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The Rivalry Cooldown: Valve makes A LOT OF MONEY outside of Dota ft. Richard Lewis & Nahaz - 007

August 09, 2021

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Take a Breather, Recharge, and join us on The Rivalry Cooldown, where we give you an unfiltered view on the current topics in esports from the experts. We pick up where we left off on the last episode with diving right into eventual market corrects in esports, potential advantages and drawbacks of the CoD franchise, possibility of Valve franchising, and eviscerating Artifact for a while.

The Rivalry Cooldown: Valve makes A LOT OF MONEY outside of Dota ft. Richard Lewis & Nahaz

Available on Spotify, Google Play.

0:22 - Dive right in with Esports market corrections
0:30 - Tournament organizers are struggling to make money
2:30 - Esports is NOT homogeneous. TOs like ESL need to have a diverse portfolio of events for an investor
3:50 - "I think there's a really fun compare contrast between CoD and OWL franchising"
4:15 - CoD Franchising was announced at 25 mil
5:00 - Richard broke the CoD story back in 2018 and no one noticed
5:20 - OWL buy in was supposed to include CoD teams
7:50 - Richard on why OWL is worth more than CoD
9:30 - Nahaz on why CoD is worth way more than OWL
10:40 - OWL is going back to traditional sports franchises and asking for more $$$
13:00 - CoD is pretty heavily against franchising
15:00 - Who is watching OWL? I know who is watching CoD
16:00 - Overwatch has utterly failed on creating a good spectator experience
17:00 - The value of a brand is how easily it can be sold
17:30 - OWL doesn't have bombs/guns, it is cartoony and 'younger generation/parent' friendly
18:30 - Nahaz: the esports audience isn't that young anymore as far as what they are consuming
19:45 - "Sourpatch kids would be all over OWL"
20:40 - Watch NCAA on a Saturday - they're showing bodies on the screen while I am watching with my 5 year old - Nahaz
22:15 - Valve would never want to franchise because they would be beholden to investors
25:00 - Richard preventing leagues from taking over, and was all for nothing
26:30 - Fans are pushed and pulled between different products
28:00 - Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of all evils
28:30 - Esports is missing a commissioner protecting the good of the game/players
31:10 - Valve still sees themselves as a game developer. They have interviewed multiple people for a Dota community manager position, and nothing works out
32:00 - Valve makes A LOT OF MONEY outside of Dota
34:00 - If you are Valve, you need to succeed in China
35:00 - Not all art needs a followup, sometimes stories don't get finished
35:40 - Richard rant on Sword Quest
40:30 - How do you balance the game for cards that are supposed to have intrinsic value?
41:20 - What Valve were committing to is insanity
44:00 - If Artifact early access players had any balls, it would have been better
45:30 - Balance works for top 1% of the skill distribution, but game play feels like complete shit to everyone else
46:30 - What we are paying attention to next
48:30 - Nahaz predicts the future of DPC/roster swaps