this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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StarCraft

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A Lemmy.world instance dedicated to everything Brood War or StarCraft II.

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Microsoft lays off most of Activision Blizzard esports organization (venturebeat.com)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Brood War flourished in South Korea and effectively became the country's third national sport behind football and baseball. OG Blizzard were cool with seeing their game played like this. Their Activision overlords were the ones who sued the fuck out of the Korean Esports Association (KeSPA) over broadcasting rights.

StarCraft II had LAN support gutted out not due to piracy concerns, but to effectively prevent unlicensed esports. This and their legal dispute with KeSPA is largely why none of the big Proleague teams ended up playing the sequel until almost three years after release.

WCS killed the grassroots scene that developed around SC2 in the first two years of the game's release. The exclusivity deals, existence in only three regions (Europe, NA and South Korea) broadcasting embargoes, and how quickly Blizzard forced the idea upon stakeholders in a swift attempt to copy Riot Games made Ongamenet nope out of the scene, caused irreversible damage to Major League Gaming as a brand and effectively bankrupted the North American Star League. Not to mention that until region locking was actually introduced three years later, no non-Korean player won a SC2 major tournament between 2013 and 2015. BlizzCon only had two non-Korean players qualify in 2013 (Naniwa) and 2015 (Lilbow) respectively during that time too.

Anybody who saw what happened with WCS could see the Overwatch League failing from a mile off.