3 things you don't know about ACE League and their impact

While The International 3 and other big tournaments in League of Legends and Starcraft 2 may easily topple the amount, the WPC-ACE League is featuring the biggest first prize in a gaming event hosted by a third party* in the world.

*Third party here means companies that are not affliated with the makers of the game such as Valve for Dota 2, Riot Games for League of Legends and Blizzard for Starcraft 2.

The total prize pool of the WPC-ACE League is $220,000 but a whopping 72%, $160,000, will be going to the champion alone.

Let us put this into perspective: $160,000 is 58% higher than the second biggest prize purse for a champion: GomTV's GSL Super Tourney, a Starcraft 2 tournament hosted back in 2011. Seong Hun 'Polt' Choi, famous Korean Terran player walked away with $93,000 on the 18th of June 2011 after he defeated Seong Won 'MMA' Mun in a TvT match-up.

League of Legends on the other, despite its huge popularity, only had $88,500 as their biggest non-Riot related first place at Azubu The Champions Spring 2012. The disparity is rather huge considering Riot hosted LCS Season 3 is featuring $1,000,000 for the team that places first.

 

ACE is infamous for not allowing S class teams (teams like TongFu and iG etc) to participate in smaller tournaments, or rather tournaments not approved by their organization. Following the post-TI3 shitstorm in which ACE was highly blamed for the Chinese's underperformance in the multi-million dollar tournament, Pei 'King' Le, Chairman of ACE, told the world that they have actually removed that rule and teams are once again free to join any tournaments they wish.

According to our insiders, teams have signed a contract to participate in WPC-ACE League which again includes a non-participation clause stating participating teams are not allowed to join other tournaments other than the ACE League until the event is over. Worse yet, teams have allegedly signed the contract that allows ACE to restrict them from playing in other tournaments whenever ACE League is running for the next three years as well.

Some of the tournaments that may be hindered by this restriction, including a second season of the very successful Alienware Cup as well as all other European tournaments hoping for a Chinese team to participate.

Furthermore, our informer told us NEST and Sina Cup were hosted in such a rush to dodge this regulation from affecting their operations. GEST The Challenge, a tournament by DotaTalk featuring two Chinese teams and two SEA teams, planned for the end of the month, may be pushed forward towards this weekend as well.

No Chinese team that plays WPC-ACE will be participating in any tournaments until the 29th of December this year! At least. But can we blame ACE again? Actually no, because the culprit behind the ruling this time is actually not ACE themselves but WPC-ACE League's sponsor, Jingrui Estate Co. Ltd. Although it is technically the right move from a business perspective, the ruling is sure to anger fans all across the globe.

King's answer in SGamer interview, translated by Ctchocula:

If we attend major tournaments hosted by them and simultaneously take part in smaller tournaments, their tournament won't last more than one season. Let me make an example. Take for instance ACE League with a grand prize of 1M RMB. Someone is interested in investing in us to organize such a competition, but while our league is running, they see players playing in our tournament during the day and attending $1000-$2000 USD LAN tournaments at night. Only two possibilities will arise. Firstly, the tournament prize pool in season two will be lower. They will feel our players' value isn't that high. If you can make something happen for 100,000 RMB, you don't need to spend 1M RMB. Secondly, this tournament won't even run for a second season. Of course there is the third possibility that the tournament will keep running like before either due to the tournament being very profitable to run or the tournament organizer being the very company behind the game. This is why when we classify tournaments. We need to consider many things.”

 

Shortly after the announcement of the WPC-ACE League yesterday, some people questioned ACE's decision to make this tournament so rewarding for the top finishers but so unforgiving for the teams that do not finish top three. We contacted some team managers yesterday and they told us that all the participating teams will receive 20,000 RMB per month as compensation. Putting that into perspective, every teams competing will be guaranteed 40,000 RMB (~$6500) and the top six placers of the groupstage will receive 60,000 RMB (~$9,800).

While $6,500 and $9,800 may still seem little in comparison to the $160,000 first prize, it is definitely enough to cover the team's stay in Shanghai throughout the tournament. Besides that, when compared to other tournaments such as Dota 2 Super League ($3,200 for participating teams), $6,500 is pretty much the right amount for teams to receive. Both the tournaments had about 4% of their first prize distributed to all the teams. In fact, some Chinese personalities told us that the compensation process is a regulation set by ACE and must be obliged by all huge tournaments in China.

However, this compensation will be given to the gaming clubs rather than the players to ease the burden of having to stay in Shanghai to compete for a minimum two months period.

With all that said, the fourth placer will almost definitely still be unhappy because they will be receiving the same amount of money as the fifth and sixth placer. $9800 is only 6% of the first prize while Super League offered 10% of the first prize for the fourth placer in their tournament.

 

A few lines can be written in summary of ACE league and in conclusion to this otherwise facts-heavy article. The massive prize pool increase – an almost shocking one – is an indication that WPC-ACE have the intention of developing and promoting Dota 2 as serious eSport even further. Surpassing all third-party first place prizes in the “rival” disciplines is a huge magnet of attention in favor of the Dota 2 scene, a display of power if you like. It’s another mighty push towards stabilizing the prize pool “feast or famine” periods which were so characteristic of the competitive Dota 2 market in 2012 and which have been gradually leveled by having more “rich” tournaments throughout the year.

One can argue that the prize pool distribution within WPC-ACE is a bit top-heavy and point it out as something but in fact it’s not much different than other Chinese tournaments. ACE’s real problem lies with fact #2 or the restriction of its participants to sign for other events. The return of this weird rule stands in bizarre counter-balance to ACE’s positive effects and holds back the potential impact of the tournament. It messes the schedule of other competitions, locks down Chinese teams in their own region thus barring them from international competition and through that build towards another possible The International underperformance.

If they want to truly use their full potential developing the Dota 2 scene, WPC-ACE will have to rethink their policy in the future.