StarCraft News & Notes

We'll open with the fact that Fuzic is currently broken--it clearly works internally, but repeated attempts to contact them to report the problem have failed making streaming stats difficult to compile (we will have to cross our fingers that it gets fixed--there are other, less fundamental broken links (the search function), that have been broken for months).  I was able to cobble together numbers for most of the streamers, but the list below includes notable absences--now added [May 16th].  The period below covers weeks 13-17, those in red significantly declined, those in green significantly increased, those in blue weren't on my last list (I exclude known viewbotters; streamers need a minimum of 10 hours a week with a few judgement calls [I've also inserted a couple of streamers I missed when I originally posted this]):

1. NaNiwa 722
2. Nathanias 597
3. Happy 555*
4. Rotterdam 555
5. Lowko 437
6. iNcontroL 428
7. Avilo 381
8. ForGG 272
9. Catz 241
10. Dragon 230
11. MCanning 226
12. ViBE 185
13. PiG 183
14. ProTech 176
15. TOP 166
16. TRUE 164
17. Neuro 160
18. Indy 151
19. Yogo 147
20. RuFF 145
21. JimRising 131
22. mOOnGLaDe 111
23. deth 107

* Happy has separate Russian language and English language streams, the former has higher viewership (along with the necessary hours) so I'm just including it

A lot of highly viewed streamers missed a week (or two) over this period (from Polt, who would be #1 otherwise, to TLO and more).  A number of notes: Nathanias (see below) has been in viewership freefall since he began his seemingly unending complaints about negativity; HTOMario has been streaming other games without a noticeable change in his viewership; StarDust hasn't streamed since week 13 for whatever reason; CranK's falling numbers have him barely streaming; MorroW's stream has disappeared (something that's happened before); MC is almost back to regular streaming and has decent numbers; German streamer dirty ela (who was approaching the top-20) has disappeared (not streaming at all from what I can tell); desRow is back streaming regularly, but did not start soon enough to qualify for this list; Neuro has been in viewer freefall for the last couple of months, although it's been very gradual; Kaitlyn hasn't streamed SC2 since February, playing a variety of other games.

There's been the usual buzz that a new game (in this case Overwatch) is coming out and that all the SC2 streamers are going to jump to it--the sky is falling etc etc.  We've heard it before and people need to just calm down.  Will one or two streamers make the jump permanently?  Sure, assuming the game has long-lasting success, but the fact some streamers are having fun playing it now doesn't mean anything--gamers like to play games and there's no need to be frightened by that.

After a long lull in major tournament activity DreamHack Austin is almost here (it's been a month and a half since the GPL in Shanghai).  A megaton of players will be showing up for the open bracket (including all the Koreans still in the WCS system) and it's bound to be a lot of fun.  There are a few foreign players attending who have the ability to beat Polt or Hydra, although the odds are one or the other will walk away with the championship.

The Nova Coop mission was the third highest-grossing PC DLC in March (behind The Division and CS:GO).  Presumably the result is something Blizzard is happy about and is a nice shot across the bow to the eternal "ded game" memers that circle around the scene.

The French government has announced plans to legalize and regulate eSports, but as the move isn't finalized it's impossible to know what impact it will have on SC2 (and the other scenes).

Speaking of memers, TLG was back on track in the latest episode; both Destiny and iNcontroL had interesting things to say about win-trading in Korea (with Geoff emphasizing just how much money was involved and both sharing an anecdote of Life gambling a lot of money).

Sometimes it's difficult to figure out what exactly Team Liquid is doing with it's SC2 material.  Recently they put up a post about Kenzi where they said this:

The Chinese and Korean communities, for example, still lie behind a language barrier that few have crossed. More and more though, some figures are making an effort to overcome this. They want to connect the different scenes and give them the ability to communicate and learn with each other.

The first part (the Chinese scene) is completely true, but the article is actually about the Korean scene--yes Korea, the SC2 scene that receives the most coverage (there's no way to follow SC2 and avoid it).  I don't understand the preamble--did they think they needed an invented "hook" for Kenzi?  Bizarre.

Speaking of things I don't understand, apparently for Nathanias if something doesn't work keep doing it until it does.  Why the guy keeps feeding the trolls expecting them to stop boggles the mind.  He can't afford to leave SC2 and he's been bleeding viewers complaining about this, so why not just make the experience as positive as you can and ignore it?  He's not avilo so raging isn't going to get him anywhere.  There are very few SC2 streamers who can easily go elsehwere (ala MaximusBlack--playing poker of all things).

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)