I would like to start off by saying that I won’t be discussing game balance in this piece, I will be looking at the guidelines in a vacuum. While I understand the need for CDPR to have a set of tournament guidelines that organizers have to follow to ensure that they can get the ability to host points that grant Crown points that will tie into CD:PR’s own system so they don’t create a inflated system. Going around it the way that CD:PR has done is wrong if you want to create an endemic esports-scene and could mean that CD:PR will fail to make Gwent a viable long term esports-title.

CR:PR’s tournament guidelines for organizers basically makes it impossible to generate any revenue from any source. First, they have a rule set in place that ensure that as a tournament entrant, whether you are competing or spectating, you are not allowed to be charged an entry fee that goes towards the overall event or the tournament itself. This is a major issue since ticket sale is a big part of an organizers revenue, in addition it also blocks out the possibility for major organizers such as Dreamhack and insomnia Festival to add a licensed Gwent tournament to their schedules since entrance to their open tournaments generally just require a festivalpass to compete in. All the way back in August 2017 Dreamhack inquired about Gwent on Twitter and the interest was most definitely there. Multiple Dreamhack LAN-events have passed since, but we have seen no movement on that front. Which is very understandable from an economic standpoint.

If Dreamhack were to host a Grand prix style event for Gwent they could potentially host upwards of 250 players, who each would have to purchase a standard event pass, which comes in at 600 SEK which is about 75 USD they would stand to gain 18750 dollars of revenue. That is almost twice the prize pool threshold set by CD:PR’s own Guidelines. On another note contestants who were eligible to partake in the GwentOpen#1 qualifier at Gamescom 2017 had to purchase an event ticket to participate in the onsite qualifier. Which technically is against their own guidelines. Furthermore, they announced the onsite qualifiers on such a short notice that it was hard for competitors to organize flying out.

Another major rule in the guidelines is that organizers are not allowed to have sponsorships or run the tournament for commercial purpose. While this is very much in line with the no entry fee rule. Sponsorship are the main reason why endemic events can host these massive tournaments that make it possible for competitors to compete full time in other titles, sponsors also help bringing in viewership and can be a very big component of promotional pieces for your events. While I do understand that CD:PR want to dodge morality issues and want to dodge certain companies from getting engaged with Gwent it is a major component of holding back the scene since they limit ways for organizers to generate revenue. This also blocks out major LAN-events such as Dreamhack once again since they have a vast number of sponsors for their events, whether it’s title-specific sponsors or event-wide sponsors.

As a former team manager for three different international organizations and current manager of a Danish one. The fact that every tournament is limited to 8/16 people and the fact that the system favors people who make it once at these events, is a bit worrying to me. The fact that a tournament can have invite spots further pushes the nepotism perspective. Gwent MASTERS have so far featured 19 players across 4 8-man events. And the only other LAN tournaments in the game’s history Lifecoach’s GwentSlam tournaments, where prize pool is provided by CD:PR. Has featured 16 different players over 3 different 8-man events. With no major events outside of these two circuits there is little to no reason to sign players for major organizations since they are likely to not gain anything from entering the esports-scene elsewhere. Outside of CompLexity and Evil Geniuses we haven’t seen any big endemic organizations enter the scene for competitive purposes.

These are some of my thoughts regarding the competitive problems that CD:PR face by trying to control everything that goes on in their esports-scene, even if they provide a massive prize pool circuit in return.