Here is my opinion.
Bundles are now what makes the customers get happy about, they spend less money and get more items. But at the same time, that causes an inflation of items throughout the economy.
Limit the bundles! Or at least make the items that come in the bundle untradeable (however that would make the esports organizers get less money because people also buy tickets for the items)
---
Also, does anyone know what valve does with their 75% cut? It feels like valve doesn't do that much with the item(its just porting the item to the client)
Also, does anyone know what valve does with their 75% cut? It feels like valve doesn't do that much with the item(its just porting the item to the client)
Just a few guesses:
-Pay salaries
-Continue development
-Maintain servers
-Pay for the international base prize pool
Also, does anyone know what valve does with their 75% cut? It feels like valve doesn't do that much with the item(its just porting the item to the client)
They fund the development and support for the entire game (or their other efforts like steam) with it...
I was upset about this last year. I could see the trend moving away from pure artistic merit to something more about marketing. The end game is that artists are getting less and less of the pie.
It's a direction I don't like, but ultimately have no control over.
I would say the system was close to ideal before 3rd parties came in. Why are non-artists even in the workshop? It is because they want the money. The "collaboration" or "sponsor" argument is weak. I'm not sure I want a "sponsor" who demands money from me. I had the argument too that 3rd parties need to monetize on the workshop to help grow DOTA. I see them as a group of free-loaders and opportunists. If you want to monetize - don't do it on the backs of artists. Artists are historically poor and have to put up with a lot of crap. The workshop was like a beacon of light that promised more.
I think I singled out DOTA Cinema in my rant which was a huge mistake because of the massive following. I ended up changing my user name here on Polycount and Steam Workshop fom the blow-back.
Also, does anyone know what valve does with their 75% cut? It feels like valve doesn't do that much with the item(its just porting the item to the client)
It's not ours to know or care what they do with their money.
-Pay salaries
-Continue development
-Maintain servers
-Pay for the international base prize pool
F2P games need to make their money somehow.
I can guarantee that the money valve makes off the workshop is honestly a drop in the bucket of their entire income. If they actually used the money for dev salaries, they would put time into it.
It's honestly just a supplemental income diversifying their company, no different from us. But as a major dev studio its nothing to them. They could close down the workshop entirely across the board and be fine financially forever.
It's not ours to know or care what they do with their money.
If we don't know what the money is used for, then we cannot speculate on change in revenue such as "Brand of you choice". If we know how much valve actually needs then the systems can change accordingly.
Right now, workshop artists are in the shadow of 3rd parties. Valve could say, items back with organizations get x% revenue, while items solo (or in a small group) get x + y%. This would even the scale between 3rd parties and non-3rd parties because 3rd parties would have a higher chance of getting an item in than people who aren't affiliated with them.
Valve will lose money at first glace and organizations would have trouble getting items without some sort of financial transaction, however, doing this would protect the individual, and if 3rd party items become limited or special edition items (perhaps particle effects on genuine ticket bundles). Thus it will make more demands, then everyone will profit.
If only 3rd party items are accepted into the game, some people will look elsewhere and some people will just stop contributing and find something better to do in that time.
To recap:
Understand the system -> tweak the system to make it better.
If valve takes away from their share, it can potentially harm the company that's why they can only lose money they do not need.
Also one thing to keep in mind is that, when a third party approaches you with the usual "we'll split the revenues 50/50, because that's how everybody does it", you, the artist, have all the rights to negotiate the split and ask for a larger cut ... or even refuse the deal altogether.
Also one thing to keep in mind is that, when a third party approaches you with the usual "we'll split the revenues 50/50, because that's how everybody does it", you, the artist, have all the rights to negotiate the split and ask for a larger cut ... or even refuse the deal altogether.
I've been thinking about this, and I totally agree, but with the business mindset, I'm sure lowest bidder will always succeed with minimal leeway dependent on quality. I completely agree with you, and I've actually tried pushing it on a few deals with the mentality of "nothing ventured, nothing gained".
If we don't know what the money is used for, then we cannot speculate on change in revenue such as "Brand of you choice".
In my honest opinion, it doesn't matter. Valve makes the rules, and they can change it to 90% or just say straight "0 revenue will be made from item submissions" whenever they want. Bottom line is that it's clearly supplemental income they they will make, so it's not a huge deal. As transparent as valve can be from the business side, I'm not sure this information would be disclosed soon, might be good to ask Gaben in an AMA or a valve guy.
I don't think the issue should be "we need more money" I think it should be "where should ticket and tourney items go." The money is a logistical thing. Brand of your choice or whatever, it may solve financial problems, but the flooding of the workshop with ticket items isn't going to solve anything really, nor is the quality of items associated with tickets, and it's just going to become a problem the longer it goes on.
I agree with Andrew's suggestion that the best way to handle 3rd parties would be to add them to the service providers list.
I'm not sure about the 10% aspect of it though - we're asking Valve to take a hit, and we are also going to still take a hit... that makes implementing it tougher to swallow on all sides.
I don't see a problem with them simply being included in the service providers list and receiving 5% for tournaments. It takes nothing away from the creators, the mechanism is already in place and it takes nothing away from Valve (beyond what they have already approved of giving away potentially). Yes, you would have to fore-go giving money to the current service providers on there, but that would have to be the sacrifice for that one time event/tournament etc.
Checkbox when submitting item to declare it a "Tournament" item - mandatory choice of tournament provider from drop down list - everything happens between them and valve on their end as usual.
5% at that level is equivalent to an artist giving 20% of their share from the 25% cut in normal negotiation. And to be quite honest, my feeling is that is enough for any tournament provider (currently artists are giving up to 50%?? ridiculous)... it is quite literally free money for them since they bring nothing to the development table at all (this is painfully obvious when they pick low hanging fruit from the workshop that's been there a while, and regardless of what they say, they cannot guarantee ticket sales). AND they still get to have the incentive of a unique item on the ticket to drive sales.
It would also alleviate the pressure of negotiations on all sides, and the chance that one party is getting taken advantage of. This is all assuming of course that there are no free rides to acceptance and that quality is still a consideration (which may or may not be the case right now - some people have had items rejected for tournaments, others have had low quality get in when it normally wouldn't).
In any case, we really have to make an effort to stop the race to the bottom we're currently experiencing. Whenever there is money to be made, middlemen of all sorts try and get in there to take a cut. Remember, artists were getting items accepted and making money before all of the 3rd party stuff began - 3rd parties need us more than we need them. Just imagine a month long boycott of bundling items - they'd get the picture quickly haha.
I agree with Andrew's suggestion that the best way to handle 3rd parties would be to add them to the service providers list.
I'm not sure about the 10% aspect of it though - we're asking Valve to take a hit, and we are also going to still take a hit... that makes implementing it tougher to swallow on all sides.
The only reason I suggested Valve taking a hit was for the fact that it's their initive to build the esport brand in dota 2 through the workshop, not the artist. Artist can help, sure, but that shouldn't automatically rule out Valve. At as it stands right now, artist are getting the short hand of the stick.
I'm right with you in treating them like a service provider however. :thumbup:
I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this or not (this thread is too much tldr) but I think what valve is doing is actually a smart decision for allowing tournament ticket items.
As much as I hate to say it, but we have to look at Valve's priorities. As a game developing company their initial goal is to make a very popular/famous game with a lot of amateur and pro players. That mean their priority is with making the game popular and get more tournaments and make more game addicts! One way to make this happen is to create an opportunity in which the players can make money (meanwhile Valve is making more money as well) and so far having tournaments is the only way to let players make money. and to make more money from tournaments (both for valve and for players) they have to sell tickets. and in order to encourage people to buy tickets is to give them some advantages from buying that ticket, because they can watch the exact game 15 mins after the ending from YouTube. One way to do so is to give them items with the tickets.
Well so far I've been captain obvious here, nothing that special
But what I wanted to say is that I think valve wants to focus on the idea of making more players and more fame for the game therefore valve doesn't want normal players to get items from chests and keys but to get them from buying tickets and supporting pro players and tournaments.
That means before, people's money would divide between valve and item designers but now a share will go to players to encourage them to play more and more and more.
What's sad is that they only cut from the item designer's share not from valve's share which is something I would expect from Blizzard but not from volvo.
Let's hope I'm all wrong and the chests will come back
I think making a standard is the most important thing. If it is 5% from Valve and artist, fine, 10% from valve alone, also fine. Whatever it is I think it needs to be standard like what has been mentioned as 'service provider' that way everyone knows that the deal is the same for everyone and the 'scammy' tournament managers wont be able to ask for any larger cut than the standard.
Basically, the service provider style is the best one yet.
Agreed about adding tourney organizers as service providers. It also means you can give them a cut if you just really like the organization but they currently don't have a tourney going.
The whole point of service providers is to give back to those that have helped the community which is why I think DotaCinema, JoinDota, etc. and some of those other 3rd parties should be added too. Reddit and Polycount are both on the list and Reddit does much less for the community than Polycount(IMO) Isn't it mainly just used as a forum? There's no arting going on is there? Any game training or anything that directly affects the game?
I do like the idea of tourney fees coming out of valves cut though the thing with them being added to a list of service provides is:
a) each time we need to choose a service provider for the % split. (saving my split choices from last time would be a nice feature btw )
b) there are tonnes of these tournaments popping up. evenly splitting it will be unfeasible. and most likely only the popular ones will be chosen if any at all.
b) there are tonnes of these tournaments popping up. evenly splitting it will be unfeasible. and most likely only the popular ones will be chosen if any at all.
My understanding was that you would only include the tournament as a service provider style contributor (from a separate list to the service providers even?) if they were specifically the ones that the item has been submitted for.
This way they get a standard percentage and having them on the list somewhat legitimizes them.
Also one thing to keep in mind is that, when a third party approaches you with the usual "we'll split the revenues 50/50, because that's how everybody does it", you, the artist, have all the rights to negotiate the split and ask for a larger cut ... or even refuse the deal altogether.
Unfortunately there are a lot of uninformed an inexperienced people on both sides. A lot of workshop artists aren't experienced pros or freelancers and a lot of tournament organizers and teams have no idea what proper rates are.
Every time I've tried negotiating fair rates with teams and organizations they quickly back away and probably find people willing to work for less. Luckily it seems most are on board with giving workshop splits now so that's less of an issue than in the past. Generally I've had dealings with people who were inflexible on even that.
On the topic of revenue splits I don't know what the current ticket breakdown is but if it's just 75/25 with half or less of the 25 going to artists, that sucks for both parties. I think something like 60/20/20 before splits would be good. Then within each 20 the artists and tournaments split as they need to separately from one another. Really, there's no reason it couldn't be 50/25/25 as far as I know. It's up to valve to determine how much they really want to support artists and esports. As far as the service providers and brand stuff, I don't really follow.
Good news guys! No moar sets for tournaments with prize pool less than 15000$ !
I think it's a really great thing cuz i don't like sets in every ticket
Good news guys! No moar sets for tournaments with prize pool less than 15000$ !
I think it's a really great thing cuz i don't like sets in every ticket
Since when? Where are you getting this information? And how does anyone think this is a good possible solution?
If item have enough quality for the game it should be added no matter it goes with ticket or not; if its bad, well don't add it. Pretty simple formula. Tickets shouldn't be a way to push something in.
So, i heard it from guy who made a tournament with $1k prizepool. Volvo said no and said that tickets with sets will be available only for tournaments with prizepool more than 15k
I have my doubts this is true, as Valve have been on vacation for the last two weeks, and today is Sunday, and the majority of Valve employees don't work on Sundays, so unless this tournament organizer with a 1k prize pool is contacting Valve via skype or something during non-work hours(which is very doubtful because 1k prize doesn't get you any special treamtent, only 10k+ does), I'll remain skeptical.
Regardless, I submitted two tournament submissions today, both with item bundles, so I'll be able to give you guys an update hopefully tomorrow, if one doesn't pop up sooner.
So, i heard it from guy who made a tournament with $1k prizepool. Volvo said no and said that tickets with sets will be available only for tournaments with prizepool more than 15k
Since when? Where are you getting this information? And how does anyone think this is a good possible solution?
Yeah, I'd like to know more about this, because just hearsay from 'a guy' is not a credible source. And it's also not a very smart solution either, so unless Valve explicitly states that they're not going to allow sets based on prizepool (which again, is a pretty dumb solution that doesn't fix anything), I don't think that people should start to take that information seriously right now.
All in all, if that is true, that WILL affect a lot of people currently working on sets for tickets for tournaments with prizepools under 15k (myself included), but since there is no actually credible source, I don't believe we should change anything we're doing right now until an actual statement or something from Valve is released. I also can't see how that is 'good news', since one of the main problems with tickets are artists not getting the cut they deserve and low quality items getting in by piggybacking those tickets, and creating that 'prizepool minimum' doesn't solve any of those problems.
Disregard my previous comment, I can confirm that this is true. I just attempted to submit two leagues with item bundles and I was declined, because Valve no longer gives item bundles to amateur tournaments.
NO sets. NO items. My tournament series has 1000 teams participate every month and we're now out of luck. The last two times we had no item bundled with our ticket we paid $1200-1300 out of our pocket in prizes (we made $800 in sales but promised prizes of $1400 in cash and $400 in gear). This seems a little silly, as tickets by themselves don't make enough money for amateur events that promise fair prizes.
I wish they'd just restrict WHO gets ticket bundles - I know so many garbage organizations that have an item with their ticket but run their tournaments like crap and don't even have a proper website. I don't know why legitimate organizations are being punished. Sure, a lot of items are getting into the game via tournament tickets, but just set a limit to how many an organization can have per year, or have strict requirements that your tournaments must meet in order to have an item (certain amount of players, minimum amount of prizes, certain level of professionalism) etc.
I can understand why they did it, but it basically just kills my events in their current form so I'm a tad annoyed. I guess I'm not really entitled to anything though since other games don't even have the option of selling tickets and making money off amateur events, but whatever. It's just weird and I'm disappointed but I guess I'm not entitled so I'm conflicted and now I'm just rambling. I'm going to attempt to keep the same format with no item and see how it goes, but my hopes aren't very high.
I don't believe we should change anything we're doing right now until an actual statement or something from Valve is released.
In a perfect world, this would be true. At this point I can imagine that a good P.O.A would to be to make the best damn item you can, and not market it on the Workshop side as being tied to a ticket, but then allow the ticket/tournament to show it off and have the promo information on their side.
This might alleviate specific Ticket marketing in the workshop and give it a solid chance to get in sans ticket (granted the demand and quality is there).
I wouldn't expect Valve to communicate this to the workshop community. From what I've noticed they don't even give tourney organizers a heads up regarding policy changes till the last minute.
As always, Valve's non existing communication is really helping the community! They're sure showing their love for e-sports by completely killing amateur tournaments and probably the chance of some artists to get started on collaborating with organizations. This is absolutely one of the dumbest ideas to 'solve' the current problem of ticket items, which is not even related to the tickets themselves but the organizations cut.
This is not going to change a lot for me, even though this is a complete game changer for amateur tournament organizers, but it sure is a kick in the teeth when suddenly all of your work and plans change direction because Valve is unable to communicate with anyone.
this hit me a littlebit since i was working on 3 projects that were supposed to be bundled with such a ticket and now *blubb* all faded so i have to reconsider what i gona do now with those..
Don't know why valve didn't give anounce about this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .In my opinion it's good, but not in every point. It's good that they won't accept sets with tickets now, but i don't like idea when valve will not accept items for tournaments like wards or hud's. I think this idea was better than valve's
<$1,000 single item
<$3,000 HUD
<$5,000 Ward
<$8,0000 Set
<$10,000 Courier
>$10,000 Bigger Bundle
Just an example. Of course $10,000 would allow to bundle HUD but $3,000 would not allow to bundle Courier.
I think valve wants to say, tournaments should get popularity not cuz of items. For example, starladder got popularity before we got items in a tickets. Items in the tickets it's just an enjoyable bonus, no more. Set shouldn't make popularity for tournaments
Replies
Bundles are now what makes the customers get happy about, they spend less money and get more items. But at the same time, that causes an inflation of items throughout the economy.
Limit the bundles! Or at least make the items that come in the bundle untradeable (however that would make the esports organizers get less money because people also buy tickets for the items)
---
Also, does anyone know what valve does with their 75% cut? It feels like valve doesn't do that much with the item(its just porting the item to the client)
Just a few guesses:
-Pay salaries
-Continue development
-Maintain servers
-Pay for the international base prize pool
F2P games need to make their money somehow.
They fund the development and support for the entire game (or their other efforts like steam) with it...
I was upset about this last year. I could see the trend moving away from pure artistic merit to something more about marketing. The end game is that artists are getting less and less of the pie.
It's a direction I don't like, but ultimately have no control over.
I would say the system was close to ideal before 3rd parties came in. Why are non-artists even in the workshop? It is because they want the money. The "collaboration" or "sponsor" argument is weak. I'm not sure I want a "sponsor" who demands money from me. I had the argument too that 3rd parties need to monetize on the workshop to help grow DOTA. I see them as a group of free-loaders and opportunists. If you want to monetize - don't do it on the backs of artists. Artists are historically poor and have to put up with a lot of crap. The workshop was like a beacon of light that promised more.
I think I singled out DOTA Cinema in my rant which was a huge mistake because of the massive following. I ended up changing my user name here on Polycount and Steam Workshop fom the blow-back.
It's not ours to know or care what they do with their money.
I can guarantee that the money valve makes off the workshop is honestly a drop in the bucket of their entire income. If they actually used the money for dev salaries, they would put time into it.
It's honestly just a supplemental income diversifying their company, no different from us. But as a major dev studio its nothing to them. They could close down the workshop entirely across the board and be fine financially forever.
If we don't know what the money is used for, then we cannot speculate on change in revenue such as "Brand of you choice". If we know how much valve actually needs then the systems can change accordingly.
Right now, workshop artists are in the shadow of 3rd parties. Valve could say, items back with organizations get x% revenue, while items solo (or in a small group) get x + y%. This would even the scale between 3rd parties and non-3rd parties because 3rd parties would have a higher chance of getting an item in than people who aren't affiliated with them.
Valve will lose money at first glace and organizations would have trouble getting items without some sort of financial transaction, however, doing this would protect the individual, and if 3rd party items become limited or special edition items (perhaps particle effects on genuine ticket bundles). Thus it will make more demands, then everyone will profit.
If only 3rd party items are accepted into the game, some people will look elsewhere and some people will just stop contributing and find something better to do in that time.
To recap:
Understand the system -> tweak the system to make it better.
If valve takes away from their share, it can potentially harm the company that's why they can only lose money they do not need.
@Andrew
10% Brand of your Choice
What does that mean? Is it 3rd party stuff? Would it be optional? If so, how is the 10% split? Is it just 50-50% between valve and the artist?
I've been thinking about this, and I totally agree, but with the business mindset, I'm sure lowest bidder will always succeed with minimal leeway dependent on quality. I completely agree with you, and I've actually tried pushing it on a few deals with the mentality of "nothing ventured, nothing gained".
In my honest opinion, it doesn't matter. Valve makes the rules, and they can change it to 90% or just say straight "0 revenue will be made from item submissions" whenever they want. Bottom line is that it's clearly supplemental income they they will make, so it's not a huge deal. As transparent as valve can be from the business side, I'm not sure this information would be disclosed soon, might be good to ask Gaben in an AMA or a valve guy.
I don't think the issue should be "we need more money" I think it should be "where should ticket and tourney items go." The money is a logistical thing. Brand of your choice or whatever, it may solve financial problems, but the flooding of the workshop with ticket items isn't going to solve anything really, nor is the quality of items associated with tickets, and it's just going to become a problem the longer it goes on.
I'm basically saying(example), 3rd party items get 20% while non-3rd party get 25%. Nobody has anything to lose by partnering with a 3rd party.
I'm not sure about the 10% aspect of it though - we're asking Valve to take a hit, and we are also going to still take a hit... that makes implementing it tougher to swallow on all sides.
I don't see a problem with them simply being included in the service providers list and receiving 5% for tournaments. It takes nothing away from the creators, the mechanism is already in place and it takes nothing away from Valve (beyond what they have already approved of giving away potentially). Yes, you would have to fore-go giving money to the current service providers on there, but that would have to be the sacrifice for that one time event/tournament etc.
Checkbox when submitting item to declare it a "Tournament" item - mandatory choice of tournament provider from drop down list - everything happens between them and valve on their end as usual.
5% at that level is equivalent to an artist giving 20% of their share from the 25% cut in normal negotiation. And to be quite honest, my feeling is that is enough for any tournament provider (currently artists are giving up to 50%?? ridiculous)... it is quite literally free money for them since they bring nothing to the development table at all (this is painfully obvious when they pick low hanging fruit from the workshop that's been there a while, and regardless of what they say, they cannot guarantee ticket sales). AND they still get to have the incentive of a unique item on the ticket to drive sales.
It would also alleviate the pressure of negotiations on all sides, and the chance that one party is getting taken advantage of. This is all assuming of course that there are no free rides to acceptance and that quality is still a consideration (which may or may not be the case right now - some people have had items rejected for tournaments, others have had low quality get in when it normally wouldn't).
In any case, we really have to make an effort to stop the race to the bottom we're currently experiencing. Whenever there is money to be made, middlemen of all sorts try and get in there to take a cut. Remember, artists were getting items accepted and making money before all of the 3rd party stuff began - 3rd parties need us more than we need them.
Cheers.
The only reason I suggested Valve taking a hit was for the fact that it's their initive to build the esport brand in dota 2 through the workshop, not the artist. Artist can help, sure, but that shouldn't automatically rule out Valve. At as it stands right now, artist are getting the short hand of the stick.
I'm right with you in treating them like a service provider however. :thumbup:
As much as I hate to say it, but we have to look at Valve's priorities. As a game developing company their initial goal is to make a very popular/famous game with a lot of amateur and pro players. That mean their priority is with making the game popular and get more tournaments and make more game addicts! One way to make this happen is to create an opportunity in which the players can make money (meanwhile Valve is making more money as well) and so far having tournaments is the only way to let players make money. and to make more money from tournaments (both for valve and for players) they have to sell tickets. and in order to encourage people to buy tickets is to give them some advantages from buying that ticket, because they can watch the exact game 15 mins after the ending from YouTube. One way to do so is to give them items with the tickets.
Well so far I've been captain obvious here, nothing that special
But what I wanted to say is that I think valve wants to focus on the idea of making more players and more fame for the game therefore valve doesn't want normal players to get items from chests and keys but to get them from buying tickets and supporting pro players and tournaments.
That means before, people's money would divide between valve and item designers but now a share will go to players to encourage them to play more and more and more.
What's sad is that they only cut from the item designer's share not from valve's share which is something I would expect from Blizzard but not from volvo.
Let's hope I'm all wrong and the chests will come back
Basically, the service provider style is the best one yet.
The whole point of service providers is to give back to those that have helped the community which is why I think DotaCinema, JoinDota, etc. and some of those other 3rd parties should be added too. Reddit and Polycount are both on the list and Reddit does much less for the community than Polycount(IMO) Isn't it mainly just used as a forum? There's no arting going on is there? Any game training or anything that directly affects the game?
a) each time we need to choose a service provider for the % split. (saving my split choices from last time would be a nice feature btw
b) there are tonnes of these tournaments popping up. evenly splitting it will be unfeasible. and most likely only the popular ones will be chosen if any at all.
My understanding was that you would only include the tournament as a service provider style contributor (from a separate list to the service providers even?) if they were specifically the ones that the item has been submitted for.
This way they get a standard percentage and having them on the list somewhat legitimizes them.
Unfortunately there are a lot of uninformed an inexperienced people on both sides. A lot of workshop artists aren't experienced pros or freelancers and a lot of tournament organizers and teams have no idea what proper rates are.
Every time I've tried negotiating fair rates with teams and organizations they quickly back away and probably find people willing to work for less. Luckily it seems most are on board with giving workshop splits now so that's less of an issue than in the past. Generally I've had dealings with people who were inflexible on even that.
On the topic of revenue splits I don't know what the current ticket breakdown is but if it's just 75/25 with half or less of the 25 going to artists, that sucks for both parties. I think something like 60/20/20 before splits would be good. Then within each 20 the artists and tournaments split as they need to separately from one another. Really, there's no reason it couldn't be 50/25/25 as far as I know. It's up to valve to determine how much they really want to support artists and esports. As far as the service providers and brand stuff, I don't really follow.
I think it's a really great thing cuz i don't like sets in every ticket
Since when? Where are you getting this information? And how does anyone think this is a good possible solution?
It's actually a pretty bad one!!!
[ame="
#valvetime
Regardless, I submitted two tournament submissions today, both with item bundles, so I'll be able to give you guys an update hopefully tomorrow, if one doesn't pop up sooner.
#thanksObama
Yeah, I'd like to know more about this, because just hearsay from 'a guy' is not a credible source. And it's also not a very smart solution either, so unless Valve explicitly states that they're not going to allow sets based on prizepool (which again, is a pretty dumb solution that doesn't fix anything), I don't think that people should start to take that information seriously right now.
All in all, if that is true, that WILL affect a lot of people currently working on sets for tickets for tournaments with prizepools under 15k (myself included), but since there is no actually credible source, I don't believe we should change anything we're doing right now until an actual statement or something from Valve is released. I also can't see how that is 'good news', since one of the main problems with tickets are artists not getting the cut they deserve and low quality items getting in by piggybacking those tickets, and creating that 'prizepool minimum' doesn't solve any of those problems.
NO sets. NO items. My tournament series has 1000 teams participate every month and we're now out of luck. The last two times we had no item bundled with our ticket we paid $1200-1300 out of our pocket in prizes (we made $800 in sales but promised prizes of $1400 in cash and $400 in gear). This seems a little silly, as tickets by themselves don't make enough money for amateur events that promise fair prizes.
I wish they'd just restrict WHO gets ticket bundles - I know so many garbage organizations that have an item with their ticket but run their tournaments like crap and don't even have a proper website. I don't know why legitimate organizations are being punished. Sure, a lot of items are getting into the game via tournament tickets, but just set a limit to how many an organization can have per year, or have strict requirements that your tournaments must meet in order to have an item (certain amount of players, minimum amount of prizes, certain level of professionalism) etc.
I can understand why they did it, but it basically just kills my events in their current form so I'm a tad annoyed. I guess I'm not really entitled to anything though since other games don't even have the option of selling tickets and making money off amateur events, but whatever. It's just weird and I'm disappointed but I guess I'm not entitled so I'm conflicted and now I'm just rambling. I'm going to attempt to keep the same format with no item and see how it goes, but my hopes aren't very high.
In a perfect world, this would be true. At this point I can imagine that a good P.O.A would to be to make the best damn item you can, and not market it on the Workshop side as being tied to a ticket, but then allow the ticket/tournament to show it off and have the promo information on their side.
This might alleviate specific Ticket marketing in the workshop and give it a solid chance to get in sans ticket (granted the demand and quality is there).
This is not going to change a lot for me, even though this is a complete game changer for amateur tournament organizers, but it sure is a kick in the teeth when suddenly all of your work and plans change direction because Valve is unable to communicate with anyone.
I think valve wants to say, tournaments should get popularity not cuz of items. For example, starladder got popularity before we got items in a tickets. Items in the tickets it's just an enjoyable bonus, no more. Set shouldn't make popularity for tournaments