would you rather make more money doing what you love and entertaining people, or be successful, making an average yearly salary, while working at least twice as hard?
edit: this was a bait. the first option is what shaz is arguing for. he wants to stream and make sure he is financially stable while doing what he loves. on the otherhand, the other side is for pro players that do not stream/do content and only focus on winning.
so will you stop hating players for making the right choice?
I'm not a Shaz hater, I don't care what he does with his time nor is it my place to judge. But your premise is wrong.
financially stable while doing what he loves
This implies that by not streaming or streaming less he is not financially stable. Shaz would be fine if he streamed less. He gets paid from Sentinels. He also gets paid by winning. It's not a matter of financial stability, it's a matter of making more money than the money he would already get if he didn't stream. Of course, there is also building his brand, connecting with other content creators, receiving more sponsors, etc, but at the end of the day, he would be fine monetarily if he streamed less. Streaming for as long as Shaz does is by no means a necessity for his survival. And if streaming mattered so much to Shaz, to the extent that it's more important than his esports competitive career and winning, then he should just retire and become a streamer/content creator.
making an average yearly salary, while working at least twice as hard?
I assure you that Shaz even by streaming less is making way above average yearly salary. That is just wrong, he is making good money. And being a pro is his job. No one put a gun to his head and said, "BECOME AN ESPORTS PRO!". He competes out of his own free will. You say, "working at least twice as hard" with a negative connotation as if by working twice as hard and not streaming Shaz would be just as skilled and have received the same results but only just be less rich. As if working hard was pointless and all you should care about is that bag. In fact, the question as a whole revolves around money. There is more to life than money. It's important, but when you are a pro athlete, results matter a lot. You should be working twice as hard. You should be putting in those hours. That is a requirement to succeed in the pro field. And Shaz knows that, I'm not trying to lecture Shaz right now I'm just trying to say that the question you posed is inherently false for supporting the claim that you proposed.
so will you stop hating players for making the right choice?
I agree that people should stop hating on pros, but calling Shaz's choice the 'right choice' is very subjective. Everyone has different priorities and ways of balancing their schedule. But at the end of the day, Shaz is a pro esports player in a competitive season and he nor his team achieved good results. They haven't for a while now. It's a sport. It's a competition. And Sentinels lost. A lot. That money Shaz makes from streaming won't buy him a win. It won't buy him a good season. It won't buy him a trophy. It won't even buy him a qualification slot to even try to get into masters or champions (although it might help them get franchising lmao). It seems that Shaz did not in fact make the right choice in terms of competitive success. But that's okay, no one is perfect, so long as they strive to learn and improve (which Sentinels have been slowly doing it seems). Look at M3C choosing to put purp0 in for Breeze at map point during the grand finals. Some mistakes are bigger, others are smaller. But Sentinels have been consistently performing poorly for a while.
Lack of practice has been an issue following Sentinels for a while now, even to this date. The amount that people connected it to streaming hours may be exaggerated, somewhat, but it's still one of the problems Sen has had.
But yeah. Shaz's choice was not the 'right' choice. It was a choice that has its pros and cons. An arguably shallow, excusatory choice when interpreted the way you have.
I could write more, and say more, but this is VLR, no one cares including me and I've been writing this for a couple of minutes. Minutes I could've spent doing anything else lmao.
Again I'm not trying to bring down Shahzam. I don't care about how much he streams. It's his life and the people who blindly hate him desperately need to get one.
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