The battle royale game H1Z1 had founded a new eSports league with great media hype. Now the league is dead again and many teams are still waiting for their money.
What happened? A large new eSports league was founded for H1Z1 six months ago. There was a big media hype and several popular streamers were involved.
However, all of this seems to have been for nothing, as the league was apparently suspended mid-way through its first season. According to Jace Hall, the vice chair of the organizer Twin Galaxies, the league is definitively dead. All obligations with the participating teams have been lifted.
And this, after it was recently said that they wanted to save the H1Z1 league with a new investor.
No money left?
Why was the league ended? According to ESPN, outstanding payments to players and severe organizational issues led to the end of the league. The 15 teams in the league were supposed to receive 6 million US dollars, 200,000 per season split.
Players are still waiting for their money: The first payment was due on July 28, split number 2 was supposed to come on September 15. However, no money has arrived so far. The last possible payment date would have been November 19.
Therefore, the first team has already left the league because they could no longer pay their players. The rest are still left and are forced to pay the outstanding player salaries out of their own pockets.
H1Z1 is not attractive
Money is not the reason: According to Jace Hall on Twitter, money was not the problem. They are still working on a solution to distribute the outstanding payments.
Rather, the lack of interest from viewers in H1Z1 was the reason for the league’s demise. Since the start of the league, player numbers and interest in the game have steadily declined. It makes little sense to run an expensive eSports league as long as the user base is not at an appropriate level.
The player numbers of H1Z1: The game had over 30,000 concurrent players in October 2017. By October 2018, there were only 2,454. The maximum viewers on Facebook were around 7,900.
It seems that at least this part of Jace Hall’s statement is true, and H1Z1 simply no longer interests anyone.
