Behind The Scenes: Nerd Street Gamers
We also show you the dueling viewership numbers coming out the Esports World Cup.
On Friday we released a story about Philadelphia-based company Nerd Street Gamer. It’s a survival story and it’s as frank as it can be about the mistakes that management made as it navigated multiple rounds of layoffs, investors walking away, and the debt it managed to accrue from late-2022 until now. We spent more than a year (on and off) talking to the CEO of the company, as well as former employees to paint a picture of the company’s journey.
Some former employees reached out to me publicly and in private over the weekend, calling it a “fluff piece” (a bit of an insult to me, but that’s okay, I have thick skin) because it didn’t include their experiences as workers. I agree that it is missing some perspective from former workers on how they felt while they were treated, but here’s the thing—people have to have the courage to talk if they want to if they want their stories to be told. I can’t provide a perspective on something if I don’t know about it (and we did talk to a number of detractors over the last year, whose perspectives we included in the article). In other words, we can’t make stuff up or give our personal opinion.
To illustrate this point, below are three stories where people did provide a LOT of insider information that helped inform what we ultimately wrote.
This story about Esports Engine we wrote earlier this year had a ton of perspective from sources:
Did Vindex’s Sale to EFG Leave Esports Engine Employees Empty-Handed?
This story about how Wisdom Gaming was being run also had a lot of insider info that helped paint the narrative that management was mis-managing the company (Wisdom recently shut down).
Exclusive: Wisdom Gaming Cuts Staff in Fresh Round of Layoffs
Finally, we wrote a series of stories on Galaxy Racer and how it mistreated workers in North America and didn’t pay women esports pros for an Apex Legends tournament (those people have still not been paid).
Galaxy Racer Fails to Pay HER Galaxy $100K Apex Legends Open Winners in 2023
The point of all this is to say that if you want your perspective to be heard you have to talk to the media. I know it’s scary going up against a company you used to work for, but you are the vault where many of their darkest secrets lie, you are the witness, you provide the evidence that helps us paint the best picture we can based on the information we have.
At the end of the day, my door is always open if you have a story to tell—and we have no fear in telling it, but you have to have the faith to trust us to do it and to keep you safe in the process.
Thanks for reading, and for those of you in America, Happy Labor Day! - James Fudge
By The Numbers: Esports World Cup
The Esports World Cup ended on Aug. 25, and three different sets of numbers measuring its viewership success were released that are drastically different. Although some have suggested that much of these numbers have been massaged, manipulated, or puffed up through “buying views,” we have no information to suggest that the Esports World Cup Foundation’s numbers are somehow illegitimate, as of this writing.
First, the Esports World Cup Foundation released its own set of numbers:
Esports World Cup Claims More Than 500M Total Viewers
The Esports World Cup Foundation claimed that the Esports World Cup recorded more than 500M viewers who consumed over 250M hours of content across 21 different games, that over 2M people attended the event in person during the eight-week span between July 2 – Aug. 24, and that the League of Legends competition saw peak viewership of 3.5M during its grand final.
Esports Charts, which was a paid partner of the event, had different numbers in its reporting:
Esports Charts: Esports World Cup Enjoys 120M Hours Watched
The event enjoyed 120M hours watched over the entirety of its eight weeks of competition from July 3 – to Aug. 25, according to Esports Charts. The report notes that EWC was the fourth most-watched esports series of 2024 so far, behind MLBB Professional League, LCK, and Valorant Champions Tour 2024. These numbers do not include numbers from Chinese streaming platforms, but we assume that they are based on traffic from YouTube, Kick, Twitch, AfreecaTV, TikTok, Facebook, and other platforms that Esports Charts monitors. Esports Charts did not reveal peak viewers or average viewer numbers for the event
Finally, StreamHatchet (a GameSquare-owned platform—the same folks who own FaZe Esports, who competed at the Esports World Cup) released its own set of numbers:
The Inaugural Esports World Cup’s Live Streaming Performance
From the report:
“Taking the viewership of all 22 tournaments played during the EWC provides the overall esports-focused interest in the EWC (excluding other events like the opening and closing ceremonies or the Esports Awards). Focusing just on esports viewership, the EWC generated 103M hours watched with a peak viewership of 2.8M.”
It is hard to understand why all of these numbers are so dramatically different, but the Esports World Cup Foundation did not reveal the sources for its data, nor did Esports Charts—beyond saying it didn’t include Chinese viewership numbers because they were unreliable. Readers will have to figure out which set of data they trust more, or attempt to combine and distill the numbers for themselves. Whatever the true, accurate number is for viewership, there’s no doubt that organizers are happy with the results for 2024.
📰 More News From The Esports Advocate 📰
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