

Losing that aspect of playing every week made Korean players lose the drive and confidence to perform well on a regular basis. With the beginning of HGC they still played on LAN, but lost the audience. Pre-HGC, Korea and China already had their own league system and played weekly in front of a live audience. This is a bit concerning since Korea is typically the lifeblood of all esports. While the format change was much needed for North America and Europe, Korean teams have been the most outspoken against the HGC 2017 format.


Let’s see where we’re at a year from now, two year from now." Braithwaite also admitted there were a lot of firsts for the Heroes esports team this year: “We’ve been working hard to get things done. While the salary promise is a huge step up for players from previous formats, they still need a structured organisation to stay afloat if they hope to become full time, long term professional players.Īt the Mid-Season Brawl, Heroes’ esports lead Sam Braithwaite stated: “We think with the plans we already have in motion, there won’t be any unsponsored teams in 2018.” There’s no telling what’s planned but hopefully there will be some acceleration on Blizzard’s part to attract well endowed organisations. I'm extremely disappointed that have not paid their players for 4 months. We’ve already seen that instance with the European team Playing Ducks recently. Some organisations, albeit sleazy, could also think they don’t need to pay their players because they’re already making a salary from Blizzard. but when the only competition to play in is HGC, there’s not much of a choice. Of course that doesn’t factor in tournament winnings, stream earnings, sponsorships, etc. Assuming a specific team doesn’t get relegated in The Crucible at the end of each phase, that comes to $20,000 a year per player which is right under the minimum wage line for the state of California, where Blizzard is headquartered. $50,000 is promised to each team per phase with two phases a year. This brought along schedule and broadcast consistency along with guaranteed salaries for the top eight teams in the four major regions: North America, Europe, China and Korea. The season was marked by production disasters, scheduling conflicts and a rosterpocalypse - players shifting and shuffling - at the end of every event (and sometimes qualifiers), this all created fuel for instability.ĭear Blizzard, the way ESL is handling the production for the NA finals in Heroes of the Storm is flat out embarrassing for the gameīlizzard introduced a major change in the format of Heroes with the “Heroes Global Championship” for 2017. Heroes esports in 2015/2016 was a bit messy.
