Land Of Broken Promises
Esports is made up of many disparate scenes but they all have one thing in common; an abundance of grifters taking fans money in exchange for promises they never deliver.
People love to analyse e-sports and talk about industry trends. What game will be “the next big thing”, what streaming platforms and broadcasting methods will be introduced, which organisations will grow and which ones will decline. Right now the most obvious trend seems to be the culture of not keeping promises made, in exchange for money, to the community that they were pledged to. They have arrived in a cluster – the pizza.gg fiasco, the ROOT Gaming house, eSportsU, the Sons of Stracraft documentary… All of them have traded on little more than your good faith and their word and you’ve effectively funded both their lifestyle and their collective failures.
I wrote several articles at the time pointing out that this a slippery slope. The “donation” model should be reserved not for the terminally inept or chronically lazy. It should be for people in dire need. I wasn’t a dissenting voice because I wanted those looking for the handouts to fail. I was a dissenting voice because the e-sports community is one all too easily exploited, a community that is often – truthfully – considered to be brutal and harsh, yet one that has always displayed startling generosity towards the people who make a recognised contribution towards it. It was my point that the last thing the industry needs is another bunch of unsustainable pipe-dreams, with no clear path in place for continued independent operations. It is like they take your money and go to the casino and put it all on black. Arguably, this would have a higher chance of success than hoping to land a big financial backer as a result of what you helped them to achieve.
At the time I came under severe fire from that same community for having the temerity to suggest organisations wanting to operate as businesses should, you know, have a business plan involving how they will make money. Let’s be absolutely clear about what donations are for – a donation is where someone with a source of income will provide a portion of that income to an individual or cause who do not have an income substantial enough to cover their requirements. These are primarily reserved for charities, people undergoing unforeseen tragedies or personal troubles and are given without the need for anything in return. It is an act of altruism in the truest sense.
Crowdfunding has unfortunately become something of a trend for less than worthy causes, albeit ones that do serve some form of greater good, although nothing so noble as the examples listed. Games producers look to beat the stagnant and derivative games industry by getting potential customers to buy the idea in advance and then use the money to make good on that idea. This has led to some fantastic games being created and as such has quickly become an accepted financial model. Steam even has a “Greenlight” section for such ideas, encouraging customers to pay for early access to unfinished games and, in essence, enable them to be finished through their contributions.
We’re already starting to see some more cynical trends emerge in this method. People shamelessly trading in on your nostalgia by promising you belated sequels and remakes to classics, which in all likelihood won’t live up to the originals. We have also seen many prominent “kickstarters” make outlandish promises that they don’t follow up on, nor do they have to. The only obligation they have to go through with what they promised stems from Kickstarter itself, a document signed that gives disgruntled backers some form of recourse. Refunds are incredibly hard to secure due to Kickstarter never having the money in the first place. For those that operate outside of a signed agreement, such as we have seen in e-sports, the legality of any disagreement exists in a hilariously vague grey area that such people know will never be tested in any court.
And therein lies the key to the model’s appeal with these people. They know they can make the promises, trade on your good will, take the money and then never actually have to do any of the things they say. They can fob you off for as long as is necessary for you to forget or for them to begrudgingly get round to doing it. There is no “bill of sale” when you’re dealing in promises, you have no consumer rights because it is a donation. That wording alone pretty much absolves the recipient of any responsibility – “hey, I meant well and I’m sorry I didn’t do what I said… But it was a gift, right?”
This is why it is an incredibly dangerous model for the industry to adopt en masse and one that you should all be immediately cynical of. This is e-sports, the land of broken promises. With no regulatory bodies, an average age that goes hand in hand with naivety and being still so small in the grand scheme of things anyone with a little bit of capital can have the whole industry at their behest for what would be considered chump change in the real world. Those who are capable of building do so only for themselves, despite crowing about “growing” the industry, and those who lack the ability look for shortcuts.
This is where your money comes in. They know you love e-sports. You’re an e-sports fan. You are part of those Twitch TV numbers that make them rub their hands and feel legitimised. They know you care about the scene. You don’t want to wake up and see your favourite parts of it absorbed into the vortex of failed ideas and bankruptcy, especially if it means other less favoured parts occupy a larger portion of the remaining space. It was abundantly clear that all of you out there love e-sports in ways they can’t.
You tipped your card yourselves of course, they didn’t always know you felt this way. They noticed that you would give generously to teams and players needing to travel when they couldn’t afford their own fees to do so. They noticed you’d give generously to your favourite streamers. They’ve known for some time you will buy brands based on who your e-sports idols do. Somewhere along the line they realised they didn’t have to use marketing to get you to part with your money. They could just simply get you to hand it over to them with a single phrase – “how you can support e-sports.”
Cropped up a lot lately hasn’t it? Want to support e-sports? Well, you can buy these headsets. Want to support e-sports? Use this website, use this discount code, use this and use that? Want to support e-sports? We’re a part of e-sports, pay for us to live a comfortable lifestyle so we can avoid the soul crushing nine to five you worked to give us the money. In exchange for this we will give you what you want, which is of course more e-sports related content for you to access and enjoy.
At the end of each of these campaigns, the numbers are shared with the people who profited and a decision is made on whether or not they will do it again. Did the return warrant the investment on their part? And be under no illusion, getting that return business from the people holding the purse strings is all that really matters. And when they invariably don’t because, after all, e-sports is small potatoes, their next concern is massaging those figures and making it look like a smart investment for the next person willing to pay to exploit your good will towards an e-sports “brand”. Somewhere on the list of priorities is actually delivering what they said they would but ultimately when you don’t have to do something it begs the question “why do it at all”?
That is where we are at – plain and simple. It is often the practice in business that you hold something back to “keep people honest”, half now, half on completion, that sort of thing. When everything is up front you hand over complete power to the person undertaking the services and it is in the lap of the gods from that point on. Think of every time you’ve sent paypal funds on an ebay transaction first and had to wait for the items to turn up. Tense, isn’t it? Giving away money up front for anything that is intangible should make you nervous because it should only be done where there are specific systems in place to keep people honest.
My faith in the e-sports community was restored slightly when I saw people finally find the spirit to raise concerns over the glut of broken promises lately. The first few times the Reddit threads were downvoted into oblivion, fans of the specific organisations shouting down any dissenting voices in a show of ill-advised loyalty. Slowly and steadily the protests became more frequent and over the last few weeks some of the parties have been shamed into action. In the absence of genuine ways to redress the situation the front page of Reddit will have to do and for now it seems as effective as anything available.
Still, don’t expect any humility with the invariable combination of apologies and excuses. Each time one of them takes to the public arena to address what is happened it starts so well, with a sorry and “ but guess what happened” only to be followed up with the precision combination of how wrong you all are to bring it up in the first place. You’re inconveniencing them by reminding them of their obligations. How fucking dare you.
This sentiment was typified by a representative of Evil Geniuses, one of the chief offenders in this current trend, Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson has given several statements regarding outstanding promises. They straddle that awkward line of attempting to acknowledge that what they have done is wrong but equally lay blame at your door for even seeming to care. His latest read:
“I can also tell you that right now this community is at a toxic level. If someone doesn't do what they said they would do in a timely fashion this community gets down right fucking mean. And I can also tell you as a person that works for a company that is involved in ALL the major gaming communities that SC2 has a special brand of snarky and mean that makes the especially negative and vile. Now, this is the part of the post where I get quoted over and over again by the dozen or so trolls that follow me around and look for a sign of emotion from me so they can harass me until I crack. Or, this is the part where I get called out for "defending" bad policy (not doing the tiers) or "blaming the community" for killing esports or whatever. I'm fine with it. I won't stop taking opportunities to give you guys a glimpse behind a curtain you otherwise will never see. I can tell you that I am really sad.. right now I am without question going to start working with other games and companies as a need for survival. This community is running itself into the ground. Every time a wound is opened up a horde of nay-sayers march in and rip it to shreds making everyone on the money side of things look at this and go WHY THE FUCK would I want anything to do with this? I will be here playing, commentating, hosting and doing other things for SC2 but I HAVE TO plan for the future and until the last few months I never imagined that would mean looking at non SC2 stuff. Is that entirely the communities fault? Abso-fucking-lutely not. It's we the players, teams, blizzard, community etc.. and those things CAN AND WILL be called out. Sure. But right now, looking at this thread? I can't help but say fuck it man.. sometimes the shit on reddit and around this community makes me sick.”
Isn’t it weird how the recipients of your good will keep turning it round and saying YOU’RE the ones killing the e-sports industry? It doesn’t hold up to any form of logic. People have a right to expect delivery of what they paid for, even when it is vague from a legal standpoint. When you put your name, your brand, on a promise to not deliver it shows utter contempt, not just for yourself, but for each and every one of the supporters that give your brand the strength that allowed it to profit in the first place. Why don’t more people in positions of prominence talk about this? Simply put, because they will expect the same courtesy when it is their turn to take advantage.
So be under no illusion guys, it’s not you killing e-sports. Your desire for the right thing to be done and your vocal protests when it isn’t are the only thing keeping these reprehensible money-grabbers honest and even then barely so. Don’t let them slap you down with a series of passive-aggressive responses that are tantamount to emotional blackmail. It’s all a bluff – they won’t leave this business for several reasons, the most obvious of which is that they are on to a very good thing. Working real jobs, for real companies, be it at the bottom or the top, they would be held accountable in ways they are not now and their own stock would mean little, just another non-monetised tiny cog in a big corporate machine. Oh no, they like it here and they’ll only leave when you stop giving them money for old rope. There’s a thought…
Over the next few days I’m going to look at each of the parties engaged in this trend and lay out what is outstanding. And sure, some of it will be infused with smug “I told you so” vibes but equally it is important that is all recorded in print, even if Reddit eclipses the online e-sports media these days. The e-sports industry stands on a very big carpet and it is starting to look increasingly lumpy from everything that gets swept under there. Anywhere else this would be called scamming or confidence trickery. We can’t celebrate the growth of e-sports when we still tolerate these kinds of practices from the people that should be holding themselves up to the highest possible standard.