Where Have All The Dota Esports Organizations Gone?
As Dota’s prize pools balloon every year and players claim the top tournament winnings of all time, its organizations have been disappearing. With last month’s news of EG and Alliance departing GoodGame Agency and becoming independent, player-owned organizations, Dota teams are following a trend that could be an ominous sign for the game’s sustainability.
For EG and Alliance, and teams like NP, Secret, and Faceless, their independency is a choice. These rosters house some of the game’s best players, but moreover they have the capital to take that risk. NP captain, EternalEnvy, rejected a sponsorship offer from Cloud 9, which would have doubled the team’s pay. Then there’s EG players, who claim the top 4 prize winnings of all time, equalling over $10 million. And Faceless captain, iceiceice, is paying the rent for the team’s 4 bedroom gaming house out of his own pocket.
But for most players, being without an organization is just par for the course.
Being Good Isn’t Good Enough
Two years ago, at TI4, being the 16th best team paid you zero, while the best team, Newbee, was rewarded with $5 million. The $10.9 million total prize pool of TI4 represented 66% of all prize money given out that year. Since then, Valve has made a slow effort to distribute tournament winnings across the board, with 13th-16th place at TI6 claiming 0.5% of the prize pool ($103k). It’s certainly more than nothing, but because Valve’s events contribute the most to player earnings, they’re also responsible for the massive income inequality in Dota.
It pays to be the best. In 2016, the top 4 out of 16 teams at Valve events took home more than 2/3rds of the $3 million at Majors and 3/4ths of the $20.8 million at TI6. In fact, counting all time, the top 1% of Dota players received 32.7% of tournament winnings, an income disparity greater than that of USA.
Better players should be rewarded for being better, but the sustainability of Dota also depends on everyone else. And right now, it’s not good enough. Meritocracy, the philosophy that people are rewarded based only on raw ability and talent, is a myth in competitive sports as it is in the real world. Never mind that certain teams get more invites to premier tournaments, or that the latency issues occur because of the country you live in. Regardless of the circumstances, teams below that bar of being the best aren’t rewarded their value.
Before winning $500,000 for their 2nd place finish at the Boston Major, the Greek team Ad Finem made a total of $31,915 in the previous year. Were they $500,000 better? That’s the case with many teams who get a chance to compete at Valve events. The tournament is their break, and their team lives or dies whether they get that chance. Without paychecks, they’re looking for their big payday. The sustainability of Dota depends on the ability of players to make a living from playing the game. The top players are certainly doing well. But the majority of players, from teams like Ad Finem, who are well capable of competing, but if they don’t get the chance, then they’re just scraping by.
Out of 753 documented player earnings in 2016, 575 players, or 76%, made less than $11,770, the poverty salary line for the US. Yes, the list has non-professionals, but it's also populated with top players like NutZ and DkPhobos, some who just had bad luck with team stability. It remains that the game pays lucratively only for a handful of players, comfortably for another subset, and meagerly for everyone else.
Dota Continues To Grow
In 2016, Dota 2 tournament winnings totaled $36.4 million, greater than the winnings of the next 4 games combined: Counter Strike: Global Offensive ($17.3m), League of Legends ($10.2m), Heroes Of The Storm ($4.6m), and Call of Duty: Black Ops III ($3.7m). With the introduction of the Majors, injecting another $9 million a year (the first being in 2015), the 2016 total prize pool for Dota 2 accounted for 39.5% of Dota’s all-time winnings ($92.2m). There’s more money than before for pro players, yet it’s still a high risk, high reward scenario for anyone who wants to become a pro in Dota.
Organizations can offer stability for players to take that risk, by offering a salary. But for Dota, Valve’s laissez faire policies with competitive Dota engendered a free-for-all landscape for players. Roster shuffles follow every premier event, as players scramble to find new teams and match with compatible teammates. Rarely do teams buckle down, maintain their roster, and opt to stabilize from mistakes. Because of the stakes at hand--the next event is right around the corner--there isn't enough time. A new roster is often seen as a new start, but it can also be a slipshod way of trying to correct old mistakes, while creating new ones in the process.
The instability of teams gives little incentive for organizations to sponsor salaries. Too much depends on the success of a few tournaments, especially now that third party organizers can no longer can incentive ticket purchases with item bundles, and at the same time they're competing with the scheduling of Valve events.
Valve, to their credit, has grown the competitive circuit with the Majors, enacted roster lock policies, and committed to prioritizing players first, but without any sort of organizational structure, players are still left to fend for themselves. Some will find the right players, the right team, all hoping to win the next big one.
And had you read even partially you'd have understood that his point is that teams should get participation medals, but it's already the case. So don't tell me X is Y when you read it as ABC.
And if with the prior post you still don't understand the Coke vs Pepsi and think it's related to discrimination and not used as a metaphor... Damn you're a case for shrinks.
Props to Yot and Brock Hall! very informative!
on a different note, bewbs.
I fully agree with the "free market" mentality embraced by this community. A problem I see is that people act as if Valve is leaving the community to drive the Esports scene, yet this is obviously not the case. By crowdfunding its own tournaments (with the help of hats and compendiums, more related to playing the game rather than watching tournaments) it is doing two things: inflating the pro player winnings by a huge margin and driving out other tournament organizers out of the scene. With inflated prize money, sponsorship deals also become less relevant and with them - organizations and brands as a whole. (I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, I hate ads as much as the next guy.)
Valve is simply using the esports scene as a marketing tool to sell it's own product and the fact is that they are very heavily disrupting it for good or for bad. Introducing of slight changes to the system (for whatever reason - e.g. to incentivise more sponsors, team stability, or w/e) shouldn't be viewed as a taboo, but as a requiremen bearing in mind Valve is already intervening massively into the esports "market".
A wild intellectually challenged comment appeared ! --https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/5m6bpg/ -- thank god redditors blasted your nonsensical ramblings to smithereens.
@Yot
I think that's discounting a lot of hard work that goes on behind the scenes. There are a lot of people that create ads, motion graphics, schedule tournaments, manage hotel bookings and flights, etc that the players don't have to worry about. Sure, it all centers around what the players do on stage, but a lot of people work really hard to make that experience enjoyable. Those third parties you speak of are called investors, and some of the most successful brands, companies, and products wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for someone willing to bet their money on someone elses success.
And so what if a contract binds you to a specific league? That's kind of how jobs work. That's not a problem because it provides stability to the industry. It also means less risk for the players, which means more will stick around, which is good for the industry. That's the point of all of this anyway: we as viewers would like the best possible experience. It is in the interest of teams, players, Valve, and advertisers to give us an engaging, satisfying, high quality product for years to come.
You know, you're right. Esports aren't sports. There is a lot of stuff that doesn't transfer. But that doesn't mean that we should completely throw out all the stuff that they do that works that could be used very successfully just for the sake of being different. I don't feel bad at all for the 'slaves' like Beckham or Ronaldo or whoever you admire. They get paid to do something they love, and they have bosses telling them to do some stuff they don't like to do, just like the rest of us. But they agreed to it because it was a good job with reliable pay. They work hard to win not because it will be the first pay in a long time, but because they might lose the job they currently have. That's incentive enough.
If Valve can figure out a way to make this work without third party sponsors I'm on board with it, but they won't keep throwing money at this project unless it is making them money. They can't milk the community forever.
Oh and thanks to the people out there who see our ramblings as informative.
Just to clarify, I'm not in any way saying that players aren't getting what they deserve. It's not about that at all. If you don't like how much you are being paid, go somewhere else and find a way to make more money. Saying you 'deserve' something is a matter of opinion, not fact, and the person paying you is allowed to OFFER whatever they want to.
What I AM saying is that it makes business sense for Valve to make competing more appealing to a larger group of people. It would grow the scene, making the viewership larger. I think Valve would make more money by giving a little more money, and we as viewers would benefit.
Yot clearly desires the scene to grow as well, and certainly seems to be supportive of the interests of the players, but I think he is just a little more direct in his approach. So, ya know, I got no hard feelings towards him or anything.
I don't think either of us harbor ill-intent towards one another. The base line is the same, the rest is semantics.
The guys on the reddit post seem more informed than most here.
^This. Again, I also think a lot of things said are valid. I also disagree with Yot and think e-sport is just as much a sport as anything else.
However that doesn't mean we have to copy bad funding models. Or at least ones that are worse for players and teams.
Pro soccer or basketball players have it good, but a guy who generates $1000mn in revenue can see perhaps $20mn of that if he is lucky. It's infact a funding model quite open to disruption if someone had enough money and wanted to fund traditional sports like DotA.
For instance, NFL yearly revenue is 13 Billion. Imagine some competitor with Big Pockets used a Dota Funding model and said he will host a 16 team football season and give say $4 Billion Prize pool. I guarantee you that with a prize pool that large distributed in Dota's proportion almost any professional player will want to play in such a league, or clubs will gladly pay bigger salaries than Status Quo in order for profit shares. It would still work out better for players.
TLDR DotA is insanely player favoured compared to any traditional sport.
I think since the player also the part of community. Its very up to them players to decide which kind of system that suits them (majority of players not only top 50 which had already grabbing some bucks), either open circuit or closed circuit have its pros cons. Just let the players decide but with endnote : American scene needs to be groomed out how to prevent EG hegemony towards almost entire American team.
Where the fuck do you get off disagreeing about me saying "esports aren't sports" when what I'm saying is that the sports economy approach shouldn't apply to esports?!
Esports are sports. Just that we don't have crappy player exploitive circuits and most pros don't wish for them. As a spectator, league formats are boring on top of how unhealthy they are to the professional scene.
Oh and Brock... I hate football, but it's the perfect example of bad distribution -- the slaves are the majority players; not the stars.
I will apreciate if you don't mix comunism things in our loved game!
@Yot
At least they get paid enough to make a living. You may think their pay is unfair but even last place teams get a salary that makes it worth keep playing for years. They aren't starving. I can't get on board with calling them slaves.
Above all, I think that even though I have been giving Valve a hard time, I also think that there is only so much they can do to keep interest in the sport at any given time. The majors have been a, uh, major improvement for the scene and are better handled and scheduled now than they have been in the past (although single elimination sucks). I think what they have planned for this year is set in stone, and they will look at how it was received and make adjustments or improvements next year. Of the large list of improvements they could make, many of which we have discussed here, I think the most important are as follows:
1. Throw a few more percentage points to the lower place teams. Not too many to make competition irrelevant, but enough to give teams a reason to try again next year.
2. Continue to explore avenues to stabilize the competitive scene. Better scheduling (always room for improvement) and adjustments to roster policies might be good places to start, but there are likely many ways to achieve this goal.
3. Improve transparency and stability in regards to direct invites, qualifiers, and open qualifiers. There needs to be a fair and obvious reason for team placements that isn't based on the opinions of Valve, but upon actual data. Simplest way of achieving this would be to award point values to various smaller tournaments (which would encourage teams to attend them while also aiding with scheduling conflicts). This would also give us a barebones league format that still allows teams to choose which tournaments they want to be a part of. It also isn't as dry as traditional league formats and doesn't tie competitors into contracts. However, any improvement on the current situation will be quite welcome.
Actually, most professionals in any sports don't earn enough to make a living and have to take up several jobs. Ask a top 100 ATP player how the earnings are... Or a sub-division NFL player etc.
You're basically looking at it from a very misinformed and unrelatable perspective: Iceberg economics.
It's always about the one-percenters and always will be, because they're the reason there is any money at all to be won in a scene. Which is what I've been trying to explain as to why a wider distribution is bad. You don't give to someone who "might" contribute in the future, but you give him a chance to prove that he can.
Spectator sports -- gambling sports -- pay to play.
Esports are currently the only games that could thrive from all three models on different scales.
There are less than 100 players at TI, and if you are competing at TI you aren't sub-division, and you aren't someone who 'might contribute in the future--you're contributing now. TI also awards more money than Wimbledon. According to Forbes the average NFL salary per year is 1.7 million (considered wildly underpaid), putting it behind NHL, NBA, MLB.
At this point though I think we are going in circles.
There is no other game other than dota, where a team gets a prize money for being 12th-16th!
I think the money is distributed much better in DOTA2 than any other sport/game/contest. This post was probably the most bullshit post I've read in DOTABUFF.
In what other ternament gets a team 100k for placing last.
I can think of one. And a team without an organisation wins 100k I would say they can pay there rent for another year. So I guess if you dont play at the TI it's hard to live from dotatournaments, because at the other tournaments the price pool is not that high but for all the players playing at TI and even placing azt some other tournaments it should be fine.
And the players are deciding on there own that they dont want to be part of an organisation, so if it would be that bad I think they would search for a sponsor. I can't believe top teams wont find one if they want to
Brock, thanks for your enlightening comments here. I agree with you on most of your points and you are much more eloquent than most. You also make your points in a matter of fact, non confrontational manner, on the other hand, while Yot has valid points too he seems like a real asshole...