It has been relatively quiet on the SC2 landscape the past week or so. We've had the Nova Covert Ops mission announced as dropping March 29th, along with some aesthetic changes made for tournament winners. StarDust has also returned, but no one seems to know what his plans are--attempt to compete in Korea for their second seasons? Given that he was struggling with mid-tier Terran GMs in HOTS (WArchief), it's difficult to see how much success he could have there. From what I can tell his stream is on the Korean ladder and his chat is Korean-only, so I'm assuming he's looking for success at home.
WCS Shanghai begins on Saturday (March 21st) and there are a few bits of information to cover: Mongolian player Sioras replaces KingKong from the SEA qualifier (due to the Korean's passport issues; the latter's team is sending him to compete in the open bracket); there were also four invited players--iAsonu and XiGua make a lot of sense (Chinese players in a Chinese tournament), but I don't know what the rationale was for inviting PtitDrogo or MarineLorD (I don't have a problem with them going, but I didn't see any reasoning offered why it was those two and not other players). There are four spots remaining from the open bracket, but as it stands it's going to be a very Terran-light tournament (2 only thus far, with 4 Protoss and 6 Zerg).
Cheesadelphia 2
N3rd Street Gamers ran the Philadelphia LAN and it was fun to watch, albeit they decided to torture viewers with shitty Internet (me) and never turned on quality options for the stream. Kelazhur beat HuK to win the tourney (and $1,000). The most surprising result was Epic landing in the money and beating JonSnow (among others). Five of the six top spots were held by Terrans (and six of eight).
Group A: 1-1 (Rogue instead of Taeja)
Group B: 2-0
Group C: 1-1 (Soulkey instead of Bunny)
Group D: 1-1 (Stork instead of Cure)
Group E: 1-1 (DeParture over Trap)
Group F: 1-1 (Classic over SpeeD)
Group G: 1-1 (aLive over Losira)
Group H: 2-0
These are decent numbers (10-6 or 62%), but below how TL was performing last year (averaging 12-4 in the R32). It will be interesting to see how the R16 goes, but I remain puzzled at their disinclination to use (or at least cite) Aligulac.
The Meisterschaft (EPS) tourney has returned and unlike in 2015 I'm happy to see they aren't having problems filling their brackets (the return of players like HaNfy and DarkHydra help). Through the first two cups it seems like ShoWTimE and HeRoMaRinE are tops in the field and certainly the former is no surprise in that respect. ESL has had an English broadcast for this and I like that addition.
Destiny talked about missed opportunities for SC2 streamers in monetization (saying he makes 10k from just t-shirts and Amazon). It's a pretty stark comparison to see how he runs his stream versus most other SC2 streamers.
G2A is one of the more visible sponsors in SC2 and Indie Game Stand writes about the problem it (and similar companies) create through the reselling of game keys:
The problem with these sites like G2A, Fast2Play, Pingwin, etc. is that they have created an ecosystem for hackers, scammers, identity thefts and other internet assholes to steal from indie developers and other small websites. They’re basically helping people launder money. There are plenty of great articles here already covering the topic of reselling keys.
The bigger problem killing the little guys is when scammers use stolen credit cards to purchase games from online retailers to resell Steam keys. Here’s how the scam works: You get a bunch of stolen credit card numbers and then go to a legit Steam key reseller site and use the stolen info to buy the digital codes. You grab as many codes as you can and then go over to one of these gray market resellers and turn your keys into real money since you bought them with stolen cards. Meanwhile, the website and/or developer that you purchased the key from gets a credit card chargeback or other dispute 30-60 days later.
It should be noted that whatever you think of PayPal, I have found their security much better than other providers. Amazon has improved with their new system but Stripe is awful and actually charges you an additional $15 for any kind of dispute. It’s a hard balance on a digital marketplace.
This all seems very off-the-cuff, but it's interesting to see someone on the front lines dealing with these particular pitfalls.
Fortune and ESPN both published pieces about women in gaming that included statistics for viewership and between them it's estimated between 34%-44% (the median is 39%) of the audience is female, which compares favorably to traditional sports. This is pretty interesting given pieces like this from a couple of years ago (or recent statements by Lam Hua). The latter perception is given ammunition when idiots like those at Natus Vincere say incredibly stupid things.
This article is written by Peter levi (@eyeonthesens)
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