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Through October 15, 2019, 25% of proceeds will contribute to the year’s final LAN event prize pools for the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI), with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000 USD ($250,000 USD for each event).
This is the announcement, while it technically says that I find it easy to misunderstand and as i already said above they are the only ones to do it like this which makes said misunderstanding even easier. Dunno if it’s because i’m not a native englis speaker but it’s not so clearly stated to me. I also don’t seem to be the only one to misunderstand this, when money is involved it’s best to be 100% clear imo.
I would agree, if we were talking about a misinterpretation, but i think we are more heading into the area of misleading. Some times companies are unclear on purpose, so that people can misunderstand and do thing based upon wrong assumptions.
I think that is what is in play here. Blizzard made a crowdfunding for their WoW esports scene. Crowdfunding of that kind normally works with the company giving a start price pool, like Dota2s 1.6 mill $ for the international, and then let the players add to that prize. That is the standard example, which all other mimics. So if you do something else than that, you should be clear in your language and be transparent.
Like Blizzard does with SC2 and their crowdfunding. They tell you directly, that they set a foundation prizepool and the sales can add up to a specific amount. They know its different than Dota2 and therefore are clear in their langauge.
This situation was not and vague to an extreme, even with language supporting the idea of “adding” money to the pool instead of creating it.
Hey hey chill, Puny only shared an article about the subject, nothing else. She is free to participate in the thread in any way she wants to, as long as it is not plain trolling
That’s what I am getting the most out of the thread yea, seeing as I am not a native english speaker I was mostly curious about how people were comprehending all that fuss.
I still don’t know if I should consider that scummy or clever. Or both ? I feel like it is cheap though.
That’s what i’m saying they should be clear about, seeing as every other organization don’t operate this crowdfunding events like this, seems suspicious that no one thought “hey this is easily misunderstandable” when they wrote the announcement. Other organizations have set a “norm” for this kind of things and when you differ from them it’s your job to make yourselfe vlear to avoid people misunderstanding and then complaining imo.
I’m now even doubting all those charity pets each Christmas they did. Did they give all the money? Or just a part? Why even make these actiosn when you need good press after a horrible year gaming wise and PR?
The only reason most of us bought these basic toys (let’s be honest here, these toys didn’t cost tens of thousands in labor to create, if it was each expac should cost billions just in production cost alone) was to help WoW E-sports (despite me not watching the M+ one, man so boring…) evolve/give the players a good price pool. Then after it does well despite the already “We keep 75% as profit” they also pull away their 500k quarenteed!
This is the exact reason I don’t do charities because most of the money ends up in people their pockets… Lesson learned!
It’s not misleading at all. It clearly says the 500k is a guaranteed minimum. Otherwise the prize is 25% of sales.
It is completely irrelevant what other companies do as standard practice, as that does not correlate with the message published.
Similarly, if I stroll into a fast food joint and a sign says "you can add fries to your burger for only half price " it’s irrelevant if another burger joint does “free fries with every burger”. I can’t barter at burger King based on what they do at McDonald’s. Well I can try, but I have no right to expect them to change to suit my misinterpretation of their offer. And would be overreacting to call it “deceptive”
Chozen has just bet Daniel to break all 6 pieces of ice.
Mr. Miyagi steps in and asks what the odds are.
Chozen says that the odds are 3:1.
Mr. Miyagi bets $600 USD.
Chozen would have to pay Mr. Miyagi $1800 USD if Daniel broke all 6 pieces of ice, but he doesn’t have that much money, so as he says; he cannot cover that.
Chozen’s uncle – Sato – then appears and says that he is covered, i.e. Sato is willing to pay the money that Chozen is unable to, if Daniel successfully breaks all 6 pieces of ice.
When Daniel then does break all 6 pieces of ice, then Sato is the one who pays out the winnings – not Chozen – because he has provided the guarantee.
So that’s what a guarantee or a cover does: It supplies what’s missing of the total sum.
In real-life you can also provide a guarantee, or have someone provide it for you, if you want to lend some money from your bank, for example. If the bank doesn’t find you to be solvent, then they may demand that a guarantee is provided, i.e. someone else has to cover your payments to the bank if you are unable to.
In the case of Blizzcon, then Blizzard offered to provide a guarantee of $500,000 USD in case the WoW community was unable to produce the money itself. But since the WoW community managed to accumulate a prize pool of $660,000 USD, then Blizzard’s guarantee doesn’t come into play. It’s simple there as a layer of security.
Maybe it’s just me, but “contribute” makes it sound like there is a base to which the toy money would be added. I was already unimpressed with the scheme when it was first announced, this makes me mildly disgusted with Blizzard.
They put it in a way that makes it easy to interpret that they would use the industry standard.
This is disgusting. But the community is not going to this slide because of some lawyerly wording. The community is not (entirely) consistent of lawyers.
Pull that stuff and you WILL burn any good will and in the end yourself.
But in the end I’m happy about it, because the fire you lit underyourself, will only lead to something Ragnaros puts best: BY FIRE BE PURGED!
They didn’t hide any of it though, this is why I am so cynical about streamers trying to give it attention now. This was all discussed and pointed out at the time they were announced and went on sale, because of what Blizzard were doing. Blizzard clearly stated what they were doing and that only 25% of the proceeds would be going towards the fund. If the fund fell short of their minimum then Blizz would make up the difference. That didn’t happen and the fund is above that minimum.
Jito’s post explains that very well here:-
Seeing as all of this was already public knowledge in advance and people had the option not to buy the items if they did not agree with what Blizzard were doing (donating 25%) it’s a little surprising that someone is trying to kick up a fuss now. No one was duped into anything.
Please find an example of how it’s worded elsewhere for this to be confusing.
Now I’ve heard this quite a few times, so please provide a link to a DOTA2 or LoL page or whatever, that has a similar wording, but a different understanding of what “minimum guarantee” means.
I mean, honestly speaking, Blizzard’s wording is 100% straight-forward and it means what it says.
I strongly doubt other game companies have used the same wording to explain a format where they basically provide x amount of money under all circumstances.
Because that’s not what providing a minimum guarantee means.
So long as the community realises they do not have a legitimate basis or righteous cause here you can scruple over blizzards business ethics sure. But to say they deceived or mislead people is actually ironically deceptive in itself.
I suspect its largely a lot of people feeling bad that blizzard stuck to their offer rather than deviating and going “you know what guys, we’re gonna stump up the 500k anyway!” so they feel a bit cheated. Point is they have no right to. The company said “we’ll do X” and indeed they did X and people are outraged because other companies do Y when they say they’re gonna do Y. I mean what.
People just like to be outraged and hating on blizzard is pretty trendy atm. I’m not saying I agree with their business ethics (they could have contributed something, or added a positive contribution as well as a guarantee like we’ll stump up an extra 100% of any money that exceeds the minimum 500k) but I don’t believe they deceived anyone, or were misleading. I’m not a lawyer and I understood the text perfectly fine. Let this be a lesson, read text and read it again, especially if it is asking something of you in terms of costs.
I would like for you to point out where the wording can be translated to " 500k is a guranteed minimum, OR otherwise the prize is 25% of sales". There is nothing in the statement, that directly says, that the 500k will go away if the 25% of sales go above that. It will require a lawyers form of interpretation.
A set standard is never irrelevant. If you ask for a car at a dealership, you kinda expect it to have 4 wheels, eventhough you can make a car with 3. When you make something that is outside the standard of the customer/donater, you have to specified or else you are misleading assumptions.
No matter what, the entire thing is just a bad faith thing. Instead of a thing that supports the community, Blizzard found a way to reduce the cost of the E-sports Event by having the players completly pay for the prize pool. No matter how they got this, through honest crowdfunding or misleading advertisement, its just a horrible way to show, that you care little about your event.
Every other game company with an esports event, and i mean EVERYONE of them, does not base the prize pool of their event on 100% crowdfunding. This is a new thing and it was not clearly stated.
How then is it possible that half the neckbeards here – myself included – can understand this lawyer speak just fine?!
C’mon. This is simple English, financial terminology. You should be familiar with it if you’ve ever had English or Economics in school. Or if you’ve ever had to borrow a large sum of money, or you read the financial section of the newspaper.
Like c’mon. Don’t try to angle this in a way where something that is fairly common sense is suddenly sneaky lawyer writings. It is not.
Through October 15, 2019, 25% of proceeds will contribute to the year’s final LAN event prize pools for the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI), with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000 USD ($250,000 USD for each event).
This is the statement. Minimum prize pool of 500k.aka, whatever the 25% of prior sales fails to make up to 500k,will be subbed to bring the total up to a 500k minimum.
I have no idea how that could be understood as “500k is being provided and 25% of sales on top”. If this were the case, they’d probably discuss the 500k first as its the base value, then the extra. They discuss the 25% first as that forms the core prize, the 500k is a guarantee.
Call it bad faith, call it dubious. But it is not unclear. And again, its irrelevant what other companies do. That makes their business ethics better, but it doesn’t mean blizzard were deceptive just because they were cheaper in comparison and made it clear they were.
Again, i would love to see the statement they made, where they made this situation clear. Where it was clear, that not only was the 500k the minimum, but if the 25% exceded that 500k, the 25% would be 100% of the prizepool.
All i can see from Blizzards side is the original statement and even a lawyer would lift their eyebrows at how things were worded in that announcement.
You say nobody was duped by this, but from the reception on a number of platforms, here included, many people were. Many people thought this was just like the crowdfunding for Dota2s International.
No matter what, if you create so much misunderstanding with an announcement, you have done a bad job as a communicator. It should be completly transparent from the start, like it is with SC2s War Chests, instead of being up to interpretation.
