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BlizzCon 2019 was something that Blizzard was expected go all-in on, but with only two days before the start of the convention, the World of Warcraft community is calling that into question based on controversy surrounding the prize pool for the WoW Arena World Championship and the Wow Mythic Dungeon International.
In a post made by Blizzard on March 19, the company announced that members of the WoW community could support WoW Esports by purchasing two new toys available in the Blizzard shop:
"For a limited time, every purchase of the Transmorpher Beacon or Lion’s Pride and Horde’s Might Fireworks, 25% of the proceeds will contribute toward the year’s finals LAN event prize pool for the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000 USD ($250,000 USD for each event.) Your support will help take the WoW esports prize pool to the next level."
On Monday, October 28th, Blizzard announced the total prize pool after proceeds from the aforementioned toys had assumedly been added on top of Blizzard's contributions:
"We’re happy to announce that because of your direct support, the combined prize pool for WoW Esports at BlizzCon 2019 will be $660,000! Each of our two WoW Esports programs, the World of Warcraft Arena World Championship and the Mythic Dungeon International Global Finals, will have a prize pool of $330,000 up for grabs. Thank you for making this the largest prize pool we’ve ever had for WoW Esports at BlizzCon and thank you for your continued support of WoW Esports."
The success of the toys and the community's rallying around the cause led to suspicions, and eventually, allegations against Blizzard for not contributing any of its own money to the prize pool and instead, relying solely on the proceeds from the toys released this past spring. A popular streamer named Zack, known more commonly as "Asmongold" came to the defense of Blizzard in a tweet quoting the original announcement made by Blizzard ahead of BlizzCon 2019.
"Attention people who are mad about Blizzard supposedly not contributing any money to the prize pools" This is a completely unfounded conclusion, there is no place that states that Blizz won't contribute if the pool is too big. Lets wait for more info," Asmongold urged. However, Kelvin "Snutz" Nguyen, a professional player for Cloud9, responded to Asmongold's tweet stating his account of what had taken place ahead of BlizzCon:
If one were to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt, the wording of Blizzard's original post a could read as a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool should the proceeds from the toys not exceed that value. Still, that doesn't seem to be enough to satisfy the community. Asmongold himself made a video expressing his disappointment and calling on Blizzard to make the right choice and add its $500,000 the prize pool.
With BlizzCon less than two days away, it is unlikely that anything in the way of a formal announcement is made public before the beginning of the event. However, a lack of explanation or clarification from the side of Blizzard could turn the the company's 48-hour highlight into more fuel for the fire of unrest that is ablaze throughout the community.
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Tim Rizzo is the editor and a reporter for Inven Global. He joined the company back in 2017.
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Comments :8
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level 1 Blarvis
Oct 30, 2019
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Boohoo. Imagine whining about playing video games for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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level 1 Leigh_Parker
Oct 31, 2019
@Blarvisdirty boomers... ruined the world and now wants to shit on the youth
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level 1 Teekrul
Oct 31, 2019
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I'm no Boomer and I agree.... No one forced them to play the game.
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level 1 Ezeckel
Oct 31, 2019
@TeekrulIt's an insult directed at your mentality, not your age.
If someone purchased the toys from this thinking that they were supporting an event with a much larger prize pool than they were, and the reason they thought this was due to false advertising (or at the very least advertising which was ambiguous in a way that feels intentional), then they have plenty of reason to be annoyed. Such prize pools are a reflection of the importance of these games and events to the company, and the people who value those games enough to contribute monetarily to their competitive scene aren't going to like feeling hoodwinked into it, especially when the company simultaneously demonstrates that they don't really care about the game.
But nah. Let's just criticize the angry gamers because we can feel superior for being dismissive for nonsensical reasons. -
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level 1 Teekrul
Oct 31, 2019
@EzeckelNo where in their statement said they'd add to it only ensure it was a min of 500k
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level 1 Enrier
Nov 1, 2019
@Teekrul True. But, there were multiple cases of esport tournaments done by huge companies Riot and Valve. Who have been doing this kind of thing for years with the crowdfunding by player purchases and even though it’s 25% from those, they still chip in the base amount as it’s part of good publicity and health towards future revenue.And there actually is one sentence in the whole post about the prize pool from Blizzard, which is “help elevate” it is vague as f*** but... It should mean that they’d add the revenue to the prize pool, which they hadn’t done.The company nullified all the good will that the community had gathered in 28 years of its existence in just this one month of October. And you should understand how bad publicity like that can destroy a company’s revenue and lifeblood.I do not know what the top brass of Activision-Blizzard is thinking, though would like to know and then give them a piece of my mind. But as far as I know, a lot of workers in the company were also not amused by this... Like at all.After BlizzCon and even during BlizzCon, their biggest event, they will have a lot of bad stuff happen to them.I mean, sure... You can think whatever since you don’t care. But you should agree, that they really f***ed themselves with this, when the basic standards of player crowdfunded tournaments have been set for years by companies as big as them if not bigger and those standards being just a google search away...
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