Hector ‘Call of Duty league could end the streaming careers of pro players should the league adopt the same rules as its Overwatch counterpart.
CoD is set to move to a franchise model for the 2020 season, with teams currently bidding upwards of $25 million on locations as they attempt to secure their spot in the league.
While teams are spending incredible sums to enter the competition, the OpTic Gaming CEO has revealed that the league could come at a significant cost to players if they implement Overwatch’s streaming rules, with stars like Seth ‘Scump’ Abner possibly forced to stop broadcasting completely.
In the June 10 episode of his Eavesdrop Podcast, H3CZ discussed the prospect of Activision adopting rules which state that Overwatch players cannot steam within an hour of any League event starting or finishing, and also specify that no more than two OWL players can stream together at one time.
“Obviously in Overwatch they’re not allowed to stream on certain days,” said the 39-year-old. “Overwatch hadn’t really developed a competitive culture like Call of Duty has. We’ve been able to raise the bar competitively. We’ve done more for competition than Activision did for competition.”
“Yeah, they created the game, but we’re the ones who brought in the crowd. So when they franchise, are they going to tell Scump that he can’t make $190,000-a-month on Twitch anymore, and then they’re going to put a salary cap on top of that?”
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As it stands, Scump is able to stream whenever he chooses, as long as he is not playing in a CWL Pro League match which are streamed from the MLG Arena in Columbus, Ohio.
If Overwatch’s streaming rules were introduced, he would no longer be able to stream OpTic Gaming’s practice, which takes up a large part of his day, and could also be unable to stream pick-up matches with other pro players.
This would greatly reduce the amount of time pro players could spend broadcasting on platforms like Twitch, which will negatively impact their growth on the site, and the revenue they can make on it.
Activision have yet to release a rulebook for the upcoming franchised league, but pro players will be hoping that the team behind the Call of Duty version will be more lenient than those who created the Overwatch handbook.