StarCraft 2 fans as well as followers of the professional gaming industry will be disappointed to hear that the Major League Gaming, MLG for short, has parted ways with Blizzard Entertainment and will not be hosting future World Championship Series tournaments.
In a statement posted to MLG’s website, CEO Sundance DiGiovani stated
Given the structure of the relationship and the impact on the organization, players and community, we feel it will better serve the eSports ecosystem to run tournaments independently. We thank the community for participating in and watching Season 1, look forward to showcasing StarCraft II at the MLG Spring Championship, and wish the players participating in World Series Championship Season 2 the best of luck.
StarCraft 2 is a real-time strategy game developed by Blizzard Entertainment released in 2010 along with an expansion, Heart of the Swarm, that was released in March. Blizzard is also the studio behind World of Warcraft, and like WoW, StarCraft 2 has a very strong community behind it. John Bain, aka “Totalbiscuit” spoke out to PCGamesN on why MLG got out of the World Series Championship due to some restrictions imposed by Blizzard
It became a massive resource drain on MLG. They had to host at an EU-unfriendly time. So you lock out your biggest audience by default and are then expected to recoup via sponsorship and ad revenue. What? The amount of money MLG had to spend… was outrageous.”
It is very unfortunate news for people who train and dream of being in MLG and not know if the game you practice will still be a featured title.
