A post on the Chinese SGamer forums have pinpointed the blame of DK not receiving their prize money on King, current head of ACE Alliance. We have translated the post, which gives some insight into the lack of Chinese competitions as well as the failings of the ACE Alliance in developing Dota 2 in China.
As the furor arises over DK's unpaid prize money from WPC-ACE, a post on the Sgamer forums has garnered a lot of attention. It suggests that the failure of DK to receive their prize money is due to King (pictured on the right), head of ACE, double-crossing the main sponsor, Jing Rui Real Estate. Our sources have informed us that the post is very accurate. We would like to thank our forum user, tobi_xls, for bringing up the issue in our forums and attracting our attention.
In the lengthy post, the contributor explains the current situation of Dota 2 in China and the anti-competitive behaviour of Jing Rui Real Estate, the main sponsor behind ACE Alliance and the entirety of the premiere competitive teams. The writer describes King as a sell-out who has manipulated his position and credcence with the team managers for his own financial benefit, and created a stale and anti-competitive scene within China.
We have directly translated the post into English below:
After 10 replies, and watching the drama unfold tonight, let me write a little about what I know about ACE. As someone within the "circle", I know rumours from most circles, but I'll keep my identity a secret.
Let's begin from the first ACE organised compeition: The first ACE competition was held in the year all the teams formally transited into Dota 2. However, the largest competition then organised by ACE was for WC3 Dota, and there had not been any announcements on an agent for Dota 2 within China. I mention the agents because ACE requires someone to cough out cash, and if there is an agent, the agent would naturally be the one to cough out the money.
As for the first ACE competition, ACE had originally said that the prizepool would be a million Yuan, but they had no sponsors. Back then, Principal Wang was still in charge at ACE – when he saw that he couldn't get any sponsors, he decided to lower the prize money from a million to 800k, down to 500k, and finally 200k. Even then, this 200k was money given by the sole sponsor: AMD, which had given a total of 500k yuan in sponsorship.
But this is just the start.
After the first ACE competition ended, Principal Wang decided that he didn't want to participate in this B-Grade business anymore, and left to do his own thing after that. King, upon seeing that ACE had no financial supporter any longer, had to find someone to pick up the bills. Living up to his name of one of the three largest scammers in Chinese Dota, King approached the current real estate giant: Jing Rui Real Estate.
King's story goes this way: "I really care for and love these Dota teams and players, and seeing that there are no competitions going on, the ACE Alliance cannot sit idly by and permit this to happen. Without the announcement that it was Perfect World to be the Chinese agent for Valve, I had to find someone to sponsor tournaments!"
It sounds, pretty reasonable, doesn't it? If Jing Rui coughs up the money, then what does ACE have to do?
1. All the players and clubs need to outsource their publicity work to ACE, which is in reality Jing Rui. When the players stream, ACE will take a cut of their earnings.
2. All of the players and clubs have to agree to not participate in any other competitions over the durations of their participation in any Jing Rui funded tournament (eg. WPC-ACE League). But everyone already knows this.
3. All the players and clubs have to stand by the ACE Alliance's standard for competitions (eg. the organisers want money), and the teams have to listen to the Alliance's instructions on participation in any tournaments. G-1 paid a security fee of 100k yuan.
How long does this contract last? Three years. That is to say, King single-handedly sold China's best and brightest professional teams and players to corporatism. Does this not feel very familiar?
You may feel some anger when you see this conditions affixed to the contracts, which mainly control participation in tournaments. But overall, how does this affect Chinese Dota 2? It actually isn't that there are few competitions.
First, to Perfect World, tournaments are a huge way of promoting the game. ACE's sell-out actions are tantamount to selling Perfect World's greatest tournament resource: the players and teams, to a third company. Why did Jing Rui stop controlling the teams' participation? Because Perfect World stepped in, and threatened to use their legal right to stop all of Jing Rui's Dota 2- based advertising since it would hinder Perfect World's expansion efforts.
Next, to the players, they personally are unwilling to sign these agreements, but because are pressured to do so by the clubs. Why would the clubs do this? This is because the ACE Alliance is made of the Clubs' managers – at the beginning when there weren't many strong teams, two outstanding managers (dare I say FarSeer and Efeng) led the way – and the other teams had no choice but to follow suit. These managers have benefitted from the money that Jing Rui gave to ACE, but of course, they will tell you that they have never made money from this.
Thus, our players have begin to earn what they can, and then retire earlier if they have the opportunity, so that they can get away from the ACE Alliance's control over their lives. A majority of those who have not retired are starting to emulate this view. Chinese tournaments remain under Jing Rui's control because of ACE's sell-out contracts, so competitions cannot be organised by just anybody. If not for Perfect World standing up for the clubs, the number of competitions would really be minimal;.
Things have continued this way until 2014, and the current conditions are: Jing Rui has already understood how to toe their way around this issue, and they have their own approach. King realised that he was unable to continue lying, and wanted to join Perfect World. Perfect World's conditions were for him to get their resources (the teams) back – King of course agreed, but was rebuffed by Jing Rui – now he can't join Perfect World, and is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
As for DK's prize money, it was really not delivered, and verbally confirmed by the team members themselves. They'd called people, asking for suggestions and help, but to no avail. Why?
To use Dota 2 as their advertising platform, Jing Rui invested a lot: building the gaming arenas, doing publicity, and so on, but still unable to compete with human desires. Actually, what Jing Rui is doing is a relatively normal business tactic in other fields and eSports. How the situation devolved to its current state is because of ACE having King at its helm: with both Jing Rui and ACE trying to reap some benefits. Of course, Jing Rui aren't idiots – they saw that King was trying to double cross them, and thus decided to let King bear the consequences by not delivering the prize money.
So, yes, while Jing Rui has to bear the responsibility of not paying out the money – they are after all the sponsors who are not paying, but why is it that they have decided not to pay? Give it some thought.
ACE has since responded with a tweet:
To explain the issue with the Dota 2 competition prize money, due to tax issues, all of the prize money is not sent to the ACE Alliance's account before the competition, but is instead distributed directly to each team organisation. We will monitor the progress of the distribution of prize money, and pressure the organisers to finish the prize money transfer as soon as possible. As for the delayed prize money, we will use legal means to return to the players what they are owed.
Sources: SGamer Forum Post; ACE Tweet
