esports brings money in the short term at the expensive of the longetivity of the game and long term profit.
Blizzard have tried to turn every single one of their casual games into an e-sport and failed misserably.
Heroes of the Storm is a perfect example of what could happen to their other games.
They tried to force it to be an esport when it was not designed to be so. They made some short term profit from the attempt yes, but that attempt failed (naturally) and then as a result Blizzard abandoned HoTS. Sticking it into permanent maintenance mode.
Overwatch 1 is also is in partial maintenance mode with its esports scene bringing in less viewers than what a mid-tier streamer gets on Twitch.
I just wish that Blizzard would wake up and realize that they make amazing games more suited for casual to semi hardcore players. If they just embraced that, they would still be putting out engaging, fun and profitable content.
But nope, they have to try copy everyone else who is hopping on the esports hype.
esports obsession is like… the housing boom of 2008, before the bubble bust.
Be yourself Blizzard. Get back to making your games amazing. You don’t need to copy any of the those esports obsessed companies out there. They only do esports because they wish they could be like you, but can’t.
The ridiculous thing is that they ruined PvE with this crap. They turned the most casual, cozy part of the game, that I actually used to enjoy at some point, and turned it into elitist, competitive, speed running nonsense only to make it an esport.
It’s almost like they forgot about arena. They could have spent resources on PvP which is actually supposed to be an e-sport at it’s core but instead they spent it all on repetitive, garbage scripted NPC crap and completely and utterly destroyed PvP in a matter of years. It’s embarassing.
I think these comps do far more harm to the game than any good they might bring. Whatever good they do bring is only shared amongst a very few select players.