RichardCastle · @DWRichardCastle
6th Aug 2017 from TwitLonger
Why I quit Smite - The Frustrations of dealing with Hi-Rez
As some of you may know me (RichardCastle), kikiomeo, Sporks, Ochita and Rowe have recently quit Smite. I want to outline some of the reasons why.
I would like to preface this post by saying how much I enjoyed playing the game. Smite for me was always a competitive hobby which gave me many great experiences, memories, and friends. Also I would like to say that I am very appreciative of the incredible opportunity given to me by Hi-Rez to participate in international and domestic events.
The problem is that with every positive experience came a very frustrating process of dealing with Hi-Rez. Even after a great tournament I would have to ask myself ‘Why do I play this game? Eventually I had enough. Due to my frustrations and my belief that Hi-Rez only ever get off their ass to do anything when there is public outrage, I'm going to highlight some of the significant issues I’ve had to deal with over the past 12 months in hope other players don’t have to go through the same ordeal.
I am also sick of receiving statements from Hi-Rez employees like the ones below, and then the exact same mistakes taking place again and again.
‘I can completely understand your frustrations and only hope that our plans for next year will keep you guys motivated’
‘We've come up with solutions to fix ‘x’ in the future, but for now this will have to do’.
Firstly my biggest gripe is with the 2017 World’s prize pooling. As we all thought the 2017 SWC would be a $1million dollar tournament as expressed on Hi-Rez’s two major websites (as seen below, these screenshots were taken on the 12/17/16).
http://imgur.com/OWriwMr
http://imgur.com/2TxNg1l
Other than the obviously dubious ethical process of selling tickets under false pretences there are serious incompetence and communication issues between Hi-Rez departments. The only reason these webpages were changed was because I had brought it to their attention only a few weeks before HRX. In a DM with a Hi-Rez employee they even said 'that's not supposed to be there lol'. I was very annoyed hearing such a flippant response.
Since nothing had been communicated with any international region regarding prize pooling we thought that the tournament would in fact be a million dollar tournament at the time. This is why we decided to have a 3-week boot camp in Atlanta prior to worlds. We also had just picked up a sponsorship from LG Dire Wolves where I communicated to them that it would be a $1 million dollar tournament. I received the tournament handbook on the 17th of December (a few days into our US Bootcamp) where I found out the initial plans for a $250,000 tournament + appearance fees for NA/EU (which were just split 3 payments). I had to tell an org that had just invested money into an extensive boot camp that the tournament prize pooling was a complete lie… Here is my email chain with Dan McHugh and Steven Cooper from the Hi-Rez esports department regarding the issue.
http://imgur.com/mmUSGuk
http://imgur.com/M0sTcs8
http://imgur.com/iE9Kxmh
http://imgur.com/h5RZGXD
From a player’s perspective you can see how frustrated and disheartened I was. This definitely affected motivation. This prize pooling issue continued up until the week of worlds where many other players expressed their disappointment, with some players leaking the prize pool information publicly. I have to say I had a few great conversations with HiRezNabil, I’m not entirely sure what happened behind the scenes but I think he worked some magic. Only then was the prize pooling issue somewhat addressed. I had to spend far too much time as a player focusing on things that I really shouldn’t have been focusing on. Eventually the tournament had a prize pool of 675k (not-including participation fees) so I guess that was okay… I honestly still don’t know how they fucked up so badly.
Of course Hi-Rez said communication would be much better in the future. Naturally they screwed up the very next thing… split 1 this year we were told OCE would have a fat 10k prize pool, only to later find out the 1st place $5000 prize was actually a participation fee for qualifying for Masters. We only found this out once we had locked up 1st place 5 weeks into the split. I also don’t know how this wasn’t communicated. Prize money we wouldn't be receiving anytime soon.
Payments for World’s and Smite Masters:
Worlds ended on the 7th of January. We were asked by Double-Jump (the people who run SMITE in OCE) for our payment details at the end of January; we responded and gave it to them on February 1st. We were then contacted by Hi-Rez Cooper on the 3rd of Feb saying they needed our payment information, even though Double Jump was supposed to have forwarded this. We then sent Cooper the same information. After a couple of weeks we were all told payments were approved on February 15th so we just sat patiently waiting.
http://puu.sh/x2YDn/b5e0d89859.png
https://puu.sh/x2YDJ/8850f9991a.png
I then was contacted by HiRez Cooper on March 24 where they told us we need to fill out w-8BEN tax forms (At this point in time NA/EU had already all been paid) and we were not told at all that we needed to do this at any prior stage. I instantly filled it out and returned it to Hi-Rez Cooper. I naturally had to fill it out twice, and attach it to an email and send it directly to cooper since their method for filling out documents wasn’t working. After another month of Hi-Rez doing god knows what we eventually received our payments by the beginning of May. As always this took 100 dm’s and a lot of emails between us, double jump and Hi-Rez. This was months after NA/EU had been paid, taking probably 4x as long to pay us.
http://imgur.com/wP5qGy9
http://imgur.com/SWMqg8G
Of course we were promised that this would not happen again… then surprise, surprise came SMITE Masters.
Our Split 1 prize money was a participation fee for Smite MASTERS (April 30), we qualified for this event on March 19. I believe everyone was paid during mid-May except for OCE. Naturally after some more miscommunications and mistakes on Hi-Rez’s behalf it wasn’t paid out to us until the 14th of July (taking almost 3 times as long as it took to pay the other regions). I was quite frustrated in the DM’s below partially because of the re-occurring fuck-ups by Hi-Rez but also the fact I was travelling around Europe at the time and wanted the additional spending money.
http://imgur.com/FthRRKQ
http://imgur.com/8Tg0Io6
http://imgur.com/z9bMMVu
http://imgur.com/Eh5fpuJ
http://imgur.com/9A0cfdN
http://imgur.com/r9XCugV
Also from Ochita
http://imgur.com/Ui45NzK
http://imgur.com/wTkvGC1
There’s more from Rowe and Kiki but it’s not worth posting, you guys get the point.
Flights
Flights for Worlds were also a struggle. After winning Split 3 in OCE we had communicated to the Hi-Rez staff who had travelled to Australia that we were looking to book a lengthy boot-camp in the US and that they should send us the travel forms as soon as possible. Of course Hi-rez left this to the last minute and we did not receive these forms until December 7th. All flights were booked by the 9th/10th but we did not receive the details until the 13th when we were flying out on the 14th of December. My major problem with this other than literally receiving our flight details 1 day before flying is that I had told them one of the players (Maxen) was 16 years old and his mother wanted the details as soon as possible so she could book the same flight, but there was still a 4 day gap between when the flights were booked (we could see on the ticket) to when we were sent our tickets.
(Also flying us to Atlanta that early was considerably cheaper than flying us out around Hi-Rez Expo dates.)
Flights for Masters were just as bad, we had qualified on March 19, but our flights were not booked or sent to us until April 20, when we were flying out on the 24th. Again the uncertainty is terrible but it also is far more expensive for them to fly us out when they leave it to the last moment. These simple mistakes are infuriating when you then hear how it's too expensive to fly OCE to DreamHack and then we don't get invited.
Broadcasting
My earlier post about split 1
https://www.reddit.com/r/Smite/comments/603o2w/oceanic_pro_league_a_summary_of_the_current/
I honestly could write a lot more when it comes to all the issues for OCE in regards to the season ticket, ladders, fixtures, server roll ups, lobby lag, formats for international tournaments (huge issue), etc.
Also I want to give huge props to Hughz, Knightfall and Cyanide who have done a lot of great things for the Oceanic Smite Scene and it would probably be kill if it weren’t for them. Also I guess Double-Jump are okay ;)… shout outs to Pauly, Dan and Jordan.
In summary, SO MUCH FRUSTRATION. Just nothing ever goes smoothly. Also I actually quite like Cooper and Dan in person, they’re really cool dudes, and so are most of the people at Hi-Rez but for some reason something always fucks up… literally every single time.
In summary these issues drained all the fun and enjoyment out of the game to the point where I can no longer find a good answer to the question ‘Why do I play this game?’