Way to go Blizzard!

They already shook SC2 economics multiple times with their (sometimes) stupid decisions.

Heh at least this wouldn't happen in TF2, a game without developer full control support, right D:?

there's only so much you can force a game with little depth to be competitive i guess.

amusing

The entry fees to OWL are much too steep to expect any orgs that don't have backing from sports teams (NGR, Missfits etc.) to to even think of buying a spot, and with Blizz making OWL the only thing available for teams its not a surprise that the "smaller" (in real world terms) teams bail on it. Blizz has always made questionable decisions when it came to there games and supporting them at a esport level and all of them up to this point have killed those games and scenes. It will be interesting to see where OW goes with all the $$ that is being pumped into it but I am not holding my breath.

https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/d/d6/Sniper_taunt_laugh.png

Bear in mind splice ESPORTS will still be participating. They dropped their roster but aren't bowing out of OWL.

The worst part about all this is blizzard killing 90% of the tournaments happening in thr interim before OWL starts. I want to watch teams play rach other damnit. APEX is good but how am i gonna watch GrimReality style on LG Evil if there are no tournaments?

http://i.imgur.com/OH84gTR.png

The entry cost is supposedly at least a million. The last I heard, the prize pool wasn't much bigger. Blizzard has even said they want to take the attention away from the prize pool. There is supposed to be a minimum salary but (assuming it works like actual sports leagues) how much of that would come from Blizzard, and how much would come from the orgs themselves isn't clear.

The financial situation just doesn't seem good, I can't imagine many orgs signing up if they aren't positive they've got a shot at first place just because it doesn't look like publicity will be able to cover the costs. Even orgs that can afford it would probably rather spend a fraction of the money for the same (or often better) exposure and prizepools in other games.

i haven't been following the game at all, could you explain what you mean here?

I'm definitely rooting for the OW scene to collapse, if only because it could potentially result in more attention and resources for TF2 if ex-players return and bring the spotlight with them.

That's a lot of ifs, though, so I'm probably just being naive.

holy shit kraft and ross are betting big on something that would take a lot to return any real investment if the reports are true

A failed overwatch is still going to be a lot bigger than tf2 right now.

So to my understanding this is Blizzard making a league that is starting to be more attractive to legit sports orgs (like NBA teams and the like?). So when you add the financial legitimacy of those organizations you can basically price out eSports orgs who don't deal with near the same kind of money.

It's gonna be real funny to see all these "professional" gamer kids suddenly be held to the standards of an actual professional athlete if that's what's really coming. Gonna be a lot of drama because 90% of the behavior and things said on twitch or really any gamer site aren't gonna fly in the real world.

nice, hopefully they come sponsor some TF2 teams!

http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/19347153/teams-hesitant-buy-overwatch-league-due-high-cost-undesirable-contract-terms

L FUCKING O FUCKING L

No wonder.

yea a lot of players are gonna get fired if this hold tru

If that's true no wonder esports teams are backing out of this. Honestly I'm surprised anyone is willing to gamble that big on an infant game on a scale never done before...

The depth of the game doesn't really matter, hearthstone has a strong scene. fucking vainglory has a thriving esports scene and its literally an ipad game

the issue here is that blizzard is slowly killing their own scene through the way they're controlling competition, announcing a dev-run league and then saying next to nothing publicly for at least 6 months, making it city-based franchising for reasons that are extremely untested in esports (and actively killing sponsorships now apparently), and shutting down successful tournament series for.... some reason? because they have to approve anything with a 10k+ prize pool

20 fucking million? LoL spots were lile $1-2M last i saw and is notoriously difficult to turn a profit in despite being far more established than OW. Is there any info on what blizzards doing for player salaries?

Probably because just about everything Blizzard Ent. has touched since 1994 has been an amazing success.
Track records like that are reasons to get in "on the ground floor" of any new enterprise

Yes. Existing orgs are jumping before they are pushed, although realistically they've already been pushed. It also explains Blizzard's indifference to the existing esports scene.

They're trying to create something on a completely new scale for a game. It'll be interesting to see how well they do but I'm sure they'll find the right price point eventually. If it's low enough for existing esports teams they'll be back, but that would represent a failure on Blizzard's part.

http://www.game-debate.com/pic.php?g_id=8987&game=Heroes%20of%20the%20Storm

but other than that, theyve done well.

-

Had this been done with something like dota or league there's a chance that it could succeed, but for a game that's just approaching one year old what's trying to be pushed is far too soon for the game. Plus the VERY high entry barrier for eSports orgs is going to turn a lot away without a doubt. The concept behind it is really cool, and I understand that blizzard doesn't want this to end up being a big failure, but for what is being promised there doesn't seem to be enough investors/investments into the game to make everything happen.

I understand there's not much of a way to get the top players who play the game onto pro teams and they're trying to solve that but as a player you can make a lot more money off of streaming and things like social media (ex: Seagull stepping down from NRG to stream more).

Also there are basically no LANs happening currently (with the obvious exception being APEX in Korea), so teams that are forming with players playing on international ping are more or less doing it out of love for the game, and let's not even talk about the different timezones and the hassle that it can be to get a visa to come to the US. Maybe if OWL was pushed off for a few years and the pro scene was built up further there'd be a better likelihood of success imo.

$20 million for a spot in an overwatch league is ludicrous

maybe blizzard will realize how many of their sponsors and organizations they're alienating that they want to participate in the tournaments and make a change

I know this sounds really weird, but enough spots will be bought out, just not by the traditional e-sport organizations that you would normally expect. The primary issue here I feel, is if investors will find their investments into teams worthwhile, which we will eventually see.

Supposedly Blizzard has restricted tournaments from happening recently aside from APEX and APAC, I have a feeling they're going to try to monopolize the tournament scene with an advanced infrastructure imitating actual sports; this would have happened eventually, as it has with traditional sports in the past.

It's just natural progression really, this is the next big step, and I hope Blizzard manages it well. Makes complete sense with their buyout of MLG last year.

If you read the article without any sense of what is actually going on in Overwatch, you're probably going to develop a terrible interpretation.

You are correct

#24 I suppose compared to LoL/DotA yeah, but in the grand scheme of things Heroes of the Storm itself is very successful for them from a business perspective and from a competitive side of things it is nowhere near a niche competitive game like TF2 is.

As far as the topic on hand, it sucks (for the esports orgs) but this is where esports are heading. It's pretty much this or they don't go anywhere, there's really no other way around it.

ITS FIVE NOW LMAO