC2 along time ago otherwise.

On June 05 2019 02:19 Lorch wrote:
Wow I would have fired Kim when she fucked over the foreign and korean scene with her constant WCS changes in 2013-2016. Now that things are actually working out (at least for the foreign scene) I figured she'd keep her job.
Oh well, enjoy this year if you like SC2. BW will probably be around forever (inspite of Blizzards best efforts to kill it off), so you can always change games if SC2 dies next year.

Sources internal to Blizzard confirmed the reason for the latest round of departures as being linked to low morale, especially surrounding the development of the esports divisions of their games.

“People are really getting tired of working for Pete Vlastelica,” one source said. “The focus has become commercializing the esports titles instead of making good programs for the community. Many people internally are laying that on Pete, and it has crushed morale among the Call of Duty and Overwatch teams especially.”

On June 05 2019 01:27 Shuffleblade wrote:

I understand where you are coming from but you missing some pretty big stuff. I do make a ton of assumptions, I do have basis for them however and I posted them above.


"They aren't doing much".... You severely underestimating the amount of time and personal it takes to do things like make the wcs schedule, follow up the wcs schedule, keep contact with players, casters, behind the scenes personnel, fix with flighttickets, hotell lodging update the schedule and post the plans online, secure the finances. Just one wcs event takes a lot of time to plan, its not just magically fixed in two hours. Balance patches....... The amount of work that goes into these, I don't even know how to begin to explain this. How do you think Blizz works up proposed balance changes? You think one person decides alone?You think multiple people meet to discuss it? If they do they need to prepare and follow up eventual ideas, you think they do the changes without any knowledge of the winrates, community opinion and outcomes of pro games? All of which takes a huge amount of time to reseach.

You might be right, there might not be any full time personnel on sc2, but 15 people working 33% with sc2 is still 5 full wages which could be around 4500 (american average) dollars a month *5 = 22 500 dollars in costs per month only looking at local wages.

You think all of the sc2 content, balance and tournaments are the results of one person working what eight hour a week with starcraft 2? They aren't magicians, that is impossible.


Erm, that was what I wrote a lot about in my previous post. That what they are doing does a lot for their brand, but exposure for their brand is not income and if it is it is not measurable. No one is arguing that its not good for them to get exposure, and no I don't know how "much" exposure they get from it but no one knows that not even Blizz themselves lol


So now you agree that they are likely losing money? Hemorrhaging money is actually very common in the financial world, its called investment. If you would have read kotakus article you probably would understand this better. Esport in general is losing money everywhere in hopes of getting a high return later when a better income model is found. This is how most businesses grows, someone invested a lot of money while not getting anything back immediately hoping they will earn money on it later. This is also what I wrote a lot about in my previous post, Blizzard stand to gain a lot on us as a market further down the line if they choose to release more rts games. Investing in keeping this niche market happy is not outrageous. Believing no company invests in the future as you do is rediculous, how do you think anything new is developed? Someone invested massive amounts of money into research not getting anything in return at the risk of never getting anything in return, thats how investment works.

"So why are they continuing to support SC2? Most likely because it is benefiting their business either directly or indirectly at a minimal cost. "

Obviously it is benefiting their business, I wrote tons about that in my earlier post and above. That doesn't change the fact that they are likely losing A LOT of money on SC2. Just do the math, they work they do versus the income they get. So why are they contiuing to support sc2? Its funny you ask that in a thread about how they are stopping their support more and more. I could use the counter arguement, if SC2 is so successful for them as you keep insisting, why are the continously getting rid of very KEY people working with SC2? The answer is there for all to see.

On June 05 2019 23:47 Shuffleblade wrote:

I've explained it to you multiple times, its simple math, they have big costs and small income if you don't think that = losses that is on you not me. If there is something in previous posts you don't understand feel free to ask, otherwise you can argue about how a small income - big cost doesn't equal a loss. Looking forward to it mr sane guy.

On June 05 2019 23:55 Nakajin wrote:


I don't get where you are getting your "big cost - small income" when we don't know either the number of people working on the game or the sale number of Coop Commander, altought we do have the warchest figure and they sell all of them everytime.

Maybe they do are losing a lot of money on SC2, maybe not, we can safelly assume it's not one of their most profitable assett, but I don't really see the point of arguing about it without actual figure in front of us.

On June 07 2019 01:28 Proko wrote:
Whether or not esports is a bubble, the bubbly atmosphere warps the scene. Profit chasing us going to kill morale and feed misguided expenditures. 2 years from now we will look on 2019 as the end of the 2nd golden era of sc2. Not sure it will ever come back.

On June 07 2019 10:58 necrosexy wrote:

golden era was WoL before BL/infestor killed it