I have returned: StarCraft II

[synistar]

Can't blame HuK leaving for EG. He really wanted to stay with TL but EG threw him a wad of cash.

[Correction]

expecting IdrA to take his previous form again hopefully!

by 'previous form' you mean cursing out other players and rage-quitting for random reasons?

[stewie]

by 'previous form' you mean cursing out other players

That and him winning a majority of the NA tournaments that he entered.

[Mathematics]

Can't blame HuK leaving for EG. He really wanted to stay with TL but EG threw him a wad of cash.

rumors are a 187k contract?

[Anakron]

rumors are a 187k contract?

That's a pretty exact number to be a rumor, haha. Any idea what TL was giving him?

[Blarg]

rumors are a 187k contract?

where did you hear this?

[Sonomaa]

187 on da undercova cop

[Rehn]

I couldn't find the exact number, but according to: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=255528

The last few weeks were the negotiation period of Huk's contract. We had known since a few months ago that it would be a difficult period. Coming off winning championships at Dreamhack and HSC, and with a legion of fans supporting him, it was obvious that there would be a lot of interest in acquiring HuK. For us, this meant making him an offer that we felt would rival any other offer that we thought could be made. To the furthest extent our finances would allow, we tried to keep HuK with the team. HuK, too, wanted to stay very much. He loved being a part of Liquid, and was willing to stay with us for significantly less than other teams. However, the offer that he received from EG wasn't just significant, it was potentially life-changing.

What "life-changing" could mean may vary from vary to person, but it must have ended a bunch of zeros to change someones mind like this.

[Lhyet]

Announcement video. Pretty awesome, and a bit of a shame that it'll probably end their rivaly to a large extent.

[Anakron]

<Announcement video.>

Am I the only one surprised to see almost 30 seconds' worth of sponsors at the end? (I don't follow pro teams at all)

[Avelain]

EG is a fairly big pro gaming company and they have pretty successful teams for many E-Sports games. Hence a ton of sponsors. They were able to afford HuK for that very reason. It's also a reason many SC2 fans don't care for EG--they have a history of player trading and "stealing" players.

[quannum]

tl forum dwellers are calling eg the yankees of esports.

[Rehn]

My brother and I may be on around 9PM eastern if I can get 2 peeps for some 4v4 akshun.

[Blarg]

Does anyone even know what kind of money current high end non koreans make from team salary. Trying to guess what Huk was offered without knowing what the scale for other players is seems like random guessing.

[Deftscythe]

Aside from the money, this doesn't seem like a great move for Huk. He's trading practice with all of oGs for Idra, who hasn't been playing well at all lately, and Puma who's great but still just one guy.

[Julian]

waaah waaah waaaaah

Congrats Huk on the promotion, and the life-changing moneys. (*'-')

And I am very excited to see them tear up Korea, now.

[Bweigelt]

The SC2 salaries are not that high. Even in SC1 they weren't as high as salaries for pro teams in the states. I believe I read somewhere that the average salary is about $20-30k US a year for SC2 maybe less. The problem with the Korean teams is they rely almost entirely on sponsorship money to pay the players where most NA/EU teams have someone very wealthy at the top privately funding them.

Aside from the money, this doesn't seem like a great move for Huk. He's trading practice with all of oGs for Idra, who hasn't been playing well at all lately, and Puma who's great but still just one guy.

It's all about the money. Your right that from a practice stand point it doesn't make a ton of sense, but from a financial standpoint this is probably the best decision for him.

[quannum]

Idra makes 40k .. no source

[geno]

Seems like kind of a silly situation. EG just has too much money and too many sponsors, I'm surprised this was never as big of a problem in S.Korea with BW. I mean KTF and SKT had a ton of money, but they were still majority homegrown talent teams, and teams almost never traded or lost their aces. I can easily see this happening again and again with players like Naniwa, ret, and thorzain in the future as well, how is any team with their tiny 1-2 offbeat sponsor budgets going to compete with a 10 sponsor megateam?

[Bweigelt]

Seems like kind of a silly situation. EG just has too much money and too many sponsors, I'm surprised this was never as big of a problem in S.Korea with BW. I mean KTF and SKT had a ton of money, but they were still majority homegrown talent teams, and teams almost never traded or lost their aces. I can easily see this happening again and again with players like Naniwa, ret, and thorzain in the future as well, how is any team with their tiny 1-2 offbeat sponsor budgets going to compete with a 10 sponsor megateam?

Teams like Dignitas, Fnatic, and Complexity have just as many sponsors as EG so they don't really have to worry, but I agree teams like Liquid and most of the Korean teams could see this kind of thing happen more often.