Submitted 1 day ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
As one Reddit commenter put it: “I thought Capcom organised this circuit as a marketing tool for the game. Makes no sense to charge viewers to watch it. And esports is, unfortunately, still way too niche for that to be profitable.”
It’s shooting themselves in the foot, not their audience. Their audience has plenty of Street Fighter tournaments to watch.
Capcom is 100% betting on their Japanese viewers, the west is just a “sad casualty”, so to speak. If this ends up working in their favor, expect this shit to expand to other companies and tournaments, just like pay2win did.
Japan’s attitude to e-sports is so bizarre. between this, Nintendo constantly shutting down fan tournaments, and other companies acting like e-sports don’t exist until it becomes big enough not to capitalize on..
How the fuck do they think it’s going to work if they keep gatekeeping the few people interested in esports?
They know nobody is going to purchase the pay-per-view, but I guess they don’t care since the alternative is not getting any money anyways. Esports was never sustainable because fans refuse to spend money, so they rely on shady sponsorships from gambling sites and Saudi money.
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.
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.
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.
They’re charging for it because the Japanese audience will pay for it, and I guess they don’t want to handle it differently abroad. Fighting games, at least up to this point, have been sustainable in a way that the rest of e-sports have not. The rest of e-sports was predicated on future growth, and fighting games have only grown as fast as the money coming in, in general. (2XKO is putting out $50k in pot bonuses for a game that doesn’t look to be earning that much, and the Saudis now own SNK and treat Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting like they’re Call of Duty.)
Kind of hard justifying a price tag to watch any person play a game IMO
I’m surprised sports are still as big as they are now that it isn’t one of the only source of communal entertainment anymore.
Welp have fun with that, Capcom. Not even complete morons would spend money for that
famous last words, hope im wrong though lol
tickets for sale to watch people play video games?
feel high and tripping just looking at the news these days
…but when it’s about watching millionaires play with a ball, then it’s fine.
I’m guessing pay-per-trailer is next.
I’m gonna miss-yah Ingrid.😭
Goodluck with that. Hope it works out.
I mean it won’t, for sure it wont, but we can hope.
slazer2au@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Absolute morons.
I look forward to someone livestreaming the games pretending to be a player.
AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 1 day ago
Just drone-🏴☠️ the footage😆