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So for those who don't know me I've been a professional Starcraft 2 gamer for a year. Even if I didn't take any major tournament title I've been able to win a good amount of prize money; enough to have a reason for making this thread.
During this one year I noticed there's an huge issue many people are not aware of and I would like to bring it to public attention. The problem is very simple: when you win money on Starcraft 2 tournaments there's a good chance you will have to wait for several months to get it or, in worst case, you will not get it at all. This applies to big tournaments but also small weekly cups. Of course there are exceptions to this but so far my experience has been very negative and I'm still waiting for a sum of around 6000$.
I know there are many companies or new people organizing stuff in esports, especially since Starcraft 2 came out, so I will just write what I didn't get and why I'm concerned about this so you guys can have an idea of what I'm talking about.
- December 2010: I got 2nd place in EPS Germany. ESL (the company organizing EPS, IEM and many other tournaments) gave me, Socke and Demuslim big checks on stage for our top3 places. I am supposed to get around 2000€. Up to now nobody ever got any money for that tournament. One of the main ESL admins Shawn told me the money was supposed to come soon at Gamescom some months ago. It turned out to be a lie and according to a mail in answer to this ESL has no plan of giving any money to us so far.
- March 2011: UGC in Italy. The italian quake progamer Stermy held this tournament with good prize money. Some top players attended and the Starcraft 2 tournament had nice prizes. Hasuobs got first place and I got second. I was supposed to receive 1600$ from that. Up to now I've been contacting Stermy over and over and he kept delaying the date of the prize, saying the sponsors still owed him the money that was supposed to be sent to the players. Today he told me we will receive the money this week, 7 months after the event.
EDIT: the correct amount was paid the day Stermy told me. Even if with serious delay I can say that at least he never evaded any question or never ignored me and when he gave me an exact date for the payment he sent the money without having me wait more.
- October 2011: this is very recent and you guys would think I have no reason to put it here. But well I'm very concerned for different reasons so I think this will be a big question mark in the future. I got top8 in ESWC 2011 in Paris and I'm supposed to receive 2000$ for this. Yet this is the first time nobody every asked me for bank details or contacted me at all after the tournament. Litteraly nobody ever spoke to me about the prize money so far and I have no clue who to ask aswell. I know ESWC has an history of not paying their prize money in the past and it really sucks playing a tournament knowing you might never get what you win, especially if you practice day and night for it and you have high expectations, like I do.
EDIT: the players who attended ESWC and won prize money have received an email asking about bank details for payment. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=281161¤tpage=75#1487
These are just big examples, but I could give more. It took many months for my IEM Kiev prize money to be paid even if I didn't make it to the groupstage and the sum was very low (250$ I believe). Also when I won Go4SC2 cups I had to litteraly beg ESL admins to pay me over and over for long periods (more than a month or two for a sunday cup win). I got top 16 in the dailymotion cup where I lost in a very close series against Morrow 3-2 several months ago. I never got any money from it and I was supposed to get around 200€ I believe. Or the most recent I won XMG cup last saturday but I was never contacted about my prize money and I wonder if they will ever do it unless I harass them.
EDIT: XMG contacted me about prize money and sent it.
EDIT: Dailymotion cup prize was paid. It was my mistake putting them in the list. I didn't get a payment from a cup in that period and I wrongly thought it was Dailymotion. I apologize to Dailymotion, ESL and TheRogue (main admin of the cup) for this serious mistake.
I hope I could give a generic idea of what's like for a player winning money in tournaments or cups and being afraid of never getting it or having to deal every day with admins for several months to finally receive what you deservedly won several months before. Currently the only income I'm sure that comes in time is the salary from my team and every time I win something I always wonder if I will ever get it or how much time and effort I have to waste to get it paid. I know there are serious guys there who pay in time and are extremely professional but from my own experience it is not the norm, like it should be. I hope this will change in the future and that the organizations behind tournaments start to take this issue seriously, because chasing all the time after already won money is something nobody wants and likes to do.
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this is definitely a problem
wtf sponsors, don't host a tournament unless you can pay up.
sad. sorry to hear about your experiences 
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I feel this may be another reason for needing a governing body for the starcraft gamers. As much as people don't want one, this is ridiculous.
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i personally think if people aren't gonna pay up they should be banned from esports.
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This is pure speculation but I heard IEM has a history of not paying their players for a while and I feel like this is a big reason that qxc dropped out of NYC finals.
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If event organizers get a bad reputation TL should initiate boycotts of their tourneys
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On November 01 2011 00:47 RinconH wrote:
If event organizers get a bad reputation TL should initiate boycotts of their tourneys
Problem is that 90% of tournaments do it 
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Nice thread Cloud, thanks for the insight. I had heard of a tournament or two being lazy with their payments, but I didn't know it was such a big hassle overall.
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DISCLAIMER: MY LIST IS JUST ALL THE TOURNAMENTS I STILL GET MONEY FROM, SOME OF THEM HAVE ONLY BEEN FEW WEEKS AGO (AND THEM BEING ON THE LIST DOES NOT MEAN I CONSIDER THEM TO BE PAYING LATE), SO PLEASE REMEMBER THAT WHEN JUDGING!
I have been thinking of creating such a thread for months, im happy that you made the step. i have a word file on my computer with all cups that i still get prizemoney from, i will copy it here. please note that some of those tourneys are very recently, so its not a big deal that i havent gotten the money yet, but some are almost, or even more than 1 year ago (for example i havent gotten the 3000 SEK from the dreamhack BYOC qualifier that all the first place finishers of the qualifiers were supposed to get).
I hope you can forgive me the slighty unorganized format of my list, but i think it should be clear what is meant in each case. it IS possible that one of those tourneys did pay me, and i forgot to take the tournament off the list, but its not very likely... but yea just wanted to put this here as a warning that i cannot guarantee that the list is 100% perfect (but pretty close to 100).
Dailymotion Cup 200$ or €
EPS Season 17 ~450€
EPS Summer 2011 ~300€
Dreamhack Winter 2010 BYOC Qualifier (3000 SEK ~ 320€)
Epiccup invite turnier 50$
Virus invite turnier (100 or 150)$
IPL Season 2 400$
WCG National Finals (Hardware prize)
29.9.2011 GeForce Pro Turnier 1575$ + hardware
Forgot date TheGreat Showmatch hardware
13.10.2011 Zotac Monthly Final September 500€
19.10.2011 ESL Monthly Final September 500€
One thing i am very happy about is that i have recently gotten my NASL Season 1 prizemoney, even though it was a bit later than promised, it still came relatively quickly, compared to many other events!
Another thing that annoys me is that you usually have to ASK via email for the prizemoney, only in rare cases are you actually being contacted by the tournament organizers about the prizemoney...
In some cases i had to write many many emails, which costs alot of time and energy and is really making me quite angry at times.
(edited in approximate amounts and dates of recent ones)
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
This is one of the reasons why SC2 needs an authoritative body that can hold these tournaments and sponsors responsible. If ESPORTS truly wants to become legit, you cannot have the professionals literally begging for what they've alrealy rightfully won. Thanks for bringing your (and I'm sure many other pros') plight to light.
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Such occurrences in my opinion is hurting e-Sports. As a progamer, you should not have to go around begging the tournament organisers for your prize money. Progaming should be a career damn it, and I'm pretty sure even cashiers at 7-Eleven (No disrespect to anybody.) don't have to beg their employees for their salary.
Wad de fuq tournament organisers?!
On November 01 2011 00:50 DarKFoRcE wrote:
I have been thinking of creating such a thread for months, im happy that you made the step. i have a word file on my computer with all cups that i still get prizemoney from, i will copy it here. please note that some of those tourneys are very recently, so its not a big deal that i havent gotten the money yet, but some are almost, or even more than 1 year ago (for example i havent gotten the 3000 SEK from the dreamhack BYOC qualifier that all the first place finishers of the qualifiers were supposed to get).
I hope you can forgive me the slighty unorganized format of my list, but i think it should be clear what is meant in each case:
Dailymotion Cup
EPS Season 17
EPS Summer 2011
Dreamhack Winter 2010 BYOC Qualifier (3000 SEK)
Epiccup invite turnier
Virus invite turnier
IPL Season 2
WCG National Finals
GeForce Pro Turnier
TheGreat Showmatch
Zotac Monthly Final September
16.10.2011 Polarfluke OPtoberfest ~~340$
19.10.2011 ESL Monthly Final September
One thing i am very happy about is that i have recently gotten my NASL Season 1 prizemoney, even though it was a bit later than promised, it still came relatively quickly, compared to many other events!
Darkforce! You didn't get the money from IPL 2?! You were amazing and deserve to be paid as soon as possible. What in the actual fuck is going on?!
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This is not good to hear, though i'm surprised it would have taken this long (if it is as bad as you made it sound) for someone to be public about it. I know in myself and my family's own past experience with esports this would not be shocking as we've had non pay outs happen to us as well. I'm mostly just surprised the pros if they are not getting paid in a reasonable time frame would not be outing these organizers sooner.
With so much competition in esports for daily tournaments, or even larger scale ones, I feel like unlike in the past the players and community are in a position to out and boycott tournaments that don't pay.
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This is something ESEA as an organization has done really well. For all their lan games, when you win, you are given the check that night.
Torbull knows whats up
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ESL are really bad at paying out. I've hear many people complaining about them and I had the same problem after I did a casting gig for ESL/XMG at CeBIT '11 (this April). It took them 3 to 4 months to pay out with me harassing them every week. It was only a few 100 Euros but still, quite annoying. This is a problem that needs to be made public much more. Tons of tourneys wave around big checks and shit, but in many cases there isn't any real money there to back it up, and usually sponsors are blamed.
I wonder which tournaments actually pay out properly. Dreamhack? MLG? If any pro players could chip in with experience that would be awesome.
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Wow, i knew there was a problem with paying out money, but did not realize it was this wide spread :O
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51473 Posts
On November 01 2011 00:50 DarKFoRcE wrote:
One thing i am very happy about is that i have recently gotten my NASL Season 1 prizemoney, even though it was a bit later than promised, it still came relatively quickly, compared to many other events!
That's good to hear that you got your prize money from NASL. I was sceptic (and even called in to Weapon of Choice to discuss) whether if NASL would pay out their prize money (considering they sort of came out of nowhere announcing huge ass prizes).
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I personally would seek legal methods regarding the bigger sums of money. Threatening to take these companies to court in a case where you will 100% win, they will have no choice other than pay you now, or risk going to court and damaging their companies name. I feel as though they think they can push gamers around because we do not have anyone backing us legally. I would most certainly persue that route if someone owed me 2000 euros.
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As far as I know IEM is known for taking a very very long time to pay their prize money... I think it's indeed a really really big issue, it's even more depressing to see that even the big tournaments are not paying.Nasically it also means that if one of the organisation goes bankrupt ( like ESWC did) progamers are not going to get paid ever, the proplayers should not be the one taking the risks.
ESL not paying you for a year is completly unaceptable, don't know what else I can say or do . This is the kind of thing that will really really hurt the scene in the long run, thanks for bringing awarness on this issue, I really thought it was something of the past or that was only a problem with small tournaments :s.
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i think progamers should refuse to play a tournaments until they sign a contract or something. its rediculous that this happens quite often. If this happened to me i would probably file a lawsuit but without a contract written they could probably get away with it
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On November 01 2011 00:52 GTR wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 00:50 DarKFoRcE wrote:
One thing i am very happy about is that i have recently gotten my NASL Season 1 prizemoney, even though it was a bit later than promised, it still came relatively quickly, compared to many other events!
That's good to hear that you got your prize money from NASL. I was sceptic (and even called in to Weapon of Choice to discuss) whether if NASL would pay out their prize money (considering they sort of came out of nowhere announcing huge ass prizes).
Yes, to be honest i was very skeptic aswell, until i had the money in my bankaccount like a week or two ago.
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EPT
