2017 has been one of the craziest years in the eSports history.
Faker is destroyed. Just this year we've had more than a dozen non-endemic investors buy
into eSports, the announcement and creation of a franchised NA LCS and a
total shift in the Dota 2 pro system. But we also saw the implosion of a major
eSports team and scandals that brought back memories of how eSports was before
the scene was professionalized. 2017 was a transitional year, it was a year
we moved further away from the grassroots origins of eSports and further into a
professionalized model designed to attract outside money and viewers into
the scene but it was also a year rocked by scandals, deals gone wrong and an
entire league being left out to dry. 2017 proved that eSports is growing but
it hasn't gone past growing pains just yet.
In January we began to see the first signs of investment from non-endemic
sports organizations into eSports. The Miami Heat entered into a strategic
partnership with Misfits which has so far seen Misfits players show up at the
Heats NBA games and Misfits itself get a spot in the Overwatch League. The Heat
weren't the only pro sports team to invest into eSports this month either as
Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Wesley Edens also founded Flyquest in January.
Speaking of eSports teams expanding, Echo Fox signed the majority of their
all-star fighting game roster this month including future EVO champion
Hajime "Tokido" Taniguchi and Mortal Kombat star Dominique "SonicFox" McLean.
Finally right at the end of January Astralis won the first cs:go major of the year with a
2-1 win over Virtus.pro in Atlanta.
CASTER AUDIO
And Astralis, they win the first
major championship 16:14 against Virtus.pro!
February was a pretty slow month but in more sports orgs are buying up eSports teams News
Delaware North purchased a controlling stake in Splyce. February did however
bring the first major scandal of the year as Tainted Minds coach
Nick "Inero" Smith came forward with allegations that his team was being mistreated by their organization.
So Tainted Minds was a huge story this year and it was drawn
out over several months over several reports basically it boiled down to an
oceanic League of Legends team, Tainted Minds and the way in which it was
treating its players. It started with Inero basically coming forward and
telling the public through a TwitLonger that there were terrible conditions in
the team house, there were allegations that air conditioning wasn't working and
this was summer in Australia, that there were insufficient computers for them to
practice that garbage was piling up in the house because basically there wasn't
enough city sponsored trash bins to collect all the trash. There were all of
these problems and that the team was basically locked in a contract dispute
the players rather, were locked in a contract dispute with Tainted Minds. Over
the course of the next couple of months we spoke to many of the players, we spoke
to their manager who outlined a lot of the problems they'd had with the
organization. Ultimately all of this culminates in a Riot investigation into the team.
The Tainted Minds saga continued into March but as it did the
rest of eSports kept moving too. Team Liquid began to shuffle around their
League of Legends roster this month bringing on
Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng to save them from relegation, putting rookie AD carry
Jung "Youngbin" Young-bin out of a job.
Man that organization has had a history.
It seems like with Steve Arhancet set, he's been a great boss. It seems
like he does really care about his players but the team
itself doesn't seem to know how to manage their roster or pick players and
their teamwork isn't really good. They seem to always want to find the quickest
solution and so they put money into places that would get them that Band Aid
solution but then it doesn't always work out. So this year we saw them, you know
they got Reignover who was freaking good in Europe. Immortals, like he's
amazing but some reason he just fell through it in Liquid. Does Liquid just
seem to ruin players? Piglet? I don't know.
Also in March Optic Gaming won the 2017 Halo World Championship with a 4-0 sweep
over team EnVy.
Casters: We are taking a look at the end of this game.This one's over!
Ladies and gentlemen Optic Gaming are your 2017 Halo World Champions.
Moving on to April we saw Team SoloMid win the NA LCS Spring Finals in
Vancouver. While Origen, the team founded by
legendary League of Legends midlaner Enrique "xPeke" Cedeño Martinez,
was relegated from the EU LCS after split after split of poor performances Origen
Casters: Origen gets 3-0. Origen's nightmare come to an end as Giants keep their LCS dream alive.
But the most important thing that happened in April was that theScore
esports broke the news that Riot Games was franchising the NA LCS, which had
wide reaching implications across all of eSports for the rest of the year and
definitely beyond that.
I think NA LCS franchising is probably still the
biggest story of the year for me at least. Basically with a move towards a
franchised model Riot is trying to duplicate with League of Legends what
traditional sports leagues have done and they're trying to create basically an
ecosystem in North America where the investors, the sponsors, the teams, all
feel comfortable and feel like they can experiment. Basically going back even
before this year, we heard obviously from basically every LCS team owner that they
were unable to turn a profit with their teams that because of the way that the
NA and EU LCS were set up. They were losing money it wasn't a successful
venture and that this was scaring away sponsors. Sponsors didn't want to
invest in teams that, A were unable to turn a profit, but B also the fear of
relegation. With a franchise system, teams can bring in players and not be
afraid. They can take some time to develop talent and rookies and it
basically just gives everyone a safety cushion to really focus on being the
best teams that they can, rather than just staying out of relegation
guaranteeing that performance split to split.
Also this month, the International 2016 champions, Wings Gaming left their organization following
reports that players weren't paid on time and that the organization took the
majority of their prize money. The players formed Team Random but collapsed
in May after a last place finish at the Kiev major and have since scattered
across several Chinese teams.
CASTER AUDIO
Wings are your International 2016 champions!
Terrific display of Dota.
Nothing else happened in May, so let's skip that in favor of something more exciting.
June kicked off with Riot Games officially announcing
that NA LCS franchising was happening detailing the application process and
revealing that they would kickstart a players association to advocate for NA
LCS pros. Also this month, we saw a lot of colleagues lose their jobs when Yahoo
Esports shut down following Verizon's acquisition of Yahoo. Several former
Yahoo Esports writers and staff found new homes elsewhere but unfortunately it
wasn't the last time an eSports news site shut down this year.
Moving on to July, League of Legends franchising saw its first result as the Madison Square
Garden Company bought CLG, adding yet another sports org to the LCS. Then just
ahead of the International, Valve released their plan to change the Dota
pro circuit adding several more Majors and Minors in a year.
Valve's rework of the major/minor system is a new system by which teams will be determined to play
at the International but also support third party tournament organizers in the
Dota scene. So any tournament that has a minimum required prize pool will be
either assigned as a Major or a Minor by Valve and have an additional prize pool
equivalent to that supplemented to the tournaments.
It's a big deal because in a lot of ways it kind of gives back a lot of power to the tournament
organizers this is something that they've been talking about a lot of
majors though the majors have been organized by third party companies there
were only so many of them. But now it's a new major/minor system. Many
more are representing Valve and Dota competitions. New companies are
representing it as well.
In tournament wins this month, Gambit won the major with a shock 2-1 victory over Immortals propelled by
the best grenade throw in major history.
Casters: This is huge.
Also this month, we saw Hajime "Tokido" Taniguchi, Adam "Armada" Lindgren and
Saleem "Salem" Akkiel-Young crowned EVO champions in EVO 2017's three biggest tournaments.
So Tokido winning Evo I think the reaction was like jubilation at
least that's what I was seeing. Tokido is beloved mainstay of the FGC of
Street Fighter specifically. I mean if you talk to someone who loves fighting
games and they don't love Tokido, I would have some questions for that
person. He had an incredible loser's bracket run through Evo and he
came up against the most promising young player of this year I think it would be
difficult to dispute, Punk, in the Grand Finals and Punk had so much hype so much
heat going into that. Tokido comes in with a character that by some accounts is not
quite an S tier or an A tier character not quite up to par in the form of Akuma
and some people, myself included, had some doubts whether that character could
carry Tokido to where he needed to be to where his skill was as a player. He was
in his element it was a legendary win. I think the reaction was just was
jubilation.
Caster: Tokido is the evolution 2017 champion!
Coming all the way from losers bracket. He's done it!
Finally he's been chasing it for so long.
Armada winning Evo I think was, obviously was a big deal for him you know and that it's he's he finally has
that second Evo he can he can work towards the three-peat he's tied with
Mang0 for Evo wins and that kind of kind of evens up that rivalry or really
pushes it in favor of Armada. It was a cap to an incredible season for Armada
following you know his loss to Hungrybox in 2016. That was sort of a very big
emotional moment for Armada as he told me and I think that after that, that lit
a fire under him to just win everything and he did. He was the
undisputed best in the world by the end of 2016 and going into 201, Evo 2017,
that Armada's tournament.
Finally this month we saw the first seven Overwatch League team owners
announced. Misfits, Immortals, NRG, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, New York
Mets COO Jeff Wilpon, Chinese game publisher
NetEase and Korean-American esports org KSV, took the first seven spots.
August brought TI7 where Team Liquid won a hard-earned 3-0
victory over Newbee to take home the aegis.
Also this month, Optic Gaming defeated Team EnVy to take home the 2017 Call of
Duty World Championship.
Finally in August, we got a few more Overwatch League teams in Cloud9 and
the Kroenke family which owns the LA Rams, the Denver Nuggets and Arsenal.
Moving on to September, we saw the final Overwatch League team owners announced.
Optic Gaming, Team EnVy and Comcast Spectacor, which owns the Philadelphia
Flyers, bought in completing the 12 team initial lineup.
The kinds of organizations and investors who we've seen buy into the Overwatch League kind of fills
me and I think some people, with a lot of hope regarding the future of esports. We've
seen a lot and I mean a lot of traditional sports investors get into
esports in last year across with League of Legends and Overwatch. The Overwatch League has
a few though kind of for my taste not quite enough traditional esports endemic
teams involved. It's got venture capitalists investors and it's got sort
of a wide array and diverse array of investment in it, which is really
interesting and exciting to see. I think with League of Legends right now we're
basically only seeing esports teams and sports teams so seeing also that mix of
VC money is really cool.
Traditional sports helped to define the unique structure of the Overwatch League our
goal is to create the world's premier eSport League where teams and players
can thrive for years to come and fans are made for life.
H2K gaming co-chair Richard Lippe released a statement threatening to have
H2K leave the EU LCS if significant changes weren't made to the system for the 2018 season.
The EU LCS is basically, to put it bluntly, in shambles. Viewership
in EU is lower than it has been for a long time and we've seen a lot of
concerns about that over a pretty long period of time, but also Riot just seems
to be unsure about what they want to do with Europe. I think, and we've spoken to
a lot of European you know, coaches, team owners and players and a lot of people
feel like Riot is just experimenting with the EU LCS. Europe has been through
so many sort of diverse attempts at making this region
work. We went to best of two's for a while and then probably the biggest
example of Riot's inability to decide what they want to do with Europe came in
the reported alternative format for 2018 which was 24 teams spread out across
many regions. Basically we would have a series of national leagues and then one
larger league to mirror the European football space.
in September the biggest cs:go story of the year broke. Immortals cs:go team showed up late to
their Grand Finals game at Dreamhack Montreal.
Immortals made it to the Grand Finals of Dreamhack Montreal facing North, three of their players kNg, henny
and Lucas failed to show up at the designated time for said grand finals.
They were then by Dreamhack given a disqualification for the first map of
that best of three grand finals, meaning North effectively just won the first map
by default.
Caster: We will not be seeing the first map of Mirage it does look like
the Immortals have forfeited it due to being late to the stage and to playing
and that's just the way the cookie crumbled I suppose I don't really know
what else to say about that other than the process needs to be respected.
They did show up late and played the second map. It was cobblestone and it was North
that was a wrap. We had a grand finals that was one map.
Caster: Immortals with an entry chance.
And in one map they win a best-of-three that's right because they
forfeit the first one and they clean up. Let that not be an asterisk beside
North's performance however they were excellent throughout this whole event it
would have been a challenge for immortals either way.
And then, Vito "kNg-" Giuseppe made some death threats.
I think it was Ryu actually that said something about some of the immortals players being out late last night partying and
then fNs after that tweeted that CLG lost to Immortals in the bracket
before saying that his only regret was like not only did he lose but
he lost to like hungover players or something like that it was seen by kNg
and he responded with "prove it or I'll kill you".
I think the community reaction towards Immortals as an organisation is that
they've handled it professionally. Noah's handled it professionally.
After losing the first map against CLG using our coach as a stand-in, henny and Lucas
refused to continue playing the match unless kNg was allowed to play as a
member of the starting roster. With kNg playing we took the next two maps and
the match but kNg being included in the starting roster was a direct
violation of the punishment that we had communicated to him and the players less
than a day earlier. For violating that punishment kNg was immediately
terminated from his contract and it's not a part of Immortals and will never
again be a part of Immortals.
After Steel and Boltz left and things really
crumbled I feel like the sentiment was just oh my god we feel so bad for Immortals.
I can't believe this happened it was like getting hit with one blow after
another it was almost a joke right what's gonna go wrong next. What's gonna
happen with Immortals next that's gonna collapse their roster for
the umpteenth time.
Immortals' slow collapse continued over the next few months as the teams signed
on more players and shed old ones. They had lost their major spot which was a
huge hit to the organization and things were only going to get worse for
Immortals, but before that happened October came around and brought even more
instability to the EU LCS. Unicorns of Love CEO Jos Mallant released an open letter in
which he stated that the current system just wasn't viable for smaller teams
like his that can't afford to take huge losses every year. The same day,
Paris Saint-Germain dropped out of League of Legends marking a huge blow to the future of EU
League of Legends.
Paris Saint-Germain lose it in extra time, S04 blow the final
whistle on Paris Saint-Germain challenger series campaign. They were so close.
Then November happened. Riot responded to the EU LCS doomsaying by claiming that
they were exploring the possibility of franchising in 2019 and that relegation
would be removed in 2018. It's still unclear what will happen, but all the
current EU LCS teams are still signed on for another season.
So the situation seems to have calmed down, at least for now.
Obviously I don't know what it's like to work for Riot and the regions are very different but it
seems like Europe has been shafted in the franchising situation but maybe
franchising wouldn't work for Europe, I don't know, but it seems like a lot of the pros
in Europe they have a lot of pride and I think a lot of the players that I've
talked to, like for example Fnatic's sOAZ I've spoken to him and
Rekkles I've spoken to him, like they seem to have a lot of pride in staying
in Europe despite the fact that the finance might not be as good.
Over in North America though Riot announced the 10 na LCS teams bringing on the
Cleveland Cavaliers' 100 thieves, the Golden State Warriors Golden
Guardians, the Houston Rocket-run Clutch Gaming and OpTic Gaming.
That left Team EnVy, Phoenix1, Dignitas and perhaps most notably Immortals out in the cold.
That wasn't great for Immortals.
We still don't know everything that happened
during the franchising application process we've done quite a bit of
reporting on it but everything is cloaked in NDAs
that are still active. You know, teams can't really tell us exactly what went
down and basically what Riot has told us
about Immortals specifically is that they were unhappy with their books that
Immortals were operating at too big a loss and that Riot was unwilling I guess
to partner with them moving forward given the financial troubles that that team was having.
In more positive news, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones
purchased Complexity Gaming marking the last of over a dozen non-endemic
investors buying into major eSports teams this year. In tournament news, we
saw Gale Force esports win the RLCS Season 4 Finals with a 4-0 win over Method,
and Hungrybox win Smash Summit 5,
the last major Melee tournament of the year ending Armada's dominant streak at
Summit events.
Hungrybox winning Summit was sort of the final nail in the coffin
that ended Armada's stranglehold on the position of best player in Melee. That
was sort of back and forth in 2016 but Armada's you know nonstop wins aside
from Evo really kind of put it in Armada's favor. Going out of Evo everybody
thought you know best player in the world Armada there is no question but
Hungrybox's incredible dominance meeting just about everybody over the
last you know, six seven months has been unbelievable to watch and him beating
Armada in the grand finals of Summit really said Hungrybox is the best player in the world.
And of course November brought us the League of Legends World
Championship where Samsung Galaxy shocked the world with upset after upset
to take home the Summoner's Cup.
Casters: The SKT Dynasty is over! All hail the new kings, Samsung Galaxy.
You 2017 World Champions.
So Samsung as a team have been in what
has felt like a rebuild since the end of 2014. At the end of 2014 Samsung
obviously, Samsung White won the World Championship, Samsung Blue the sister
team looked like one of the strongest teams in the region and after that all
ten players starting players from both teams left the region as part of the
Korean Exodus. Samsung was forced to rebuild and through 2015
they seemed almost insignificant in the Korean scene they didn't have strong
performances at all but they were slowly putting together
this roster that was really able to compete with some of the top teams with
SKT with Longzhu in 2017 and heading into the Summer Split basically it
seemed like Samsung was able to be one of the strongest teams in the region but
a lot of people still expected them not to go to Worlds a lot of people expected
kt rolster to go to Worlds instead of Samsung. Faker has built a reputation for
himself in the past few years being the unkillable demon and I don't
know even seeing him he always seemed kind of monotone. Getting the chance to
interview him he did have like moments of like you know personality that came
out but to the public I think generally people saw him as almost stoic and
unapproachable. He kind of had that reputation. So the moment you saw
him actually break down on stage after losing to Samsung
he was a person. He's a kid, he's a kid. People forget that someone who's won
Worlds 3 times is just a kid. That's probably one of the most
important images, or like moments in esports at least in League of Legends for the year.
Following their win the Samsung Galaxy roster was purchased by
KSV the company that owns the Seoul Dynasty and KSV black.Bu November
wasn't all happy news Counter Logic Gaming dropped their male cs:go rosters
with reports stating that the team had ongoing financial issues.
In December the Immortals saga finally came to an end as LUCAS1, HEN1 and
kNg signed with 100 thieves bringing Immortals' major spot with them.
December capped off the year with plenty of tournaments. MKLeo won the 2GG
Circuit Championship, MenaRD won the Capcom Cup in a complete upset and KT Rolster
the KeSPA Cup.
December is always a quiet month for big news in esports but LCS teams finished
off finalizing their rosters, the Overwatch League preseason kicked off
without the Philadelphia Fusion. We actually moved from the other side of
the planet to be here to cast this. We've been talking about it for a long
time it's great to finally be here and get things started and a great match to
start things off with with Florida Mayhem vs San Francisco Shock.
and Dota's majors and minors continued while cs:go teams got ready for the Boston Major.
I just want to thank everyone that came here live watching it everyone
watching on stream. For us this is so much more than the game and you're also
a big part of why you make esports so great so thank you very much.
2017 was a transition year for esports. It's impossible to say exactly where we'll go
next and no one knows where it's going but 2017 proved that esports has gotten
huge. Too huge not to have massive scandals and business deals gone wrong, but also
too huge to not treat players well and grow leagues into something that
benefits everyone involved. Esports is here to stay
it just remains to be seen what it will look like in 2018.
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