As you should know, a bunch of esport organizations are “leaving” VG. However, “leaving” is the incorrect term to describe the departure of these organizations. They actually were in a way, kicked from the VG esport program. You ever wondered why VG never made ads? Course you have, the topic was quite heavily debated. Well, much of SEMC’s budget was devoted to esports, they PAID the organizations to join VG. In return, these organizations were supposed to create content regarding VG, in return, ADVERTISING VG. They didn’t, and VG’s player count remained the same. Because of that, VG cut ties with those organizations. Take one remaining organization, Tribe. Currently pretty small, its players all have active youtube channels and ChiefPat, the owner, is a massive content creator. That is why they remain. With a smaller esport budget, SEMC can now use the remaining money to create ADVERTISEMENTS. Yeah, you will probably see some VG ads this coming year. If you want a more qualified opinion, check out FlashX’s video, which I basically summarized.Vainglory isn’t dead
I hope they don’t advertise and spend this money on fixes the game
Tbh, advertising for the game itself is a better choice regarding the news.
well lets hope that is so
This text will be blurred
I wish their money not for ads but for improving vg’s internet connection and quality.
You beat me to it. My thoughts exactly. Nicely done.
Worth noting that this is speculation by Flash rather than the gospel - he sincerely believes it, but I think he is mistaken both in terms of what the orgs failed to do (most did do some content creation, certainly TSM did not do more than the rest combined) and I am not convinced that any franchisees are being retained - I think the franchise system is gone.
And that is a good thing.
The franchise system unfairly biased esports funding towards some regions (hi NA…) and artificially inflated player wages and expectations in a way that is harmful to the game, as well as costing a fair chunk that would be better used on advertising, prizepools and so on.
I’m pretty sure that is separate with a whole other team working on it.
Agreed, but what he says does make sense and is definitely more reliable than the dramatic tweets flying around.
I think they have a separate budget and separate team for that.
Worth reading Pwt’s response here: https://twitter.com/pwntbyukrainian/status/981197257683816448?s=21
Again I think Flash has somethings right but somethings wrong.
I am aware, but in my eyes, I feel streams and youtube videos by VG players are not really good content in the way of how it advertises VG. In my eyes, those vids and streams are already directed to VG players, not really people who would be interested in VG if they heard about it. I believe that the most it could do is maybe bring people who play other MOBAs in. That I believe, Youtube is better at.
Thats not the only core point - the another important point is that Flash gets the amount of money involved wrong - by an order of magnitude - that was my impression as well - we talked to orgs in the franchise system who were interested in acquiring our team last year - the resources they indicated they had from it suggest that pwnt is much closer financially to the cost of the programme than Flash is.
I personally believe vainglory isn’t ready for esports and that when it is the esports should never included in advertisement. To me the game feels like its in an open beta form. There are so many problems with networking that are death sentences for games. If they bother with normal advertising before fixing them they are just wasting money as most people won’t tolerate a game that ping spikes you so much. Not to mention they have the game coded where a single tap of back exits the game, most games even non serious ones it takes at least 2 times to exit
Nevertheless, I believe that much of our marketing/advertising money was used on esports. Though his numbers are off, his point still remains that SEMC used much of their budget on esports.
at leaat that one guy doing bingo with the franchise teams would finally get a bingo
(https://twitter.com/girlsonboys_vg/status/980914557714538496?s=21)
He already got one DNG announced their departure a few days ago.
One interesting side effect of the great Org Massacre of Spring 2018 is that SEA might well become the area with the most paid pro players and most active orgs…
Impunity, Elite 8 and Brenchong all have funding independent of SEMC and at this stage I don’t see 3 paying orgs in any other region…
TSM did do lots of YouTube videos on their official channel though, and I don’t think any other NA teams made many videos on Vainglory on their official channels. I know Cloud9 made 1 or maybe 2, and of course Gankstars did a lot which FlashX didn’t mention - and I can’t really speak for other regions because I don’t follow esports outside of NA - but what I gathered from this is that SEMC didn’t really want the advertising to come from the pro players themselves, because the only players who would really watch them are Vainglory players - they wanted the orgs to make videos like TSM’s Glory series, thus reaching a larger audience.
This strategy was pretty bad in hindsight, most PC gamers look down their noses at mobile games (why play something on a mobile when you can get a better version on a PC which pretty much everyone has?) and the comments section on the TSM videos were just painful to read. Hopefully SEMC can focus on traditional marketing, sponsoring streams by top streamers; they recently did something with Kibler, a Hearthstone streamer. Things like that,