EPTEG signs PuMa, responds to criticism - Page 47
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eriktufa
Australia19 Posts
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Corrupted
United States1255 Posts
On July 26 2011 18:11 Executor1 wrote: Saving lots of money? alot of these teams have either no sponsors or very limited small sponsors. They are probably barely getting by as is, im sure most of them would be way more than happy to pay their players if they had the sponsors for it, but the simple fact is most of them dont, TSL was one of the only teams able to pay some of its top players. Also im sure most of them would have more money for stuff like salaries if they didnt have to house their players and feed them , something most american teams dont have to do (obviously the money fromm that isnt enough to pay all your players but its a start). Trust me none of these coaches or managers are getting rich and just not paying their players, they are barely getting by themselves. You dont think if TSL could have offered puma something similair they wouldnt? One of the reasons fruitdealer and trickster left (i beleive) is because sponsorship dollars dropped and the team couldnt afford to pay Trickster and fruitdealer what they were paying them. These coaches care about their players , they arent trying to screw them and keep all the money for themselves. The reasons are irrelevant. The players are not getting paid what they deserve and are seeking alternatives. Anything that puts more money in the players pocket is a win. This whole situation is a win. | ||
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AmericanUmlaut
Germany2576 Posts
Thanks, Alex, for posting your side of the story. I feel like I have a reasonable understanding now of how this went down from both sides' perspective, and I can see how both sides could be pretty pissed off at how this went down. | ||
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Nizaris
Belgium2230 Posts
GO EG! | ||
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zul
Germany5427 Posts
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Asha
United Kingdom38156 Posts
I'd be interested to know how you knew he wasn't under contract before you approached him at the NASL since that information didn't seem to be known 100% by anyone outside of TSL till recently? | ||
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IVN
534 Posts
It's sad seeing that a player like Puma, who is undoubtedly champ material, wasnt even being paid. TSL got what they deserve. Damn exploiters. | ||
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PlosionCornu
Italy814 Posts
You are the activision of Esports, and not limited to this event, which is pretty small time compared to a lot of other stuff, even little details, that give me "that gut feel" about distrust and contempt. You are a trained PR or w/e in the art of spewing politicalbabble (sounding not accusatory and accusing someone, like Marcus Aurelius LOL) which automatically invalidates whatever you say. I personally don't trust you, like everyone of your kind. Businessmen talk in such a way when they want to rip you off in some way. You represent what I don't like in EG these days. As It stands, I won't cheer for your players, I won't listen to your shows, I won't buy from your sponsors. | ||
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AsnSensation
Germany24009 Posts
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emythrel
United Kingdom2599 Posts
On July 26 2011 18:31 svarog wrote: So you say in your post that you have already been in contact with other Korean team's management, you even further explain this that in all this cases you spoke to management directly not to the players first, and yet you still went for PuMa directly at the NASL. Then you say you had an agreement with Puma that neither of you would be able to proceed with the recruitment unless TSL's coach was okay with it. From the reaction of coach Lee it is obvious that he is not okay with it. And after the whole community outcry it is obvious that many of us are also not ok with it. Why did you sign the contract then even inspite of all this? This are the things that are biting EG in their PR ass. You should try to be consistent, especially when you're doing damage control statements. Coach Lee's acceptance was either a deal braker or it wasn't, you just cannot have it both ways. I feel that you and EG in general are always trying to push this kind of arguments, and frankly in the whole wall of text in which you repeat certain points five times, it is easy to miss this flawed logic. Well Coach Lee might not be ok with it but he released Puma from TSL, at that point EG didn't have much choice but to sign him. They couldn't very well turn around and say "well sorry Puma you will have to find another team" the point Alex was trying to make was that once Puma had spoken to his coach EG's intent was to speak with him also and work out a deal. If Coach Lee hadn't released Puma from TSL, EG might have decided not to pursue signing him. But simple fact is, Coach Lee basically said he was ok to Puma, then said something else to the press. EG's logic isn't the one thats flawed, its your understand of the situation. How could EG not sign Puma after all this shit hitting the fan? | ||
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GamerSyneX
United Kingdom64 Posts
Still and always will be a fan of EG and Puma. +1 | ||
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Huragius
Lithuania1506 Posts
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Talin
Montenegro10532 Posts
On July 26 2011 16:00 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Welcome to the real world. I think your perception of the real world is somewhat warped by the media. You choose to accept the things that are sly and borderline nefarious because you're convinced that it's somehow "normal" and that it's pointless to expect the scene to grow in another direction. But this quite simply isn't true - it's just that people making money off of it would want you to believe it is and to meekly accept it as a part of the sport you follow as either "something that's perfectly normal" or "something that's ugly, but ultimately still normal". I think it's important that the people who are in the position to do so (which is to say the fans who aren't financially or otherwise tied to any of the organizations) realize that "business" is NOT something that should have free reign over Starcraft and to keep overly "ambitious" organizations in check by dishing out criticism that stings (and stings very very hard) every time they make a move that compromises the fairness, integrity, manners and standards of good behaviour that we have and that we expect. In all honesty, this whole issue with Puma in itself isn't that all big or that horrible, but it's as good place to make a stand and a point as any. And moreover, EG's reputation had already been damaged (in SC2 too, let alone other games) - with Puma, they've overstepped their bounds one too many times. Comparing Starcraft to professional sports is a case of apples and oranges if there's ever been one. Arguments based on analogies between professional sports and e-sports are by default very weak and very wrong - because there quite simply isn't all that much that football and Starcraft have in common. That's an understatement - there's almost NOTHING that they have in common. The only thing they have in common are common descriptors like "sport", "game" and "competition" - which just isn't enough to back up any of the arguments that usually rest on these analogies. If you want to look at the "real world", look at the actual e-sports and all the attempts to grow an e-sports scene in the west, because for us, that is the real world. Football and basketball with the ridiculous amounts of money going around everywhere, billions of followers and hundreds of years of history are actually NOT the real world relative to what we're talking about. It's as far from the real world as anything could conceivably be. In some ways this is unfortunate, because we would want Starcraft to grow to that point, even though it won't go anywhere close in the conceivable future. In some ways it is very fortunate because we get to lay the foundations and do things differently and do things better. Going back to the real world of e-sports, if you look at every serious western attempt at turning a competitive game scene into a "professional" (and I use the term loosely) sport, you'll see a pattern emerging. In each case, someone at some point was willing to dump money in it. Maybe even too much money for the time. In each case, the fledgling scene turned into a predatory business environment. Two to five years later, what was built initially imploded to the point of no recovery, bridges were burned, and many of the "businesses" were left scraping for money to pay for the contracts - yes, the same contracts that so many people seem to think are the solutions to everything. "What's the problem TSL, just give them contracts" has been nonchalantly posted so many times so far. The real problem is that this predatory, competitive environment that so many people are so willing to welcome to Starcraft is actually killing e-sports (yep, there I've said it). It has killed before. It will kill again. If Starcraft too goes in the direction EG would have it, the instant gratification direction, the "WE have the money NOW and FUCK YOU" direction, the direction where one team or organization causes harm to another outside the real playing ground (the game) for profit or to "get ahead" - it's going to happen again. It just will. This isn't the kind of game where you play survival of the fittest and win - when you do that, everyone loses. And I understand (reading through a lot of General forum threads as well) that this is an ideological, borderline religious issue for some people, but for once realize that Starcraft isn't a "market". It just can't sustain competition of that sort, there's nothing here that can feed the petty business greed and ambition of organizations like EG in the long run. The only competition that can go on in Stracraft is competition in the actual game. Teams and organizations aren't really supposed to be competitors at this point, but allies - in nourishing and growing Starcraft. If you screw them over, you screw over your own future. And see this is the big problem with EG - they just don't care, and unfortunately they can afford to not care. Because they have this whole "e-sport organization" infrastructure, they have Justin Wong on the side and in a year or two or five they can just jump ship to the next hit e-sport title or whatever they smell as a perspective one. The point is that their fate isn't tied to the fate of SC2 (like TSL's is), and they behave accordingly. This is why every time I see EG, Fnatic, SK and Complexity involved in something, there's this big alarm bell going off in my head. I didn't really want to drag down the names of the other 3, because to my knowledge they've done nothing wrong in SC2 yet, but they all function on the same principle. EG is here because SC2 is the next big thing, not because Alex Garfield is so passionate and cares about the game or the community or the scene. In a way, they're only here to leech - as AG said himself, he's running a business. Business is essentially all about leeching while giving as little as possible. On the other hand, a team like TSL is made up entirely from people who are passionate and care about Starcraft (including coach Lee). Teams like TSL create and build what SC2 is as a competitive game, getting almost nothing in return at this point in time. That's why a team like TSL is ten times more valuable to SC2 than a business organization like EG. And indeed, before we've had SK Telecom and Samsung in Brood War, Brood War was the same - it was a bunch of guys giving out of their own pockets and scraping for small sponsorships to live, sleep, eat and train together so that they can compete in the game that they love. Just read up a bit on the 4U part of history of a team now known as SKT1. Big corporations moved in and established their own teams when the time was right and when investing so much into BW was justified - and once again, they didn't create a predatory business environment where everything goes, but they decided to operate as allies (KeSPA) to regulate and grow the sport together. So instead of comparing SC2 to football and basketball, why not look up to the ONLY working electronic sport in human history that has long-term popularity and success? As far as applicable knowledge goes, I think we can learn much more from KeSPA and Brood War than we can from what goes on in the business world of football and basketball. As far as business in e-sports goes, I would also like to point the difference between a petty business that runs on sponsorships and thin air (EG) to a real company that supports not only their own Starcraft team, but actively supports the scene as well. I'm talking about FXOpen - FXOpen is big enough that they don't have to be sly and underhanded in their workings to make their presence known, and they're big enough that they can contribute to the scene beyond what benefits them and their team. I don't think that there's a doubt in anyone's mind that FXOpen could have the SC2 dream team before tomorrow if they wanted to - but there's no reason for them to want that. They want their involvement with Starcraft to pay off in the long run, and that can only happen if Starcraft itself grows. With EG it's the opposite. They technically bought Puma, a player they neither really need nor can really support. If they keep him in Korea, he's isolated from the rest of his "team", as well as isolated from a good practice environment. If they keep him in the US, his skill will plummet down faster than EG's reputation these past few days. The only reason they actually got Puma was for the sake of getting a top player alone (they've done the same with Idra and Demuslim before). They only care about the image of Puma parading in an EG shirt as a top Korean player. If he even happens to win a foreign tournament or two on top of that before his skill and career goes downhill (much like Idra's and Demuslim's, funny that), that's just a nice bonus feat. Why do you think they got Grubby of all people? To support his growth as an SC2 player or to leech off of his WC3/e-sport legend image? Yeah. PS. See I can write longer posts than Alex Garfield. | ||
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Executor1
1353 Posts
On July 26 2011 18:36 Nizaris wrote: Honestly after reading this, i think Mr Lee is a huge douche / drama queen. GO EG! After reading a biased statement from someone who hasnt even spoken to MR. Lee/ doesnt speak the language and doesnt really know whats going on in korea. If he had just contacted MR Lee to begin with , wich even he admits is the normal thing to do, he could have avoided this whole situation. Yea what a douche Mr. Lee is........ | ||
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Docmedical
Libya75 Posts
Not to go off topic, but does anyone care to comment on this purchase with regards to the foreign EG players? Does anyone get the vibe that EG originally had the intention to drop some of their weaker foreign players and pick up uncontracted koreans instead? Could we perhaps see foreign teams becoming "Korean heavy" in the future? | ||
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emythrel
United Kingdom2599 Posts
On July 26 2011 18:38 zul wrote: from a straight business point of view Alex did everything right and therefore he was succesful (got the player he wanted). But the PR damage stays. I read the statement and in my heads one word pops up over and over again "politician". I´m probably biased, cuz I still feel bad for TSL. They may not have paid Puma, but they provided a roof over his head, food and excellent training surroundings, so he could become the player he is right now and then he is taken away from the team. And the team/coach gets nothing, when at least they should have gotten respect (EG talking directly to the coach/manager), or in the best case money (for raising a talent, that they cant capitalize on now). And all that is Coach Lee's fault. EG intended to work out a deal with TSL for Puma and still are willing to do it even though they've already signed Puma. If Coach Lee had given it more than a couple hours between his convo with Puma and going to the press, this deal probably would have gone down in private and TSL would have got compensation and none of us would be any the wiser to the details of how it went down. | ||
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katzby
United States110 Posts
This whole ordeal got blown way out of proportion with all the overreacting. Basically, a team acquired a player, that's all. I feel like this will set some sort of precedent in mindsets, which is negative in my opinion, that will discourage Korean players from considering joining foreign teams. They'll all be concentrated in a single region, hampering the popularity and growth of the Starcraft 2 scene. A lot of people know that the caliber of Korean players are usually greater than that of the foreign players because of the extreme regime that the Korean players follow usually for low pay. Yet some foreign players don't invest as much tears and blood but they are still paid more. I find this highly unfair, and that Korean players should look to outsourcing. After all, it's a real job. If you find a great employment opportunity but it's in another state, most would pack their bags and head out. Also, I would like to point out the matter with other respectable players, Thorzain and Nightend, leaving Team Praetoriani for other teams and prestige, which resulted in the entire team being closed down. That news generated some interest, but surely nothing as ground-shaking as the interest (and negativity) that this situation has concocted. I believe that there is some inherent bias present here if I'm not mistaken? Forgive me for the accusation for I am only a newcomer, but still I cannot help but compare both these situations and the response they have received. I'm gaining the thought that Team EG is not fondly held in regard for whatever reason I cannot discern at the moment. I believe that Team EG is not truly at fault... it's Mr. Lee who should be examined here. | ||
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Angelbelow
United States3728 Posts
On July 26 2011 18:49 PlosionCornu wrote: So? You are just pulling water to your own mill, like every arrogant corporate marketeer in the world. You are the activision of Esports, and not limited to this event, which is pretty small time compared to a lot of other stuff, even little details, that give me "that gut feel" about distrust and contempt. You are a trained PR or w/e in the art of spewing politicalbabble (sounding not accusatory and accusing someone, like Marcus Aurelius LOL) which automatically invalidates whatever you say. I personally don't trust you, like everyone of your kind. Businessmen talk in such a way when they want to rip you off in some way. You represent what I don't like in EG these days. As It stands, I won't cheer for your players, I won't listen to your shows, I won't buy from your sponsors. Wanted to avoid reading these threads because there a lot of subjective bias either for or against EG. But this ones gotta be one of the best in this thread. Granted, I havent read that many posts but this one was pretty LOL. How unreasonably mad are you going to get when emotions blow over and all this is all forgotten in a few weeks, their players continue to grow, their team adds more exciting additions to their team? So do you automatically reject all apologies made by businessmen as insincere and fake? Or just this one cause its threading on TL right now? | ||
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ZaaaaaM
Netherlands1828 Posts
On July 26 2011 18:35 eriktufa wrote: It's business and there is no legal contract between Rain & TSL. End of story. Exactly. This whole issue has be put to rest. Even if EG would have 'sniped' puma from tsl, so what? Thats how it goes in the grown-up-world. I feel bad for both puma and eg that people are responding like a bunch of girls. | ||
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DrowningSC2
United Kingdom21 Posts
I think the whole thing has indeed been blown out of proportion due to the instant response by TSL but hopefully when the dust settles the community can forget about this and welcome Puma as a regular in future tournaments and not think of him as the "sniped" player when they see him in his EG attire... I wish Puma, EG and TSL all the best for the future, Puma looks like he has a promising future ahead of him and he should have the proper finanical backing to further himself in his esports career  | ||
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