Rainbow Six Siege has had a pretty strong competitive scene for pretty much the entirety of it’s lifespan- it’s definitely fluctuated a bit in popularity, but every Invitational has had the same prize pool.
Esports was never sustainable
I feel like Dota 2’s The International goes against your claim. It was the esports tournament with highest prize pool several years in a row, and it was funded almost exclusively by Dota 2 players buying The Battle pass. Valve removed battle pass like 2 years ago, but it’s still ocupies top 1 up to top 7 esports tournaments with highest prize pool: www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments.
SolSerkonos@piefed.social 1 day ago
tekato@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A sustainable scene wouldn’t have dropped from a $40M prize pool to $4M. The issue is that the esports scene was not self funded, it was funded by a percentage of the base game economy.
The reduction in prize pool being related to the removal of battle pass shows that fans never cared about supporting the esports scene, they only wanted the battle pass for the skins or whatever it is that you get from it.
Even if the Dota 2 esports was sustainable, that would be one game out of dozens.