eSports fans are angry at Blizzard. Because this time, the prize pool in World of Warcraft comes completely from the fans.
There is again stress surrounding World of Warcraft, this time in the area of eSports. Players feel betrayed and misled by Blizzard. They bought toys in the hope of helping eSports professionals – they do help, but much less than expected.
What happened? Around half a year ago, Blizzard brought some toys to the World of Warcraft shop. These were fireworks and a transformation item that allowed players to take on the appearance of various bosses. These items were not only time-limited but were also advertised with a certain “bonus”: 25% of the revenue was supposed to contribute to the prize pool of the eSports events, namely the Arena tournament and the MDI (Mythic Dungeon International). Blizzard guaranteed a prize pool of at least $500,000 and told the fans:
“With your support, we will take the WoW eSports prize pool to the next level.”
Profit comes entirely from crowdfunding: During an event before BlizzCon, Blizzard spoke with some participants of the tournaments, at least that’s what Snutz from Cloud9 reports. It turns out that they made about $2.6 million with the toys, and thus $660,000 (i.e., 25%) will go into the prize pool for both tournaments. So, $330,000 each.
The catch: The money represents the entire prize pool. The sum consists entirely of the 25% of the toy purchases by players. Thus, Blizzard isn’t spending any additional money for the prize pool.
This is just another case that adds to the many shitstorms surrounding WoW.
Players are angry, feel robbed: Many WoW YouTubers are now voicing their opinions on this. It is seen as a disgrace that this time the prize pool is entirely composed of the community’s earnings. Especially the sentence “With your support, we will take the WoW eSports prize pool to the next level” is sour to many in memory. It sounded to many players as if Blizzard would contribute the usual amount of $500,000 and that the 25% of toy revenues would be added on top. The YouTuber HeelvsBabyface is particularly outraged:
Or to put it another way: Even though Blizzard made $2.6 million with the toys, the prize pool of both tournaments only increases by $80,000 each.
There are numerous comments about it on Reddit.
Yakatak writes: “I thought there would be more posts about this, it’s pretty dirty. They try to appear as generous as Dota 2, only to backtrack and keep the millions they earned through ambiguous words.”
Or more drastically, the user Random_act_of_random says: “Sigh. I expect nothing more from Blizzard, and they always find new ways to disappoint me anyway.”
There are also opposing voices: However, there are also a few who say that Blizzard adhered exactly to what they had previously stated: The prize pool would amount to at least $500,000, and 25% of the revenue would go into the pool. Had this money not come from the sales of the toys, Blizzard would have added the missing sum.
However, it must be said that there are comparatively few of these voices. The majority of players are rather outraged or angry and have announced that they will no longer support such actions in the future.
It was assumed that buying toys would help the eSports players, and not that Blizzard would just pocket more money for themselves.
What do you think about this incident? Is it a scandal? Or did Blizzard do everything right?
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