soO has officially retired, according to a Weibo post from Weibo Gaming.
Machine translation of the post:
"After friendly communication with the player and the club, and with full respect for the player's personal wishes, StarCraft II legendary player soO officially announced his retirement today. The club terminated his contract with him effective immediately.
With his tenacity and talent, soO won the GSL runner-up six times and the IEM Katowice championship, writing an immortal legend. His unremitting spirit and outstanding performance will be recorded in the history of StarCraft forever. Thank you soO for his contribution during his time on the team, and may his future be bright and broad, and his StarCraft journey be glorious forever!"
what a wonderful story when he won IEM Katowice. He almost didn't even make it out of groups. he advanced with a 2-3 record even though he lost to Bunny. Bunny, having the head-to-head victory over soO, and the same 2-3 score, didn't advance. After that, soO managed to beat Serral -> herO -> and eventually Stats to lift the trophy. It was a miracle run, like it was destine to happen. With all his 2nd places, he definitely deserved it for having never given up. starcraft fans will never forget him. IEM Season XIII - Katowice
On December 23 2024 21:53 Expensive-Law-9830 wrote: In other news, soO just announced streaming BW on Soop
Wouldn’t be surprised. BW more popular and less micro /macro intensive game. Better game choice for gamer who are older
Inb4 he accuses you of coping...
soO retiring doesn't feel particularly shocking, considering his results in recent years, but nevertheless, as Cicada said, he is an absolute legend of the game. Sometimes you need these kind of players, who add more "story" than "results". And at some point, didn't we all become soO-fans in every goddamn final?
On December 23 2024 21:53 Expensive-Law-9830 wrote: In other news, soO just announced streaming BW on Soop
Wouldn’t be surprised. BW more popular and less micro /macro intensive game. Better game choice for gamer who are older
Inb4 he accuses you of coping...
soO retiring doesn't feel particularly shocking, considering his results in recent years, but nevertheless, as Cicada said, he is an absolute legend of the game. Sometimes you need these kind of players, who add more "story" than "results". And at some point, didn't we all become soO-fans in every goddamn final?
He has more fun playing BW than StarCraft II these days.
On December 23 2024 21:39 CicadaSC wrote: what a wonderful story when he won IEM Katowice. He almost didn't even make it out of groups. he advanced with a 2-3 record even though he lost to Bunny. Bunny, having the head-to-head victory over soO, and the same 2-3 score, didn't advance. After that, soO managed to beat Serral -> herO -> and eventually Stats to lift the trophy. It was a miracle run, like it was destine to happen. With all his 2nd places, he definitely deserved it for having never given up. starcraft fans will never forget him. https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/IEM_Season_XIII_-_Katowice
Goodbye soO! We loved watching you play and were cheering so hard when you finally won! GG WP, wishing you a wonderful life after esports, you are one of the legends of this game.
So he retired from SC2 to play BW professionally? Why should anyone do this? Seems like there is only 1 tournament with decent prize pool a year (ASL).
On December 27 2024 12:53 CicadaSC wrote: So he retired from SC2 to play BW professionally? Why should anyone do this? Seems like there is only 1 tournament with decent prize pool a year (ASL).
Since you can't stream twitch from korea anymore to engage more easily with a foreign audience and the domestic audience for bw is larger, I assume that's the reason? Or maybe just fun?
On December 27 2024 12:53 CicadaSC wrote: So he retired from SC2 to play BW professionally? Why should anyone do this? Seems like there is only 1 tournament with decent prize pool a year (ASL).
The money is in the various Proleagues and streaming in general, and it’s pretty damn decent dough if you can get a chunk of it.
ASL at this stage is more for prestige and bragging rights than a real financial cornerstone of that scene
On December 27 2024 12:53 CicadaSC wrote: So he retired from SC2 to play BW professionally? Why should anyone do this? Seems like there is only 1 tournament with decent prize pool a year (ASL).
The money is in the various Proleagues and streaming in general, and it’s pretty damn decent dough if you can get a chunk of it.
ASL at this stage is more for prestige and bragging rights than a real financial cornerstone of that scene
If you want to reduce it to the simplest form, there are two primary competing factors...
1) soO enjoys BW more
2) the guaranteed money of being on a SC2 contract is objectively better than the uncertainty of streaming.
On December 27 2024 12:53 CicadaSC wrote: So he retired from SC2 to play BW professionally? Why should anyone do this? Seems like there is only 1 tournament with decent prize pool a year (ASL).
The money is in the various Proleagues and streaming in general, and it’s pretty damn decent dough if you can get a chunk of it.
ASL at this stage is more for prestige and bragging rights than a real financial cornerstone of that scene
If you want to reduce it to the simplest form, there are two primary competing factors...
1) soO enjoys BW more
2) the guaranteed money of being on a SC2 contract is objectively better than the uncertainty of streaming.
soO chose 1 over 2
You know the lad much better than I!
On point 2, I guess it really depends on what SC2 contracts are actually worth these days.
I’ve seen very little on that, even in terms of pure speculation for forever. It’s always somewhat annoyed me as people make economic comparisons between scenes based purely on prize earnings, or streaming. Even if contracts, be they sponsorships or team salaries aren’t public information, they’re a huge factor
On December 27 2024 12:53 CicadaSC wrote: So he retired from SC2 to play BW professionally? Why should anyone do this? Seems like there is only 1 tournament with decent prize pool a year (ASL).
The money is in the various Proleagues and streaming in general, and it’s pretty damn decent dough if you can get a chunk of it.
ASL at this stage is more for prestige and bragging rights than a real financial cornerstone of that scene
If you want to reduce it to the simplest form, there are two primary competing factors...
1) soO enjoys BW more
2) the guaranteed money of being on a SC2 contract is objectively better than the uncertainty of streaming.
soO chose 1 over 2
You know the lad much better than I!
On point 2, I guess it really depends on what SC2 contracts are actually worth these days.
I’ve seen very little on that, even in terms of pure speculation for forever. It’s always somewhat annoyed me as people make economic comparisons between scenes based purely on prize earnings, or streaming. Even if contracts, be they sponsorships or team salaries aren’t public information, they’re a huge factor
You are 100% correct. It's really hard to evaluate these things when prize earnings, streaming and contracts (both streaming and team contracts) are either yet to be determined or unknown. Then again, wildly speculating at things which are unknown is one of the most enjoyable parts of fandom.
On December 27 2024 12:53 CicadaSC wrote: So he retired from SC2 to play BW professionally? Why should anyone do this? Seems like there is only 1 tournament with decent prize pool a year (ASL).
The money is in the various Proleagues and streaming in general, and it’s pretty damn decent dough if you can get a chunk of it.
ASL at this stage is more for prestige and bragging rights than a real financial cornerstone of that scene
If you want to reduce it to the simplest form, there are two primary competing factors...
1) soO enjoys BW more
2) the guaranteed money of being on a SC2 contract is objectively better than the uncertainty of streaming.
soO chose 1 over 2
You know the lad much better than I!
On point 2, I guess it really depends on what SC2 contracts are actually worth these days.
I’ve seen very little on that, even in terms of pure speculation for forever. It’s always somewhat annoyed me as people make economic comparisons between scenes based purely on prize earnings, or streaming. Even if contracts, be they sponsorships or team salaries aren’t public information, they’re a huge factor
I have zero insight on current SC2 contracts, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are better than people might think. I remember back in WC3 (that was pre-Esports bubble bursting though) even mid-tier teams paid out really decent money, even teams that I think never really managed to win any prizepools in team competitions.
In the end, it would also heavily depend on what soO is planning to do exactly. Like does he want to stay a "Fulltime-Gamer" or has he something else lined up? If you play Fulltime and are good, the payout in SC2 is probably much better than in BW (or it was until this year, depends what happens next year). If you are only planning to do it on the side, you can probably get more money out of streaming BW than playing SC2, specifically in Korea.
And while I don't doubt that soO enjoys BW more than SC2, it is also the only way to go if he wants to do streaming. With Twitch being gone from Korea and Koreans not caring about SC2 at all, I can't imagine anyone doing a living from streaming SC2 in Korea
On December 27 2024 12:53 CicadaSC wrote: So he retired from SC2 to play BW professionally? Why should anyone do this? Seems like there is only 1 tournament with decent prize pool a year (ASL).
The money is in the various Proleagues and streaming in general, and it’s pretty damn decent dough if you can get a chunk of it.
ASL at this stage is more for prestige and bragging rights than a real financial cornerstone of that scene
If you want to reduce it to the simplest form, there are two primary competing factors...
1) soO enjoys BW more
2) the guaranteed money of being on a SC2 contract is objectively better than the uncertainty of streaming.
soO chose 1 over 2
Playing it for fun is definitely valid, it's what 99.9% of the player base does! I don't know why I just felt like some people were acting like he was going to bw to make more money.
are you guys sure the money is better in sc2 than bw?
just from the fan created pro league, players made between 100-155k us dollars in 2023 pro league, probably even more in 2024 since bw popularity has been ramping up.
mini 155k royal 145k jaedong 146k snow 112k light 130k soma 142k rush 133k ggaemo 112k queen 117k best 124k stork 109k shuttle 108k bisu 105k mind 93k jyk 74k effort 130k sharp 101k soulkey 114k
and they also make money from their own streams, plus other sources and again this was 2023 earnings...
On December 28 2024 04:43 Sweden-Celidar wrote: are you guys sure the money is better in sc2 than bw?
just from the fan created pro league, players made between 100-155k us dollars in 2023 pro league, probably even more in 2024 since bw popularity has been ramping up.
mini 155k royal 145k jaedong 146k snow 112k light 130k soma 142k rush 133k ggaemo 112k queen 117k best 124k stork 109k shuttle 108k bisu 105k mind 93k jyk 74k effort 130k sharp 101k soulkey 114k
and they also make money from their own streams, plus other sources and again this was 2023 earnings...
it's really strange how some people make their online persona "bw fan who talks shit about sc2".
On December 28 2024 04:43 Sweden-Celidar wrote: are you guys sure the money is better in sc2 than bw?
just from the fan created pro league, players made between 100-155k us dollars in 2023 pro league, probably even more in 2024 since bw popularity has been ramping up.
mini 155k royal 145k jaedong 146k snow 112k light 130k soma 142k rush 133k ggaemo 112k queen 117k best 124k stork 109k shuttle 108k bisu 105k mind 93k jyk 74k effort 130k sharp 101k soulkey 114k
and they also make money from their own streams, plus other sources and again this was 2023 earnings...
it's really strange how some people make their online persona "bw fan who talks shit about sc2".
Personally I don't find that strange at all, for me SC2 has been fun when it was less figured out ,and had less of those BS units. Disruptor definitely turned me into BW fan who talks shit about SC2 vibe. Mostly SC2 is a great game, but it requires crazy reflexes just to play, more so than any FPS games..... it's a strange feeling, I am 37, and SC2 just ain't cutting it for me at all. I might be able to macro up well, but for one second I am not looking at minimap, shit blows up and there's no reason to play the game at all.
However I am not here to shit talk the game.
soO had been a great player in both game, I wish him well, and love to see him around whichever game he choose to play.
It's sad that ForGG, Special/Major, Has, neeb and many other people I like in SC2 has gone from the game, I really don't have much to follow the game anymore, aside from how annoying the game itself is for me. :S
On December 28 2024 04:43 Sweden-Celidar wrote: are you guys sure the money is better in sc2 than bw?
just from the fan created pro league, players made between 100-155k us dollars in 2023 pro league, probably even more in 2024 since bw popularity has been ramping up.
mini 155k royal 145k jaedong 146k snow 112k light 130k soma 142k rush 133k ggaemo 112k queen 117k best 124k stork 109k shuttle 108k bisu 105k mind 93k jyk 74k effort 130k sharp 101k soulkey 114k
and they also make money from their own streams, plus other sources and again this was 2023 earnings...
it's really strange how some people make their online persona "bw fan who talks shit about sc2".
Who's exactly "talking shit about SC2" here though? Just posting outdated statistics is considered "talking shit" now?
Thanks for soO being soO, Yellow is still Yellow, Yellow stayed being kong, but soO eventually became a winner winner !
And thank you soO for bring us so many fun memories over the years, was really happy every time you make a deep run, and it was thrilling to see you finally pick up trophies!
I was actually just curious, since people in the thread said money was better in sc2 for soO, I thought the money in bw for_all_ players looks really good, because of how they structure their pro league.
So please instead of trying to make this a bw vs sc2, let me know how incomes look for the average pro gamer in sc2 today.
Classic "I'm not talking shit, I'm just curious"-post. When you are so curious about those facts, maybe just use a search engine, like you did before for the bw stats? I definitely get now, what Mizen meant..
On December 28 2024 23:33 Sweden-Celidar wrote: I was actually just curious, since people in the thread said money was better in sc2 for soO, I thought the money in bw for_all_ players looks really good, because of how they structure their pro league.
So please instead of trying to make this a bw vs sc2, let me know how incomes look for the average pro gamer in sc2 today.
Clem and Serral make tons of money of course
For Korean is just a different story, because brood war just have a really really large player base in Korea, even these days, and a lot of old people love watching it, so ASL still running, so lots of them have lots of fan, these known players, you know.
While I cannot give a exact number, I would say it is considerable much more for them, especially Serral/Clem been dominating the international tournaments that's lots of money coming in for those 2.
And Korean SC2 player seemed to me just lack of motivation outside of GSL, and needless to say that if Korean needs to travel oversea for any tournament, I think most of the travel was either paid by TO or their Team(org), With GSL gone these days, there really ain't much hope for Korean SC2 players tbh, probably will die down pretty drastically compare to before in some sense. Definitely very few new blood
On the other hand Brood War has college tournament in Korea, like bunch of Female College Students are even competing these days. I think it is just much more of a cultural thing, and most Korean didn't like SC2 much at all tbh.
Like one other thing is streaming on twitch used to be somewhat profitable for Korean SC2 players, you know I was donating to ForGG / Ryung and others a lot back then also Sub. Cause it was still popular for them to stream on there, and countless other Koreans back then you know. If you pull up twitch these days they are gone, guess what? Korean TWITCH is dead. because TWITCH stopped operation in Korea, well, does any foreigner will go see SC2 stream on Afreeca ? Maybe, very few. and with Korean player base not really tunning into SC2 stream, well... shit. I mean youtube would've worked, but I think youtube is still slowly picking up steam because twitch has been shit and shitter. I used to own a turbo twich sub, not anymore, I cannot get rid of YouTube for good reason, so I have been watching stream mostly on Youtube now, I rarely go watch anything on twitch, and if I do I have a prime sub to get by, I hate twitch ads, and they don't have enough draw or content for me to actually go sub there. So yeah.
I have not checked much on twitch, but I would assume that most Korean are not streaming on twitch anymore? Maybe?
So....... with tournaments GSL and such dying down, twitch Korea gone.... well we got a bit of real shit show for Korean SC2 players here.
Frankly I think lots of them probably don't feel SC2 is that fun to play, I mean the ones that are still grinding SC2 def love it, but I would say with a lot of reason, especially economical ones. It give them a lot more incentive to play BW, and hey, as long as they are alive, and if the global circuit is profitable enough you can count on these old Korean SC2 dogs to put up a fight to get the prize.
Anyhow these are just my observations, on a more accurate number wise I will leave to those who has actual knowledge. And I don't want to make wild guess or stuff again :D I'll stay in my lane :D
On December 29 2024 00:41 Rob-Zero wrote: Classic "I'm not talking shit, I'm just curious"-post. When you are so curious about those facts, maybe just use a search engine, like you did before for the bw stats? I definitely get now, what Mizen meant..
Well.... maybe I just wasted 5 minutes to type up some stuff damn.
I mean I am just going of based on the assumption giving my observation anyway, I guess just leave it there for whoever will entertain it :D
I didnt use a search engine for the bw stats, it was from a jinjin500 video that I had screenshooted before in amazement. and I have actually tried to search for the sc2 stats, but could not find any, the posters earlier were damn sure however, so thats why I asked while posting the stats that I had.
plus rob, if you read mizens comment on the page before, even he confirms that its really hard to get these numbers...so stop trolling or read the comments on page 2 in which context my post was posted.
I was not trolling, I was just curious. Aside from that, so you did not even research the facts you stated? When I make some video about sc2 money now, you will screenshot it and take it for granted? And be amazed? Is that really good research?
About the matter : Tbh I have no clue, you might absolutely be right.
Yeap, the SC2 Korean scene is pretty dead. EWC '25 has announced around 80% of their games, and expected to make the announcement for the last 5 games in the next month (if my understanding from their HP is correct): - if SC2 is not part of the tournament: I don't think there will be any serious professional players left by next year - if SC2 is part of the tournament: I think the top 10 or so KR players will likely stick around as getting into the tournament is sufficient to pay for their living (assuming little to no change in prize pool and distribution)
On December 31 2024 15:25 johnnyh123 wrote: GGs soO.
Yeap, the SC2 Korean scene is pretty dead. EWC '25 has announced around 80% of their games, and expected to make the announcement for the last 5 games in the next month (if my understanding from their HP is correct): - if SC2 is not part of the tournament: I don't think there will be any serious professional players left by next year - if SC2 is part of the tournament: I think the top 10 or so KR players will likely stick around as getting into the tournament is sufficient to pay for their living (assuming little to no change in prize pool and distribution)
It's not about prize money or tournaments. The question is whether or not teams are willing to offer players a decent living wage. Once that goes away players will have no choice but to move on to something else.
On December 31 2024 15:25 johnnyh123 wrote: GGs soO.
Yeap, the SC2 Korean scene is pretty dead. EWC '25 has announced around 80% of their games, and expected to make the announcement for the last 5 games in the next month (if my understanding from their HP is correct): - if SC2 is not part of the tournament: I don't think there will be any serious professional players left by next year - if SC2 is part of the tournament: I think the top 10 or so KR players will likely stick around as getting into the tournament is sufficient to pay for their living (assuming little to no change in prize pool and distribution)
The example of War3 and various fighting games (before publishers started putting up esports money) makes it pretty clear there will be some kind of organic scene without any 'big' outside money. The number of full time pros will definitely go down, but I'm pretty confident that a fully 'independent' SC2 would be bigger than War3 at the bare minimum. Hard to put a finger on an exact number, but I think the scene might support around 5~10 full-timers globally + prolly a decent number of part-timers.
I guess that would spell 'dead' to some people, but those people can just stop watching and leave everyone else to enjoy SC2 in peace
On December 31 2024 15:25 johnnyh123 wrote: GGs soO.
Yeap, the SC2 Korean scene is pretty dead. EWC '25 has announced around 80% of their games, and expected to make the announcement for the last 5 games in the next month (if my understanding from their HP is correct): - if SC2 is not part of the tournament: I don't think there will be any serious professional players left by next year - if SC2 is part of the tournament: I think the top 10 or so KR players will likely stick around as getting into the tournament is sufficient to pay for their living (assuming little to no change in prize pool and distribution)
The example of War3 and various fighting games (before publishers started putting up esports money) makes it pretty clear there will be some kind of organic scene without any outside money. The number of full time pros will definitely go down, but I'm pretty confident that a fully 'independent' SC2 would be bigger than War3 at the bare minimum. Hard to put a finger on an exact number, but I think the scene might support around 5~10 full-timers globally + prolly a decent number of part-timers.
I guess that would spell 'dead' to some people, but those people can just stop watching and leave everyone else to enjoy SC2 in peace
This game has survived bl/infestor, gomtvt, pvproleague, swarm hosts, mech, mass adepts, hydra/ling/bane, swarm hosts again, protoss being really bad, the end of ssl, the dissolution of proleague, blizzard making sc2 a legacy game, some really bad map pools, ravens, nydus worms, ravens again, mass immortals/high templars, op reapers, infestors again, mlg pulling out, ipl going away, not being at ewc or katowice and match fixing scandal.
EPT
IEM Season XIII - Katowice
damn.
