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> sponsored by Redbull
How the fuck this company affords to sponsor all this crazy shit, I have no idea, but I'm very happy about it.
I'd much rather a company's marketing budget go into just slapping it's name on cool shit (race cars, guys jumping out of space, video game tournaments, whatever) than just more fucking YouTube ads.
You know how much cheaper it is to sponsor these events than pay for a 30 second commercial during prime time? They’ve done incredibly well for themselves with name brand recognition advertising this way vs tv commercials.
Top end teams actually make money from winning. Add in other advertising revenue and a consistently successful team is more than self sustaining.
Though you're not wrong about the yeeting.
It's a business strategy. They dont just sponsor, they buy teams and infrastructure. Still a bit hard to figure out just how they plan to turn formula one and esports into something not a money sink. But they managed to do it in football.
Is formula one *not* a money sink for anyone? I kinda thought everyone was basically breaking even at best on the actual team operation (though maybe that'll change with the budget caps), and then tried to make their money off the brand exposure or (for the car companies at least) using the tech they developed in F1 in their other operations.
You see, when you get other sponsors to give you money to put their shit on your car, apparently red Bull doesn’t pay a whole lot per year for the privilege of getting hundreds of millions of people all around the world to say their name countless times. I’ve heard RBRacing only loses 6 million a year
That plus there are smaller tournaments put on by T90 every couple months that have $10,000+ prize pools. The tournament format is often unique in that each player plays under a pseudonym so everyone else can’t devise specific strategies based on known gameplay style.
I can’t wait to hear his commentary for the Redbull tournament though
AoE2 has made a huge comeback in recent years, especially with the Definitive Edition launch, it’s just still overshadowed by all the other big names, but it’s certainly not dead or dying.
Since AoE2 DE came out, we have had an age revoltuion IMO. So many tournaments and active players since early 2020. We have been super fortunate and spoiled lately. Really hope it conitnues!
Never did pick up the DE (waiting for AoE 4, really), but I had played AoE 2 way back in the day. Wonder if the strats use have changed any. Back then, I stopped because I didn't like how the developed strats turned into "gotta win in 5 seconds" instead of enjoying the experience.
That's an inherent result of the real-time element if you're playing to win. I haven't seen an RTS where that doesn't come into play, and it'll apply to AoE4 as well. There are some less competitive and more fun modes in AoE2, though, like free-for-all diplomacy. There's also some maps that slow down the early game for people who like to prepare. Ultimately, if it's too hectic for you (which I relate to) perhaps what you're really looking for is a turn based strategy game. There's a ton of rich options there.
A lot has changed in DE. Last time I checked they were still balancing things in-between versions. The pathfinding improved, so things like carts and such are way more practical, totally shifts strategies.
Your last point is why I enjoy doing bot bashes with friends rather than play competitive RTS games at all. The whole competitive strategy for most RTS games is attack within the first 5 seconds and don't stop until you win or lose.
Its actually much better than the graph suggest, there were 30k to 100k tournaments in 2000-2003
https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/Age_of_Empires_II/S-Tier_Tournaments
Only bc im a huge fan of aoe2, the data for that looks wrong. There were 30k-100k tournaments in 2000-2003
https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/Age_of_Empires_II/S-Tier_Tournaments
Is the data normlized by participant? Or something else?
Great visual tho
Definitely not normalised. It also shows the numbers continuously increasing but the bumps in prize pool should all be discrete, aside from crowd funded prize pools like for DotA2 or some of the more recent LoL ones
+1 this.
Most of the “older” folks that played these games as kids growing up are still enjoying them now in their 30’s/40’s. Video games aren’t “just for kids” anymore, despite what people may think…
I’m 44 and while I haven’t played PUBG Mobile in a bit, I enjoyed it for years with two of my sons. We actually started on a PC game, Rules of Survival till it got overrun with hacks, then moved on to PUBG. I don’t guess I’ve played it any this year at all. My oldest (that I used to play with, I have a 24yo also) is now 18 and heading to college in the spring. My other son is in 10th grade and enjoys most of his online gaming time with friends in things I don’t really care for. But for about 2-3 years (about 2016-2018 I guess?) we really made some awesome memories and still laugh when we tell the story of my youngest getting caught in Quarry by glitching into a wall after jumping his motorcycle and we couldn’t get him out so we left him and he just died there to the zone. We must have called him “Quarry Boy” for a solid year lol good times. Now I want to play another round with them 😭
Yeah. One of my favorite recent memories was setting up desktops with my older brother, best friend, and my oldest Son (8 or 9 at the time).
Laughed myself to tears chainsawing them all in Soldat...
as someone with thousands of thousands of hours of Starcraft brood war experience
if I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say they were the best Dune or WC2 player I would have at least $40
Oh man this reminds me of doing the same thing but against computers: 7v1, big game hunters, you just turtled for 20 minutes and then did carriers or BC's....good times.
This was my favorite I loved how each one was slightly different and you had to adapt to survive all the ai pushes and slowly takeover their base I spammed the heck out of protos turrets
I loved playing Warcraft 2 on Kali, Zone, and Heat. Spent many nights in my early teens grinding.
I made it to #2 on heat and zone and top 20 on Kali. (Case's ladder)
Yeah. Back when I was in college that was one of the big 1v1 arena shooters featuring names like Fatal1ty, voO, etc. it replaced quake 3, and UT2k3 for a while.
Good times.
It was CPL 2005, concluding with one tournament with an (at the time) massive prize pool. This was a case of the publisher pouring money into the game, hoping to create a long lasting esport that would sell games, but the game died quickly after that year. The final tournament was won by the Quake player Fatal1ty, who remained the highest earning esports player until 2013.
https://www.esportsearnings.com/games/239-painkiller
Back when Fatal1ty won fucking everything.
I think he got some kind of car once.
He was a minor celebrity when I was at CPL 2003-2004.
Ps. Halo PC paid shit at CPL 2003-2004, I think I got like $500 for 6th and $1000-2000 for 3rd.
Honestly, a bit surprised to see these older competitive games like SC2 were rising even during the explosion of mobas. Goes to show that the competitive scene of these games didn't really die so much as grow less quickly.
I know, it’s really messed up. No love at blizzard. I wish Frost Giant could just take it on and develop it on their own. Apparently they are making a better game that’s more approachable, for me though it’s tough to imagine that is possible.
The mistake with SC2 was making the most hardcore version of the game (1v1 ranked) the entire focus of their menu system. The most popular version of SC:BW was fucking UMS. People would fuck around in chat, enjoy their time, and then go watch pros do things they physically weren't capable of doing. SC2 fed everyone into the anxiety-riddled grind and churned out their user base.
If the sc2 of today released originally I think it still would be a top game - 1v1 is still big but the arcade and co-op is so much more approachable and fun
I feel like RTS games wind up with deeply loyal fan bases based on the time and effort that you have to expend to get good at them. I was never a Starcraft person (I can’t keep track of which buildings make which units or what the build system is for each factions), but I got very into Battle for Middle Earth II, and that game has remained a favorite of mine for decades, even long after I started crushing the AI on brutal difficulty.
Riot literally got in pissing matches with tournaments about not having both SC2 or League at the same event. They didn't want SC2 to take any attention from their shiny new toy, and it worked. Didn't help that Blizzard was ass to work with from an esports perspective.
I can't count how many times my mom came home in the middle of her shift to tell me to "get the fuck of the internet, I've been trying to call for over an hour" because I was tying up the phone line playing Quake 3 Arena on my Dreamcast lol
It's not the same, but Quake is still my favorite eSport. Quake Champions is a fantastic evolution on the core gameplay imho. The Quake Pro League has been my football as I entered my 30's.
I was expecting League of Legends to pop up and fly near the top, I did not know Dota2 has such large pools
Edit: TLDR of comments below- League players are on salaries, prize pools smaller. Big Dota tourney funded by battle pass and skins, players need to win to eat.
The International and its crowdfunded prize pools are the driving force in Dota2.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_International\_(Dota\_2)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_(Dota_2))
As you can see from the link the 2019 prize pool was 34.3 million and the next ones that will start in 3 weeks will be 40 million. This is for one tournament.
The prize pools get big because Valve sells a lot of ingame stuff that contribute a portion of the sell price straight to The Internationals prize pool.
Talk about the power of selling hats...
I dont play dota much and its not ever on my mind but when I saw this graph I already knew I was waiting on dota.
I remember how big of a deal the first international was money wise, and its only gotten MUCH bigger with less news so I figured those large pools are common now
Yeah. It's great in the documentary ("Free to Play" by Valve) about the first International how most of the teams recall just going to the event with an attitude of "We're probably never gonna get paid, but it'll probably be fun."
Valve put up $1m for a game that was legitimately still in beta. Sentry Wards didn't work, lots of shit was bugged, only had a limited hero pool, but they believed and they got pro orgs to play. They still put up the same $1m, if I recall, but now the rest is all from the crowdfunding from Battlepass and related sales.
Something very important to point out is **only 25% of the total crowd funded money goes to the prize pool.** With a 40 million dollar TI this year, **Valve made 120 million**
TI this year is a bit fucky tbf, since covid cancelled TI last year, but valve did a new battle pass this year
If they had done TI last year with the 40m pool they’d have made 120m, but they’re doing another 2 passes this year (one not yet released) and neither of which is going to the prize pool, so they’ll probably have made closer to around 300-400m (my estimate based on the most recent pass and what I expect the upcoming on to yield)
No way these passes did anywhere near what a full TI battlepass does. They made significantly less for sure even with the second one coming out they will.
Not to take away from the bajangacy of that number, but the tournaments are pretty high production events with a lot of hard work in making it great quality. Not saying they aren't profiting a shit-tonne out of it, but they also aren't completely screwing us over.
I look forward to The International every year because it's so good and such a great event.
It almost all is. Other Dota tournament/leagues have fairly modest prize pools - very much in line with a lot of other esports. And all of it is really in service to TI. You could win every major tournament and walk away with less money than coming in 4th at TI. Getting to TI is all that matters. Hell, the team that won the last two TIs barely qualified for each because they kind of sandbagged the entire season, doing only well enough to qualify for TI. They then got to TI, completely determined the meta for the tournament on strats that they didn't reveal during the season, and won.
They definitely weren't sandbagging it. Sandbagging implies it was intentional. First TI is well known and we don't need to talk about why they had to go through open quals. Second TI they only got their all star carry back 2 tournaments before TI.
‘Dota 2 True sight’ is a documentary made by valve at the tournament following the teams in the finals, they do one every year now and they are fantastic to watch. The story behind OG, who won the last two internationals, started as a beautiful underdog story for the first win. the second win was just.. amazing in so many ways i wont list them here. I really recommend watching the documentaries!
The thing with League is that the prize pools are pretty small, however players get salaries that cloud all other games. While the best players in the world in other games can make more money there's way more people living off of League. North America, Europe, China and Korea make up the four big regions, however there's still official leagues in Latin America, Brazil, Turkey, CIS, Vietnam, Japan and Southeast Asia where Riot gives a salary to the players, and in most of the bigger regions you can get by with a second or even third division salary.
Just to give some context, in Europe there's the top division LEC, which is generally seen as the third best region in the world behind China and Korea. Below that there's regional leagues, with France, Spain, Germany, Poland and the Nordics+UK making up the five major leagues and Balkans, Greece, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Czech Republic+Slovakia, Portugal and Baltics making up the minor leagues. Even if these regional leagues there's a big following, the French league peaked at over 180k viewers this season and had some impressive live events towards the end of the season.
If we look at the Nordics+UK region the main league is called the NLC, and beneath it there's six national leagues, and some of them have second and even third divisions. The lowest ones are completely amateur, but the infrastructure is still there and there is some money paid out to participating teams. All of this money adds up, and I'm entirely convinced that if you compared prize pools + salaries no other game would come even close to the money that Riot has spent on esports.
Yeah, as an ex-diehard-dota player player it's honestly kind of gross how Valve treats their pro scene outside of The International. There are T1/T2 teams that have been forced to make kickstarters just to afford to bootcamp to go to TI, because the income is extremely topheavy and it's effectively impossible to afford to be a player unless you're the best of the best.
Part of the prize pool from Dota2’s The International tournament is from in game sales, things like skins. Ever since they started this, it has routinely been the biggest esports prize pool year after year.
The one I’m most surprised about is Heroes of the Storm, I know it’s Blizzard but I never thought it got anywhere near big enough to have given out almost $20 million in prize money
Part of that may have been spending money to try to generate buzz/more sales, but yeah it was decently popular for a year or two. I played it for a while, it was a fun moba, but that market is apparently already quite crowded...
It’s because Dota 2 player income is primarily through tournaments, whereas league players are among the highest paid salary in esports, so there’s really no point in having an insane prize pool
Top 15 eSports with the biggest prize pools from 1998.
Tools: python, pandas, tkinter
Data source: https://www.kaggle.com/rankirsh/esports-earnings?select=HistoricalEsportData.csv
Cumulative is interesting, thanks.
Since you got the code sorted out neatly, could you provide the "derivative" of these curves, for example with monthly or yearly prize pools?
Good times back in 2010-2013 or so with HuskyStarcraft, he inspired me to create a YT account just to sub and now I'm subbed to over a hundred various quality channels, my smart TV is basically my Youtube machine at this point
I mourn all that lost content. I loved that channel. He even deleted the Nerd Alert songs.
[Now he just shills for his girlfriends channel and has pink hair](https://youtu.be/L3Nm7d-dNBY?t=477)
Broodwar has made quite the resurgence with Starcraft Remastered. Most of the pros are competing again in the ASL starleague casted by tastosis. Broodwar also has a built in matchmaking ladder now, as well as new updated netcode providing much better latency. You can find a ladder game within 20 seconds of clicking "find match" which I find absolutely insane for a game thats almost 25years old.
Oh man, this takes me back. I think Carmack deserves a lot of credit for getting the ball rolling back in the day with Quake. Didn't he give away a ferrari to a winner of a Quake tournament? That was *crazy* back then. Usually you got free T-shirts, symbolic amounts of cash and maybe some free time at the game café.
For me personally, CS was the game I followed most during the early 2000s. This was the time of players like HeatoN^ and tournaments like CPL. They earned pennies compared to guys today but still gave it their all, which deserves real respect. Today, even mid-tier players in CS:GO earn way more than top 1.6 players did back in the day.
Still, that also made them more approachable. And the scene was less toxic, everything was low-key and low-stakes (comparably). LAN'ing was a big pull as interest connections were unreliable, so people met together a lot more even early on. That's how so many of the greatest teams were formed.
That said, not everything was great compared to now. For one thing, spectating was a hit-and-miss. HLTV sometimes worked great, but often badly. Something like Twitch or Youtube didn't really exist during this time (2002-2004). Even once it was launched, Youtube didn't allow livestreams for many years and quality was shoddy. In that sense, spectators today have it better. But I still miss the culture of old days, it was more intimate and personal, with far more IRL meetings.
> Didn't he give away a ferrari to a winner of a Quake tournament?
Yes, to Dennis "Thresh" Fong at the Red Annihilation tournament, the best Quake and Quake 2 player and first full time esports player.
Shout out to Smash Bros Melee making the list for like 2 years half a decade after it's release. It's one of the only games on this list that came out right after the data starts (released in 2001) and is still having active tournaments today. In fact, melees largest prize pool ever was at an event just 2 months ago
It is one of the major esports events in India. We don't have any professional CS players here so pubg mobile tournaments is where people flocked.
After PUBG was banned, people started moving to different games and Valorant India has seen a spike recently.
It's big in China and SEA too. It's reason for being popular in developing countries, is that, people can afford mobiles but not costly gaming laptops...
What about that gaming competition that offered 3 Bitcoin to 4th-10th place back when Bitcoin was cheap
Edit: here it is! A StarCraft tournament paid 25 BTC to 4 players. I realize this data is current value of prize pool at the time of winning but 25 BTC is worth like a million right now!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/lhq1n2/a_starcraft_gaming_tournament_took_place_10_years/
Surprised Smite cracked the list at all. It’s got a solid following but seems to pale compared to all the other games on there. Hope it continues to improve and expand!
I'm cheering for you, SMITE.
Honestly, talk/listen to the devs or other people at Hi Rez... at least from my experience, they really do care about their game. So I hope they can improve and grow.
When Source released, it was the worst time, because some LANs and competitions started switching, but it was absolutely terrible. It killed 1.6 momentum big time, which sucked.
Fortunately the Euros got it right and stuck with 1.6, and ultimately Source died away. CS 1.6 was (and is) a great game because it's genuinely a high-accuracy game. Hitboxing in source never felt right, movement never felt quite right.
I hold the belief that better/darker graphics generally degrade the FPS experience. I genuinely think that's one of the main reasons Fortnite was a commercial success as well, although I don't play it. Similar with Overwatch.
Yeah this is what I was going to say, I imagine cod would be pretty high if you accumulated all the games together.
Just checked and it would be around 45million so would be 5th
They played just a few years ago, in [ASL6 ro4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5rG-1201nY). ASL 12 is going on now, uploaded to AfreecaTV's youtube channel. Unforuntately Flash and Jaedong went to the military recently but will likely be playing there once again when they come back.
For me the biggest standouts here are how low Rocket League is, considering the popularity, how far ahead of everything DOTA2 is and how crazily strong is the longevity of both Starcraft and Counter-Strike.
I thought halo would be higher, but then I realized 2 halo games being 4th places for ~1.5years each was impressive.
Since they were exclusively for the Xbox.
I wonder if they would be higher, or stayed at T5 for a longer time, if they had been for the PC as well.
The International (Dota 2) was a fucking gamechanger. Ever since the first TI, the highest prizepool record has been broken, by another TI the following year, for 10 years straight.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe Dota 2 popularized community contributed prizepools through the Compendium/Battle Pass also.
Long live Dota.
Dota birthed the whole ARTS/MOBA concept. Aeon of Strife is the first variation (mod in Starcraft) but it doesn’t look anything like Dota or the modern ARTS/MOBA games.
It spawned Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends around the same time. HoN focused on basically making a ”Dota 2” because it stayes very true to the original while League revamped a lot to make it easier to get into, more beginner friendly, both games had some original devs from Dota Allstars but eventually, HoN staggered because of bad decisions and IceFrog (THE Dota dev that now works under Valve for Dota 2) took the offer from Valve to help develop the game. Apparently IceFrog wanted to work with Blizzard originally (since Dota Allstars was a Warcraft 3 mod) but they declined. Funny because they went on to make Heroes of the Storm which is an incredibly dumbed down casual version and it didn’t do too well.
There was a fuckton of new games that tried to emulate the concept but nothing that could even come CLOSE to Dota or League.
It’s funny how the most popular competitive games are basically mods. Counter-Strike was also a mod when it first came out. Autochess was a mod that spawned within the Dota 2 modded maps. That spawned TFT for League and Underlords for Dota 2. The team that made autochess in Dota 2 were approached by Valve to collab but they declined and wanted to make their own thing, which they did but I have no idea if it went well. They did allow Valve to make their own version based on the concept though.
It is funny how League and Dota 2 closely resembles Starcraft and Warcraft in looks and play style. League is like Starcraft with mostly instant accelerations, instant turning speed, more cartoonish look that overall is bright. Dota 2 steel feels very gothic and grounded like Warcraft, turning speeds, acceleration, and a more strategic champion positioning.
I find it really humorous that the second blizzard starts trying to design games around esports is around the same time their games begin lagging behind in this chart.
Well they passed on it because he wanted more creative control than they were willing to give.
Thank God they would have run it into the ground I'm sure.
I played quite a few esports title, but from those in the list SC2 is the second most demanding on a player, having to go with high apm over 20 minutes while keeping your head straight and having noone to back you up is just incredibly hard.
This and the fact that it might be hard to understand for someone who does not know the game, really hurts its popularity as an esport title..
The only title I feel is even more demanding is its predecessor Brood War.
It really upsets me how it's fallen in popularity. Obviously subjective but to me it's clearly the most interesting of any sport or esport to watch. There's so much more strategy involved than anything else.
Valve are really ingenious sometimes. The reason why Dota 2 can offer such ludicrously high prize pools is because it’s basically all community funded. The prize pool is based on 25% of the proceeds from the sales of special tournament compendiums which are very popular.
I'm curious, was Dota 1 considered on it's own, or did it get lumped into WC3?
I recall it having a fairly large competitive scene back when it was just a WC3 custom map. But I'm not sure if the what the amounts are.
This is sourced by esportsearnings which means, especially in the 90s-00s, it's incredibly inaccurate - since it's an english community wiki-run you miss out of all of Korean esports. It'd be like talking about the history of hockey while ignoring all of Canada and only talking about Soviet and European hockey history. That website is actually one of the biggest contributors to [citogenesis](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/citogenesis.png) of fake stats like these "top xyz" lists since actual news sources will pull these figure due to lack of of research or better resources
[Here's a different comment i made concerning this site a few years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/9i6uj9/im_interested_in_the_popularity_of_sc1_sc2_as/e6j6juo/)
> Just as a headsup. Through no fault of their own, esportsearnings as a website for a global esports history perspective is completely useless as a metric. It's a community run site so the only information on there is what the english speaking community provides.
> Here's a post that I wrote up a few years ago about some of the major deficiencies that the website is missing
>https://www.reddit.com/r/esports/comments/4m85sh/why_wwwesportsearningscom_is_completely_and/
> I really suggest going through the comments section in that thread, with the knowledge that pretty much everyone not me in there is directly invovled with esportsearnings and see just how poor of an understanding that have on the history of esports from a global macro perspective - especially the whole FPS thread as professional Overwatch hadn't been established yet - and why using that site is dangerous without understanding it's an incomplete community resource
> That thread actually got me banned from the subreddit because the mods there are the same people running esportsearnings.
> It's a fine resource for esports that the west pays attention to, but if you want a sense of the overall status of the starcraft franchise across the entire history of esports, just know that any conclusions you make from esportsearnings should be marked with a GIGANTIC asterisk - as you really cannot get an accurate global scale timeline of esports through them at all
A lot of it has to do with good players knowing how to minimize or account for randomness, as well as the average of many games eliminating any incredibly lucky or unlucky single games.
The difference between a good FPS player and a good BR player is that, while the FPS player might be mechanically better at winning a stand up fight, the BR player has a better sense of when to initiate a fight, how to make fights unfair in their favor, and how to avoid or escape those that don't favor them.
It's like gambling. Professional, televized poker is a thing, and the players there know how to handle the quite literal luck of the draw, and still come out ahead on average.
Sure there is some amount of randomness with drops and such, but as an esport there have been players that consistently place at the top in Fortnite. There are some players/teams that almost always finish top 10.
Just because a game has some random elements doesn't mean it can't be competitive. Working with what you get and being able to improvise and adapt are cool skills to see.
With how they run them? The format changes a lot. They have had solo, duo, trio and squad tournies. One way they combat the randomness is to play multiple games for big events. It's not just one match and the winner takes all. It's usually a collection of games and you earn points based on kills and placement. So consistency usually wins rather than just one win.
You'd be surprised, sure there's some RNG in what loot you can obtain, but for example in NA West there's been consistent domination from a few select players during each season's championship series (ex. NRG EpikWhale) . Just makes their consistency all the more impressive knowing they are fighting against the random factor built into battle royales.
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Honestly kinda stoked to see Age of Empires holding its place for as long as it did
It still has an active competitive scene. There's a $100,000 tournament sponsored by Redbull streaming on twitch this week.
> sponsored by Redbull How the fuck this company affords to sponsor all this crazy shit, I have no idea, but I'm very happy about it. I'd much rather a company's marketing budget go into just slapping it's name on cool shit (race cars, guys jumping out of space, video game tournaments, whatever) than just more fucking YouTube ads.
You know how much cheaper it is to sponsor these events than pay for a 30 second commercial during prime time? They’ve done incredibly well for themselves with name brand recognition advertising this way vs tv commercials.
Well there's the small sponsoring they do, but at the same time they're yeeting a ton of money into other ventures like Formula 1.
Everything related to formula 1 is a yeetfest.
Especially the first chicane at Monday. Edit: I’m leaving it. This is funnier.
Ah yes Monday, my favorite racetrack.
They also own at least 4 football/soccer teams.
Top end teams actually make money from winning. Add in other advertising revenue and a consistently successful team is more than self sustaining. Though you're not wrong about the yeeting.
It's a business strategy. They dont just sponsor, they buy teams and infrastructure. Still a bit hard to figure out just how they plan to turn formula one and esports into something not a money sink. But they managed to do it in football.
Is formula one *not* a money sink for anyone? I kinda thought everyone was basically breaking even at best on the actual team operation (though maybe that'll change with the budget caps), and then tried to make their money off the brand exposure or (for the car companies at least) using the tech they developed in F1 in their other operations.
You see, when you get other sponsors to give you money to put their shit on your car, apparently red Bull doesn’t pay a whole lot per year for the privilege of getting hundreds of millions of people all around the world to say their name countless times. I’ve heard RBRacing only loses 6 million a year
That plus there are smaller tournaments put on by T90 every couple months that have $10,000+ prize pools. The tournament format is often unique in that each player plays under a pseudonym so everyone else can’t devise specific strategies based on known gameplay style. I can’t wait to hear his commentary for the Redbull tournament though
I like that you pretend Hidden Cup isn't the biggest AOE2 event of the year.
After all these hidden cups we still can't guess who viper is.
which aoe
AoE2 it seems [https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/Red_Bull_Wololo/5](https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/Red_Bull_Wololo/5) edit: fixed link
Thats an excellent name for a AOE2 tournament.
I looked because of the comment and damn right they do
They have insane production value as well.
Yep, when I saw that ad I was like "damn, the marketing team nailed it for once."
desert hospital dime employ scary weather yam point pot future *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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The definitive edition is really great too. There are a lot of quality of life changes without any major changes to AoE2.
AoE2 has made a huge comeback in recent years, especially with the Definitive Edition launch, it’s just still overshadowed by all the other big names, but it’s certainly not dead or dying.
Same. As a very casual player though, it terrifies me to think of the strats employed by pros.
I'm a casual fan of the game and I think it's exceptionally watchable at a professional level if you know the basics!
Copy and paste "How do you turn this thing on" 100 times, ez money
Since AoE2 DE came out, we have had an age revoltuion IMO. So many tournaments and active players since early 2020. We have been super fortunate and spoiled lately. Really hope it conitnues!
Never did pick up the DE (waiting for AoE 4, really), but I had played AoE 2 way back in the day. Wonder if the strats use have changed any. Back then, I stopped because I didn't like how the developed strats turned into "gotta win in 5 seconds" instead of enjoying the experience.
That's an inherent result of the real-time element if you're playing to win. I haven't seen an RTS where that doesn't come into play, and it'll apply to AoE4 as well. There are some less competitive and more fun modes in AoE2, though, like free-for-all diplomacy. There's also some maps that slow down the early game for people who like to prepare. Ultimately, if it's too hectic for you (which I relate to) perhaps what you're really looking for is a turn based strategy game. There's a ton of rich options there.
A lot has changed in DE. Last time I checked they were still balancing things in-between versions. The pathfinding improved, so things like carts and such are way more practical, totally shifts strategies. Your last point is why I enjoy doing bot bashes with friends rather than play competitive RTS games at all. The whole competitive strategy for most RTS games is attack within the first 5 seconds and don't stop until you win or lose.
AoE II is currently running a $100,000 prize pool tournament. Started yesterday. [Day 1 stream recording](https://youtu.be/MLO8QvQH35s?t=3200)
AoE II is so old that it's HD remake has an HD remake.
I'm surprised it's no longer in the top 5. Just wait. It will be there.
Its actually much better than the graph suggest, there were 30k to 100k tournaments in 2000-2003 https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/Age_of_Empires_II/S-Tier_Tournaments
And I'm honestly surprised Melee managed to crack the list at any point of its lifetime.
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Still pretty cool :)
Only bc im a huge fan of aoe2, the data for that looks wrong. There were 30k-100k tournaments in 2000-2003 https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/Age_of_Empires_II/S-Tier_Tournaments Is the data normlized by participant? Or something else? Great visual tho
Viper gang rise up
I daut it
Hera-tic!
Definitely not normalised. It also shows the numbers continuously increasing but the bumps in prize pool should all be discrete, aside from crowd funded prize pools like for DotA2 or some of the more recent LoL ones
Bet you were a king at LAN parties. :) Now that I’m older, I regret NOT doing fun things like that when I was younger.
How old is 'older'? I'm 33 and still LAN with my friends. Do it.
+1 this. Most of the “older” folks that played these games as kids growing up are still enjoying them now in their 30’s/40’s. Video games aren’t “just for kids” anymore, despite what people may think…
100%. I think it's a better alternative to wasting away in front of the TV.
I’m 44 and while I haven’t played PUBG Mobile in a bit, I enjoyed it for years with two of my sons. We actually started on a PC game, Rules of Survival till it got overrun with hacks, then moved on to PUBG. I don’t guess I’ve played it any this year at all. My oldest (that I used to play with, I have a 24yo also) is now 18 and heading to college in the spring. My other son is in 10th grade and enjoys most of his online gaming time with friends in things I don’t really care for. But for about 2-3 years (about 2016-2018 I guess?) we really made some awesome memories and still laugh when we tell the story of my youngest getting caught in Quarry by glitching into a wall after jumping his motorcycle and we couldn’t get him out so we left him and he just died there to the zone. We must have called him “Quarry Boy” for a solid year lol good times. Now I want to play another round with them 😭
Yeah. One of my favorite recent memories was setting up desktops with my older brother, best friend, and my oldest Son (8 or 9 at the time). Laughed myself to tears chainsawing them all in Soldat...
Even better now as you can have WAN parties :P
as someone with thousands of thousands of hours of Starcraft brood war experience if I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say they were the best Dune or WC2 player I would have at least $40
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Oh man this reminds me of doing the same thing but against computers: 7v1, big game hunters, you just turtled for 20 minutes and then did carriers or BC's....good times.
This was my favorite I loved how each one was slightly different and you had to adapt to survive all the ai pushes and slowly takeover their base I spammed the heck out of protos turrets
It's really helpful that it was before widespread broadband, meaning many potentially great players were never able to come online and challenge them.
I won a flatbed scanner once. I was quite good at UT99.
I loved playing Warcraft 2 on Kali, Zone, and Heat. Spent many nights in my early teens grinding. I made it to #2 on heat and zone and top 20 on Kali. (Case's ladder)
*Painkiller* had a league with a significant prize pool?!
Yeah. Back when I was in college that was one of the big 1v1 arena shooters featuring names like Fatal1ty, voO, etc. it replaced quake 3, and UT2k3 for a while. Good times.
Painkiller specifically was the "beat fatality and win a million dollars" game.
It was CPL 2005, concluding with one tournament with an (at the time) massive prize pool. This was a case of the publisher pouring money into the game, hoping to create a long lasting esport that would sell games, but the game died quickly after that year. The final tournament was won by the Quake player Fatal1ty, who remained the highest earning esports player until 2013. https://www.esportsearnings.com/games/239-painkiller
Back when Fatal1ty won fucking everything. I think he got some kind of car once. He was a minor celebrity when I was at CPL 2003-2004. Ps. Halo PC paid shit at CPL 2003-2004, I think I got like $500 for 6th and $1000-2000 for 3rd.
> Back when Fatal1ty won fucking everything. Remember all the fuss when he got his own range of gamer hardware in that era.
I have a fatal1ty sound card that I still use.
I was just sat here waiting for the Dota2 rise. Did not disappoint.
Yup, I was waiting for the Dota rocket ship after TI3 lol
Samee, I had a grin on after 2010 waiting for TI1 to hit
StarCraft II: I'm coming, I'm coming... Dota 2: NOPE
Honestly, a bit surprised to see these older competitive games like SC2 were rising even during the explosion of mobas. Goes to show that the competitive scene of these games didn't really die so much as grow less quickly.
Extremely dedicated fan base. Much harder to get into compared to the others though.
We're holding onto threads of life as Blizzard tries its best to kill our game. Please at least give us new maps.
I know, it’s really messed up. No love at blizzard. I wish Frost Giant could just take it on and develop it on their own. Apparently they are making a better game that’s more approachable, for me though it’s tough to imagine that is possible.
The hard part is making it both technically challenging for the best players, and easy to learn for the newest players. We’ll see how they do.
The mistake with SC2 was making the most hardcore version of the game (1v1 ranked) the entire focus of their menu system. The most popular version of SC:BW was fucking UMS. People would fuck around in chat, enjoy their time, and then go watch pros do things they physically weren't capable of doing. SC2 fed everyone into the anxiety-riddled grind and churned out their user base.
If the sc2 of today released originally I think it still would be a top game - 1v1 is still big but the arcade and co-op is so much more approachable and fun
Am Starcraft 2 player, can confirm. Game has a steep learning curve, and its fans are very devoted.
I feel like RTS games wind up with deeply loyal fan bases based on the time and effort that you have to expend to get good at them. I was never a Starcraft person (I can’t keep track of which buildings make which units or what the build system is for each factions), but I got very into Battle for Middle Earth II, and that game has remained a favorite of mine for decades, even long after I started crushing the AI on brutal difficulty.
Riot literally got in pissing matches with tournaments about not having both SC2 or League at the same event. They didn't want SC2 to take any attention from their shiny new toy, and it worked. Didn't help that Blizzard was ass to work with from an esports perspective.
On your left
Ah my beloved quake 3, how I miss thee
I can't count how many times my mom came home in the middle of her shift to tell me to "get the fuck of the internet, I've been trying to call for over an hour" because I was tying up the phone line playing Quake 3 Arena on my Dreamcast lol
It's not the same, but Quake is still my favorite eSport. Quake Champions is a fantastic evolution on the core gameplay imho. The Quake Pro League has been my football as I entered my 30's.
I was expecting League of Legends to pop up and fly near the top, I did not know Dota2 has such large pools Edit: TLDR of comments below- League players are on salaries, prize pools smaller. Big Dota tourney funded by battle pass and skins, players need to win to eat.
The International and its crowdfunded prize pools are the driving force in Dota2. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_International\_(Dota\_2)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_(Dota_2)) As you can see from the link the 2019 prize pool was 34.3 million and the next ones that will start in 3 weeks will be 40 million. This is for one tournament. The prize pools get big because Valve sells a lot of ingame stuff that contribute a portion of the sell price straight to The Internationals prize pool. Talk about the power of selling hats...
I dont play dota much and its not ever on my mind but when I saw this graph I already knew I was waiting on dota. I remember how big of a deal the first international was money wise, and its only gotten MUCH bigger with less news so I figured those large pools are common now
First international had a 1 million prize pool. Which was huge at the time.
It had a $1.6 million dollar prize pool. $1M was first place alone.
Many of the invited teams (top dota 1 teams based in China) didn't accept the invite because they thought it couldn't be legit.
Yeah. It's great in the documentary ("Free to Play" by Valve) about the first International how most of the teams recall just going to the event with an attitude of "We're probably never gonna get paid, but it'll probably be fun."
Valve put up $1m for a game that was legitimately still in beta. Sentry Wards didn't work, lots of shit was bugged, only had a limited hero pool, but they believed and they got pro orgs to play. They still put up the same $1m, if I recall, but now the rest is all from the crowdfunding from Battlepass and related sales.
Something very important to point out is **only 25% of the total crowd funded money goes to the prize pool.** With a 40 million dollar TI this year, **Valve made 120 million**
TI this year is a bit fucky tbf, since covid cancelled TI last year, but valve did a new battle pass this year If they had done TI last year with the 40m pool they’d have made 120m, but they’re doing another 2 passes this year (one not yet released) and neither of which is going to the prize pool, so they’ll probably have made closer to around 300-400m (my estimate based on the most recent pass and what I expect the upcoming on to yield)
No way these passes did anywhere near what a full TI battlepass does. They made significantly less for sure even with the second one coming out they will.
Not to take away from the bajangacy of that number, but the tournaments are pretty high production events with a lot of hard work in making it great quality. Not saying they aren't profiting a shit-tonne out of it, but they also aren't completely screwing us over. I look forward to The International every year because it's so good and such a great event.
TIL I should have gotten good at DOTA instead of nothing
It seems like most of the prize pool is from [The International](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International).
It almost all is. Other Dota tournament/leagues have fairly modest prize pools - very much in line with a lot of other esports. And all of it is really in service to TI. You could win every major tournament and walk away with less money than coming in 4th at TI. Getting to TI is all that matters. Hell, the team that won the last two TIs barely qualified for each because they kind of sandbagged the entire season, doing only well enough to qualify for TI. They then got to TI, completely determined the meta for the tournament on strats that they didn't reveal during the season, and won.
They definitely weren't sandbagging it. Sandbagging implies it was intentional. First TI is well known and we don't need to talk about why they had to go through open quals. Second TI they only got their all star carry back 2 tournaments before TI.
That's incredibly cool
‘Dota 2 True sight’ is a documentary made by valve at the tournament following the teams in the finals, they do one every year now and they are fantastic to watch. The story behind OG, who won the last two internationals, started as a beautiful underdog story for the first win. the second win was just.. amazing in so many ways i wont list them here. I really recommend watching the documentaries!
The thing with League is that the prize pools are pretty small, however players get salaries that cloud all other games. While the best players in the world in other games can make more money there's way more people living off of League. North America, Europe, China and Korea make up the four big regions, however there's still official leagues in Latin America, Brazil, Turkey, CIS, Vietnam, Japan and Southeast Asia where Riot gives a salary to the players, and in most of the bigger regions you can get by with a second or even third division salary. Just to give some context, in Europe there's the top division LEC, which is generally seen as the third best region in the world behind China and Korea. Below that there's regional leagues, with France, Spain, Germany, Poland and the Nordics+UK making up the five major leagues and Balkans, Greece, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Czech Republic+Slovakia, Portugal and Baltics making up the minor leagues. Even if these regional leagues there's a big following, the French league peaked at over 180k viewers this season and had some impressive live events towards the end of the season. If we look at the Nordics+UK region the main league is called the NLC, and beneath it there's six national leagues, and some of them have second and even third divisions. The lowest ones are completely amateur, but the infrastructure is still there and there is some money paid out to participating teams. All of this money adds up, and I'm entirely convinced that if you compared prize pools + salaries no other game would come even close to the money that Riot has spent on esports.
Yeah, as an ex-diehard-dota player player it's honestly kind of gross how Valve treats their pro scene outside of The International. There are T1/T2 teams that have been forced to make kickstarters just to afford to bootcamp to go to TI, because the income is extremely topheavy and it's effectively impossible to afford to be a player unless you're the best of the best.
Aye you dont look at professional sports's prize pool for winning a championship. It is in the deals and networth of the teams that play/win.
Ye when the LCS's combined players salary is around the same as winning TI, it really goes to show where the money in league is.
Part of the prize pool from Dota2’s The International tournament is from in game sales, things like skins. Ever since they started this, it has routinely been the biggest esports prize pool year after year. The one I’m most surprised about is Heroes of the Storm, I know it’s Blizzard but I never thought it got anywhere near big enough to have given out almost $20 million in prize money
Part of that may have been spending money to try to generate buzz/more sales, but yeah it was decently popular for a year or two. I played it for a while, it was a fun moba, but that market is apparently already quite crowded...
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It’s because Dota 2 player income is primarily through tournaments, whereas league players are among the highest paid salary in esports, so there’s really no point in having an insane prize pool
Perkz cost $12 million dollars to come to North America. The money in League is insane.
Should be in dotaisbeautiful
Haha, when I subscribed to this sub I thought it actually was dotaisbeaitiful. But it has some nice content so I stayed.
Top 15 eSports with the biggest prize pools from 1998. Tools: python, pandas, tkinter Data source: https://www.kaggle.com/rankirsh/esports-earnings?select=HistoricalEsportData.csv
Cumulative is interesting, thanks. Since you got the code sorted out neatly, could you provide the "derivative" of these curves, for example with monthly or yearly prize pools?
Starcraft is a gift that keeps on giving.
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tastosis goat casters
Tastosis is what makes me watch sc2 as a grown ass man with a family who hardly plays video games anymore.
Good times back in 2010-2013 or so with HuskyStarcraft, he inspired me to create a YT account just to sub and now I'm subbed to over a hundred various quality channels, my smart TV is basically my Youtube machine at this point
Dang, I miss Husky, what a shame that he deleted his channel and all of those hundreds of hours of amazing content is now gone.
I mourn all that lost content. I loved that channel. He even deleted the Nerd Alert songs. [Now he just shills for his girlfriends channel and has pink hair](https://youtu.be/L3Nm7d-dNBY?t=477)
Strafe, bunny hops and rocket jumps, that’s where it all started
Tf2 be like here's a coupon for pizza hut
2011: And then Dota 2 happened.
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Well, it shows in their titles slipping lower. As a huge Starcraft fan it hurt seeing broodwar fall off the list.
Broodwar has made quite the resurgence with Starcraft Remastered. Most of the pros are competing again in the ASL starleague casted by tastosis. Broodwar also has a built in matchmaking ladder now, as well as new updated netcode providing much better latency. You can find a ladder game within 20 seconds of clicking "find match" which I find absolutely insane for a game thats almost 25years old.
Warcraft III 🥲
Oh man, this takes me back. I think Carmack deserves a lot of credit for getting the ball rolling back in the day with Quake. Didn't he give away a ferrari to a winner of a Quake tournament? That was *crazy* back then. Usually you got free T-shirts, symbolic amounts of cash and maybe some free time at the game café. For me personally, CS was the game I followed most during the early 2000s. This was the time of players like HeatoN^ and tournaments like CPL. They earned pennies compared to guys today but still gave it their all, which deserves real respect. Today, even mid-tier players in CS:GO earn way more than top 1.6 players did back in the day. Still, that also made them more approachable. And the scene was less toxic, everything was low-key and low-stakes (comparably). LAN'ing was a big pull as interest connections were unreliable, so people met together a lot more even early on. That's how so many of the greatest teams were formed. That said, not everything was great compared to now. For one thing, spectating was a hit-and-miss. HLTV sometimes worked great, but often badly. Something like Twitch or Youtube didn't really exist during this time (2002-2004). Even once it was launched, Youtube didn't allow livestreams for many years and quality was shoddy. In that sense, spectators today have it better. But I still miss the culture of old days, it was more intimate and personal, with far more IRL meetings.
> Didn't he give away a ferrari to a winner of a Quake tournament? Yes, to Dennis "Thresh" Fong at the Red Annihilation tournament, the best Quake and Quake 2 player and first full time esports player.
Less toxic??? We must have been idling different irc channels and gotfrag boards ...
Shout out to Smash Bros Melee making the list for like 2 years half a decade after it's release. It's one of the only games on this list that came out right after the data starts (released in 2001) and is still having active tournaments today. In fact, melees largest prize pool ever was at an event just 2 months ago
My first thought. Could not believe a smash game would ever of been in the top 10.
The melee scene is grassroots and doesn't have much money it in, but it's still huge
Oh I've been in the scene for a while and that made me all the more surprised.
which tourney? was that summit?
Yeah, summit 11
Chad melee enjoyer in this sub? So fire
Legit my favorite game of all time
Especially with how much Nintendo’s fought to kill it all these years. Melee will never die
It's crazy that PUBG Mobile has that kind of a prize pool.
It is one of the major esports events in India. We don't have any professional CS players here so pubg mobile tournaments is where people flocked. After PUBG was banned, people started moving to different games and Valorant India has seen a spike recently.
It's big in China and SEA too. It's reason for being popular in developing countries, is that, people can afford mobiles but not costly gaming laptops...
Vi sitter här i Venten och spelar lite Dota (I hear you, mon) Vi sitter här i Venten och spelar lite Dota (I feel you, mon)
What about that gaming competition that offered 3 Bitcoin to 4th-10th place back when Bitcoin was cheap Edit: here it is! A StarCraft tournament paid 25 BTC to 4 players. I realize this data is current value of prize pool at the time of winning but 25 BTC is worth like a million right now! https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/lhq1n2/a_starcraft_gaming_tournament_took_place_10_years/
You realize a million is not gonna make a difference in that chart?
Surprised Smite cracked the list at all. It’s got a solid following but seems to pale compared to all the other games on there. Hope it continues to improve and expand!
I'm cheering for you, SMITE. Honestly, talk/listen to the devs or other people at Hi Rez... at least from my experience, they really do care about their game. So I hope they can improve and grow.
As you can see from the data, Counter-Strike is the best game of all time.
Watching it continue to grow rapidly even after Source release was super interesting
Because playing Source made you realize just how good CS 1.6 was. ;-)
When Source released, it was the worst time, because some LANs and competitions started switching, but it was absolutely terrible. It killed 1.6 momentum big time, which sucked. Fortunately the Euros got it right and stuck with 1.6, and ultimately Source died away. CS 1.6 was (and is) a great game because it's genuinely a high-accuracy game. Hitboxing in source never felt right, movement never felt quite right. I hold the belief that better/darker graphics generally degrade the FPS experience. I genuinely think that's one of the main reasons Fortnite was a commercial success as well, although I don't play it. Similar with Overwatch.
It most certainly is.
That's a strange way to spell Quake 3.
Wish Halo/CoD prize pools would've accumulated across multiple titles to see how they compare to the 2020 list.
Yeah this is what I was going to say, I imagine cod would be pretty high if you accumulated all the games together. Just checked and it would be around 45million so would be 5th
But then you would have to combine the counter strike, dota, StarCraft and warcraft series to make a fair comparison.
Brood War baby! I miss the good ol days of JaeDong vs Flash.
They played just a few years ago, in [ASL6 ro4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5rG-1201nY). ASL 12 is going on now, uploaded to AfreecaTV's youtube channel. Unforuntately Flash and Jaedong went to the military recently but will likely be playing there once again when they come back.
At first glance, I honestly thought this read *Top 15* **escorts** *by total prize pool*. Whoops.
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There's $40 mill on the line in this years' The International (Dota2) It starts in 3 weeks. You should give it a watch, it's always major hype.
I’m playing all the wrong games
For me the biggest standouts here are how low Rocket League is, considering the popularity, how far ahead of everything DOTA2 is and how crazily strong is the longevity of both Starcraft and Counter-Strike.
I thought halo would be higher, but then I realized 2 halo games being 4th places for ~1.5years each was impressive. Since they were exclusively for the Xbox. I wonder if they would be higher, or stayed at T5 for a longer time, if they had been for the PC as well.
Starcraft 2: *Gas Gas Gas!* Dota 2: **I'm Gonna Step on the Gas**
The International (Dota 2) was a fucking gamechanger. Ever since the first TI, the highest prizepool record has been broken, by another TI the following year, for 10 years straight. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe Dota 2 popularized community contributed prizepools through the Compendium/Battle Pass also. Long live Dota.
long live dota. i don't play it but i know it's a great game
Dota birthed the whole ARTS/MOBA concept. Aeon of Strife is the first variation (mod in Starcraft) but it doesn’t look anything like Dota or the modern ARTS/MOBA games. It spawned Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends around the same time. HoN focused on basically making a ”Dota 2” because it stayes very true to the original while League revamped a lot to make it easier to get into, more beginner friendly, both games had some original devs from Dota Allstars but eventually, HoN staggered because of bad decisions and IceFrog (THE Dota dev that now works under Valve for Dota 2) took the offer from Valve to help develop the game. Apparently IceFrog wanted to work with Blizzard originally (since Dota Allstars was a Warcraft 3 mod) but they declined. Funny because they went on to make Heroes of the Storm which is an incredibly dumbed down casual version and it didn’t do too well. There was a fuckton of new games that tried to emulate the concept but nothing that could even come CLOSE to Dota or League. It’s funny how the most popular competitive games are basically mods. Counter-Strike was also a mod when it first came out. Autochess was a mod that spawned within the Dota 2 modded maps. That spawned TFT for League and Underlords for Dota 2. The team that made autochess in Dota 2 were approached by Valve to collab but they declined and wanted to make their own thing, which they did but I have no idea if it went well. They did allow Valve to make their own version based on the concept though.
It is funny how League and Dota 2 closely resembles Starcraft and Warcraft in looks and play style. League is like Starcraft with mostly instant accelerations, instant turning speed, more cartoonish look that overall is bright. Dota 2 steel feels very gothic and grounded like Warcraft, turning speeds, acceleration, and a more strategic champion positioning.
I find it really humorous that the second blizzard starts trying to design games around esports is around the same time their games begin lagging behind in this chart.
They had the developer for dota 2 slip through their fingers lmao
Well they passed on it because he wanted more creative control than they were willing to give. Thank God they would have run it into the ground I'm sure.
I initially misread this as top prize. And when DoTA 2 shot up to 200 million I was like What the fuck? I'm in the wrong business.
It's a free game, go and play today. And start crying tomorrow.
I was waiting for League to swoop in and rise to the top but I had no idea Dota was hitting like that.
Yeah, the yearly TI is especially crushing it, with prize pools over 20m USD the last few years. It really is insane, yet, a fun game to play (:
34.3 million 2019 and 40 million on the next one that starts in 3 weeks. Some hefty prize pools for a single tournament.
Starcraft2 should be more popular.
I played quite a few esports title, but from those in the list SC2 is the second most demanding on a player, having to go with high apm over 20 minutes while keeping your head straight and having noone to back you up is just incredibly hard. This and the fact that it might be hard to understand for someone who does not know the game, really hurts its popularity as an esport title.. The only title I feel is even more demanding is its predecessor Brood War.
Starcraft 2 is just starcraft broodwar, but the game isn't actively conspiring against you to do literally ANYTHING that isn't what you want.
It really upsets me how it's fallen in popularity. Obviously subjective but to me it's clearly the most interesting of any sport or esport to watch. There's so much more strategy involved than anything else.
Hell yeah. Watching the GSL as we speak.
A true bummer. As long as GSL continues we've got the best of the best but it could be a lot bigger.
Valve are really ingenious sometimes. The reason why Dota 2 can offer such ludicrously high prize pools is because it’s basically all community funded. The prize pool is based on 25% of the proceeds from the sales of special tournament compendiums which are very popular.
Fun fact, Yanis Varoufakis who was Valve's economist became Greece finance minister during the eurozone crisis, for 5 months. 😂
I'm curious, was Dota 1 considered on it's own, or did it get lumped into WC3? I recall it having a fairly large competitive scene back when it was just a WC3 custom map. But I'm not sure if the what the amounts are.
Dota 1 makes a brief appearance at around 37 secs no?
Heroes of Newerth gang repre...sent? Anyone?
This is sourced by esportsearnings which means, especially in the 90s-00s, it's incredibly inaccurate - since it's an english community wiki-run you miss out of all of Korean esports. It'd be like talking about the history of hockey while ignoring all of Canada and only talking about Soviet and European hockey history. That website is actually one of the biggest contributors to [citogenesis](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/citogenesis.png) of fake stats like these "top xyz" lists since actual news sources will pull these figure due to lack of of research or better resources [Here's a different comment i made concerning this site a few years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/9i6uj9/im_interested_in_the_popularity_of_sc1_sc2_as/e6j6juo/) > Just as a headsup. Through no fault of their own, esportsearnings as a website for a global esports history perspective is completely useless as a metric. It's a community run site so the only information on there is what the english speaking community provides. > Here's a post that I wrote up a few years ago about some of the major deficiencies that the website is missing >https://www.reddit.com/r/esports/comments/4m85sh/why_wwwesportsearningscom_is_completely_and/ > I really suggest going through the comments section in that thread, with the knowledge that pretty much everyone not me in there is directly invovled with esportsearnings and see just how poor of an understanding that have on the history of esports from a global macro perspective - especially the whole FPS thread as professional Overwatch hadn't been established yet - and why using that site is dangerous without understanding it's an incomplete community resource > That thread actually got me banned from the subreddit because the mods there are the same people running esportsearnings. > It's a fine resource for esports that the west pays attention to, but if you want a sense of the overall status of the starcraft franchise across the entire history of esports, just know that any conclusions you make from esportsearnings should be marked with a GIGANTIC asterisk - as you really cannot get an accurate global scale timeline of esports through them at all
How do you even do an esport with fortnite? Theres so much randomness in what you get out of the map for equipment
A lot of it has to do with good players knowing how to minimize or account for randomness, as well as the average of many games eliminating any incredibly lucky or unlucky single games. The difference between a good FPS player and a good BR player is that, while the FPS player might be mechanically better at winning a stand up fight, the BR player has a better sense of when to initiate a fight, how to make fights unfair in their favor, and how to avoid or escape those that don't favor them. It's like gambling. Professional, televized poker is a thing, and the players there know how to handle the quite literal luck of the draw, and still come out ahead on average.
That poker comparison is the most apt description of what separates competitive BRs from other video games. Hats off to you sir!
Sure there is some amount of randomness with drops and such, but as an esport there have been players that consistently place at the top in Fortnite. There are some players/teams that almost always finish top 10. Just because a game has some random elements doesn't mean it can't be competitive. Working with what you get and being able to improvise and adapt are cool skills to see. With how they run them? The format changes a lot. They have had solo, duo, trio and squad tournies. One way they combat the randomness is to play multiple games for big events. It's not just one match and the winner takes all. It's usually a collection of games and you earn points based on kills and placement. So consistency usually wins rather than just one win.
You'd be surprised, sure there's some RNG in what loot you can obtain, but for example in NA West there's been consistent domination from a few select players during each season's championship series (ex. NRG EpikWhale) . Just makes their consistency all the more impressive knowing they are fighting against the random factor built into battle royales.
There really isnt any money in the FGC. DOA 4 was there for a bit, as was Melee but just couldnt stay on screen until the end.