Steam would never sponsor an aoe2 tournament, why would voobly?
Why cannot the people running the platform do what they want?
Think nhoobish wins 1-0 on that argument, but still agree with Ultrafong though as it just doesn't make any sense to do it from a business perspective so why would it be done? Has to just be wrong thought process understanding the strengths of what they have and how best to monetize it.
---
The strength of any platform utilized by communities / multiple users, is to be able to gain exposure to as many people as possible and have as many active users online at any one time to be able to monetize the community through non-forced actions that don't cause resentment at 'having' to pay.
Easiest to put everything back to a Poker analogy.
For years online poker rooms had an actual disdain for play money poker players, freeloaders and deadbeats that if they were not going to deposit to the site, the site didn't want them. That was until Zynga Poker came along and made more money from play chips than all but the very largest real money poker rooms. Having a product that was open and accessible to all, widely publicized and players heavily rewarded for their play.
Apparently am still typing so this must be a rant, it's a little frustrating to watch happen though as there are so many other alternatives they could pursue.
If Voobly casting was so good, all the AoE viewers would be watching their streams, but they are not because AoE has a crazy proportion of excellent casters and streamers it is kind of silly to compete with on a serious level - Focus should be on working with the streamers in question to ensure voobly is advertised / sold / pushed as much as possible to guide as many people to the platform as possible. Players = power + just need to get a little more creative on how to generate revenue to cover running costs and generate prize pools.
*Edit* If any Voobly mods are reading this, ping me a message with contact details and happy to help if I can and it is wished for. I'm not going to go to the voobly forums though as you should be reading AoCZone .
TouchéI think it's fine to do this to be honest, but don't then wonder why only 100-150 people are watching the games because none of the prominent streamers are interested in paying 150$ to cast them.