Seeing a team league with $150,000 behind it (operations + prize pooling) that excludes current professional teams is disappointing from the perspective of us team owners. That being said, on behalf of existing SC2 teams, we would like to raise our concerns with how this is being implemented. There is no denying that bringing back a team-based tournament is great news overall, as the scene could really benefit from having more highly funded team events. On June 11th, Blizzard, in collaboration with WardiTV, announced a brand new War Chest Team League, which would be the first StarCraft II team league directly supported by the main publisher since GSTL (ANZ Proleague and GTC have been sponsored by other Blizzard branches). Since the announcement, several team owners have come out and released an open letter together, denouncing their exclusion from the event and proposing changes to the league, which would give established teams more spotlight, amongst many other suggestions to support the teams in the scene. Organizing a team event without involving any of the established teams still active in StarCraft 2 has, however, proven to be a point of contention in what they see as long-term negligence and lack of support for them by Blizzard.
#STARCRAFT WAR CHEST FULL#
We’ll have full details about the tournament in another upcoming post, but in short, we’re selecting 9 prominent StarCraft II commentators to draft teams of four players each, who will then duke it out in an action-packed clan wars-style format, with tons of opportunities for everyone to shine.
To that end, we’re committing the first USD $150,000 of the proceeds (less taxes) to prizing and tournament operations for the event. Our goal for War Chest 6 is to make War Chest Team League a success.