bait post, but i'll entertain a proper answer.

probably? though i'd put many other factors as more significant first.

i don't think the playerbase disparity paints the full picture - polls show that 30% of valorant players are women, so all other things equal, you'd also expect 30% of t1 valorant pros to be women too. clearly not the case, so something else has to be going on.

i think most of the reason is social - studies have shown that men have a disposition to be more aggressive and assertive when pursuing a high level of competition. whether this disparity is biological or social can be left to the experts, but i'd think that this is what results in such a heavy disparity at the highest level of play.

you could also boil it down to gaming being a really toxic space for women - players around might be less supportive or they may be offered less opportunities to improve - its similar to how, oddly enough, professional sports players tend to be born around september - january (since a couple months of development is a huge difference in early ages, meaning sports coaches support them more or pick them for sports teams etc), despite birth month not leading to any biological difference.

biology i'd probably put as the least significant reason. there may be some inherent differences in reaction speeds and dexterity due to hormones, but i don't think it's like traditional sports where strength and speed is everything. women also dominate in challenging sports which prioritise things that suit their biology (gymnastics, for instance), so I don't think the "spirit of competition" is inherently non-present in women.

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yeah, the problem is that this results in an overcentralisation of major teams within the esports scene. especially since riot is trying to push a "anyone can make it" type mindset through premier, there needs to be a way to disseminate the monetisation policies to tier 2 and below. unfortunately, i don't think the current monetisation sources (us, the viewers) is large enough to sustain a successful t2 scene, providing a reasonable risk-reward balance, while also keeping major organisations interested and profitable.

traditional sports have the benefit of standout players being idolised, and therefore are very easy to monetise - kids want to be the next messi, the next michael jordan, and their parents will buy them a jersey for their birthday. i believe esports lacks that psychological "inspiration" factor.

brother, you need to separate whats ethically wrong and what is a security-related mistake. if i walk in a dangerous part of town at midnight and get stabbed, just because i could have made better routing decisions doesn't make the stabbing itself okay. similarly, just because companies can invest more in pirating protections doesn't make pirating ethical. if everyone pirates, studios make no money and games won't be made. if you pirate, you're just freeloading off the people who have paid for the game to actually support the studios, which is clearly unethical.

i'm not going to crucify people for pirating - i do it too when the content is inaccessible in paid format. i think its similar in scale to shoplifting. that said, jumping through semantic hoops to somehow justify it to yourself and others for the sake of moral superiority is the problem. pirating is stealing. i don't care if you steal, especially if its from mega-corpos who have made their fair share of decisions with questionable morality. that said, you shouldn't try justify it in a way that makes it seem like its a good thing to do.

not much we can do unfortunately, just if the esports scene becomes bigger. the traditional idea is that esports can replicate the success of the traditional sports scene, and be monetised in the same way.

personally, i'm not super convinced - i think monetising esports has some unique challenges, (mainly in terms of sport psychology), but maybe someone smarter than I can solve that problem (and probably make a shit load of money doing so)

so it's fine if everyone pirates the game then? and the studio earns zero revenue?

good thing is they specified the 2025 circuit - if the tier 2/ascension ecosystem improves they may come back?

lets put it this way.

is it okay for everyone to pirate the game, such that the developers get paid nothing? intuitively no, correct?

so is it okay if 80% of the people to pirate? 50%? at what point does it become okay? and when it does, what makes it okay for YOU to pirate it, but not okay for everyone else to?

the semantics of whether or not its full "ownership" or a "digital access license" is irrelevant - point is, you're not paying for a service which you're supposed to pay for, aka, stealing.

things you can buy without owning:

access licenses to copyrighted material
permission to redistribute
pretty much all forms of intellectual property

piracy is a form of copyright infringement, which is, in spirit, theft of intellectual property.

again, see the case of cadence design systems vs avanti corp - CDS didn't physically "lose" anything, but theres a good reason why avanti corp doesn't exist anymore today - copyright infringement is, in ethical spirit, theft.

i think the difference between piracy and choosing to not purchase and consume a product should be intuitively clear, but if you insist on pedantic definition, then the fundamental difference lies in accessing premium products without paying the associated price. what is lost isn't the 'potential sale' per se, but the development time and costs associated per product consumed.

think about it inductively. is it ethical for EVERYBODY to pirate a product? the developers and the studio earn zero revenue for their development effort, so clearly not. so at what point does it become acceptable? when only 50% of the playerbase pirates? 20%? and when it does, what makes it okay for the n% of the playerbase to pirate but not okay for the 100-n% of the playerbase to do the same?

point still stands, tagline is inherently flawed. just because it isn't something physical doesn't mean the company doesn't lose something - in the case of games, they lose a potential customer. the details of whether it is strictly "ownership or not" is irrelevant to whether or not piracy is stealing (it is).

see cadence design systems vs avanti corp for an example of non-physical theft resulting in a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

how serious piracy is is a different question - i'd argue its similar to shoplifting from a supermarket (whatever if its from an international megacorp, a lot worse if its your next door friendly grandma, i.e, indie studios).

doesn't change the fact its inherently unethical and therefore the "piracy isn't theft" tagline is a shit take.

point is, this is a really shit take.

the lack of the ability to own something does not inherently suggest that theft is justified. can you go rob a car rental shop and still defend yourself saying "you don't provide us with a way to own the car, therefore I'm not stealing"?

ethics of digital ownership aside, you need much more backing to justify pirating than a logically flawed tagline.

valve games are better competitively (dota 2, cs are far better "esports"), but riot games are more fun for the average player like me and you. how that translates into viewership is down to your interpretation.

valorant and league are more fun since theres more bullshit, which increases game variance, lowers skill ceiling and makes them less competitive at the highest level.

cheating, some of the people he's queuing with is also pretty blatant

nah, top 10 fs. stats wise, sure, but within edg's playstyle (super frequent 4-1 setups), only the best sentinel/lurk players can reliably hold down massive areas of the map singlehandedly while also frequently delivering round winning impact kills/plays. i'd go as far as to say that chichoo is probably the best player on edg, only reason i ranked kk higher is recency bias. this nats-style gameplay only really works if you have a team that can play off the pressure that you exert simply by just existing and staying missing on the map - in the same way nats's average performances these past seasons doesn't change the fact that he has fundamentally changed the way the game is played.

not bad list, not the worst

1. keznit. idc, this guy is the best duelist itw. criminal he hasn't been picked up by a better team yet.

2. t3xture

3. meteor

4/5. aspas/kangkang - coinflip, aspas more self sufficient, kangkang better in a super aggressive team like edg

6. alfajer

7. chronicle

8. chichoo

9. zekken

10. woot

beyond top 10 no point really ordering

can't compare, they are fundamentally different types of players. aspas is super self sufficient, throw him in any team playing any style and he'll give you 30. kangkang plays a hyper aggressive style that requires his team (s1mon) to play around him, which works really well within edg but he needs a really good setup initiator to go with him. s1mon actually saved the team.

bro what is this, you're waaay too generous

slight recency bias, talking about right now not all time.

(all in order)

NA:
keznit, aspas, zekken

EU:
alfa, chron, leo, benjy, woot, riens, cned(?)

pacific list looks about right, missing karon somewhere in there

CN:
chichoo, smoggy, kk, autumn, s1mon

can't be hindsight harry, obviously it didn't work out here

no point getting into a levelling war, his other option was to just run at the bomb and take a super unfavoured fight

the argument "he should have predicted my predict and hence done xxx" can be recursed infinitely

ehh in fairness its pretty smart, just the wrong read

the read was that kangkang (whos a really aggressive player) would try push him after the nade to end the round there, so he backs off to hold from a deeper angle

don't think he realised how bad the plant was for him

boaster is playing an rts while everyone is playing valorant, its a lot harder to focus and have professional level reflexes when the majority of your attention is on how to outcall the opponent - notice how he aims 10x better when he's the last alive in a clutch

him spending 90% of the time looking at minimap allows his entire team to spend 10% looking at map and focus on fragging

i thought it was gen.g vs heretics rivalry 2024, don't think sen performed anywhere near good enough throughout the year to rival gen.g

the walkout on the bonus wasn't even bad, it was a read that they'd be holding something else, bonus so high risk high reward plays are good

lev isn't an NA team dipshits

we need to laugh at the entire americas region XDDDDDDDDDDDDD

CN #1

the problem with that team isn't nats, they aren't letting him play the super ratty playstyle which worked so well before

in that sense, we haven't seen what he can really do since gambit

need some reward for upper bracket.

in fighting games its more brutal, where the player coming from losers needs to win two sets in a row.

ok, in fairness, just because you are worse than the pro players doesn't mean you're not allowed to criticize them.

thats like saying 'you're not allowed to criticize the president, become president first then you can speak'

its not fully fluent, clearly not her first language but its understandable

gardens of babylon would be sick

teams can have multiple heavy hitters lol

literally had assistance coach on duelist

gassed about being taken to map 3 by a team without their star player