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100 Thieves gets fined but makes the best of it. Luminosity and Maryville University partner. TikTok gets banned, and Sony pushing for Web3 future?

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Here’s what we have for you today:

• From Fined To Partners: 100 Thieves sign partnership with Crocs 🐊 

• Collegiate esports in the limelight: Luminosity partners with collegiate powerhouse Maryville for OWCS 👨‍🎓 

• Could it be TikTok’s last days? as U.S. looks to ban the social app 🤕

• Sony files patent for ‘super-fungible’ tokens, adding to speculation of Web3 future ⚡️ 

🐊 From Fined To Partners

This past week, 100 Thieves was fined $5,000 for wear Crocs on stage…

Riot Games’ LCS, along with many other leagues, require players to have close toed shoes. But 100T League of Legends player Sniper seemed to ignore this rule, walking out on stage with open toed Crocs.

Sniper was then issued a $5,000 fine for his choice in shoes…

The official Crocs Twitter ever replied to 100 Thieves hinting that they would offer to pay for the fine.

The following day, the entire 100 Thieves roster too the stage with closed toe Croc shoes, in support of their teammate and poking fun at the interesting rule. Social media blew up, talking about how an esports pro could be fined thousands just for wear a certain style of shoes.

A few days later after all of the conversation on social media settled about the ruling, 100 Thieves officially announce their partnership with Crocs. With the announcement Crocs says they will cover the fine issued to Sniper for his choice of shoes.

👀 Our POV

I’m a massive fan of this partnership rollout. It’s very organic, bringing attention to both brands, and caused a lot of conversation on social media.

The teasers were right in front of the fans, they didn’t have to go to any websites or watch any videos, it was right on the main stage of Riot Studios.

This type of rollout helps portray Crocs as a hero, coming in and paing off the fine of a player who was wearing their shoes. 

Looking forward to see how 100T & Crocs expand on this partnership. Some custom 100T jibbitz would be crazy…

- Justin Palacios (Private Lobby)

👨‍🎓 Collegiate esports in the limelight

The sands of esports continue to shift, and with the complete resurgence of Overwatch 2 after EFG picked up operations, there have been a barrage of announcements around the title (like being added to the Esports World Cup). One such announcement that caused a lot of folks to perk up was the partnership between Luminosity Gaming and collegiate powerhouse Maryville.

With most of the OWCS (Overwatch Championship Series) being held online, and anchored in an open ecosystem that allows virtually anyone to become pro, the partnership between these two groups allows Luminosity to field a very competent team in the title for significantly less than it would cost to go into the open market and pick up players who have become accustomed to inflated salaries from the last few years… but also gives Maryville players incredible exposure and the chance to earn additional money on top of what they are already being provided on scholarship. This directly answers the question of “What can the path to pro pipeline look like?”

Big caveat here is that Maryville is the equivalent of a Tier 1 org in the scholastic space. Their Director of Esports was the GM of eUnited for nearly five years, pro players join the staff to serve as coaches, and a few of their talent even make it big. Oh, and they have a partnership (albeit on the franchise level) with a small brand called McDonald’s.

👀 Our POV

Professional esports is working its way through puberty. The industry is still trying to figure out who they are going to be when they grow up. Strategic alliances like this, taking full advantage of changes to rules and updates to title infrastructure, can only be a win for everyone. Huge ups to Daniel Clerke and Alex Gonzalez for setting a precedent here. 

My jaded thought on the other side of this coin is that very, very, very few university programs have established themselves to a point where 1) their players will be sought after by Tier 1 orgs looking to field a team in a title and 2) the finances work out. Maryville has done a hell of a job over the last 5-6 years maturing their program as the industry matured. They also win. When an org like Luminosity only has to spend <$1000 per month to secure each player on the roster because these players already have food and housing paid for, plus killer subsidized staff that can serve as a surrogate admin and coaching staff throughout the duration of the relationship, it’s a no-brainer. 

However, the collegiate level still has to catch up for this to be a wider adopted model. It’d be a whole different conversation if an org was assuming more risk on a less established program, footing the bill for scholarships and helping bankroll the maturation of an esports team at a university on the rise. Note: I have no visibility into the actual economics involved in the partnership. I’m making some assumptions based on the conversation that occurred under Clerkie’s amplification of the announcement. I could be underselling how much Luminosity is investing, but knowing that they had to trim teams late last year due to funding, I don’t think I’m far off.

- Brandon Painter (Private Lobby)

🤕 TikTok’s last days…

TikTok could be gone… In the USA at least.

This week the United States House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill that would force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell of its app in order to operate in the United States. If ByteDance fails to sell off the company within 6 months of the bill passing - TikTok would be banned in the United States.

Politicians are concerned over the security of the app and the data it collects.

The bill still has to pass through the Senate, and be signed off by the President - so TikTok is safe for now.

👀 Our POV

From a social & marketing perspective - having TikTok be banned would be a major blow for any creator or brand that has any kind of social media activity. TikTok is one of, if not, the best apps at targeting a specific demographic. 

Countless of small businesses & creators that would potential exposure due to how good TikTok’s For You Page is would be devastating. Although Instagram & YouTube provide short form alternatives - I’ve always found TikTok to be the best at targeting my personal interest

- Justin Palacios (Private Lobby)

⚡️ Sony files patent for ‘super-fungible’ tokens, adding to speculation of Web3 future

In the event that you didn’t scroll on by this article knowing that it mentions the bad “web3” word, let’s take a look at this. Firstly, filing for a patent does not guarantee anything is actually going to happen. Corporations do this all the time and we never see the products, features or developments come to life. However, Sony has been stacking patents in the same realm for a few years now. 

NFTs, or “non-fungible tokens,” are digital assets or identifiers that are recorded on a blockchain (also referred to as a “ledger”) to certify ownership and authenticity. In an increasingly digital world, they are critical components of a future-proofed infrastructure where people will be relying on certain metadata to truly validate what is theirs. This concept is key to understanding what “super-fungible tokens” are in the context of this patent.

The patent application outlines “tracking a set of gaming assets associated with a player on an ‘electronic device’ and generating metadata based on those assets. The metadata would then be used to create a super-fungible token—essentially a bundle of various NFTs—where the token is created by the storage of said metadata on a distributed ledger that is ‘associated with the gaming application.’ In Layman’s terms, this would mint in-game elements like skins, weapon blueprints, vehicles, emotes, etc. as NFTs and package them in one “super-fungible token” bundle. Why would they do this? So they could be transferred over a network that might mean from game to game or even device to device (ex. PlayStation to Xbox to Smart TV).

👀 Our POV

In my article about Team Liquid’s fan engagement platform moving to Sui, I mention how bullish I am on DOA usage in esports and Spellbound tokens to track accolades and identity across all gaming accounts… This particular use case for NFTs is kind of like Pandora's box in game development, however, it’s arguably the most commonly discussed.

For consumers? This would be fantastic. Plenty of players get heavily invested into a game, spending a good amount of money on new skins, battle passes or other in-game items, then get tired of it or don’t agree with a new release, etc. At that point, if they want to start playing something different then all of those assets are simply sunk costs. In short, that kind of sucks for players. In this scenario, on the complex end of this technological spectrum, gamers could take their Dragon Ball Z collab skin from Fortnite and carry it over into Warzone. At the very least, it would allow players to sell them to others like the remarkably popular resell market for Counter-Strike skins.

For publishers and developers, that kind of interoperability and open ecosystem for DLC/NFT support sounds like a nightmare. I can imagine financial modeling around in-game economies to support that concept or IP licensing for collabs would be a gnarly mess. Even in their application, Sony states gaming consoles available today are “technologically inadequate for the owner to use the asset across different games and/or platforms.”

As the behaviors and expectations of gamers continue to evolve, and we hit points of diminishing return for large-scale live service titles, it will be very interesting to see how/when/where the industry will start to incorporate some of this technology. For now? We don’t need to look any further than community response to Square Enix and Ubisoft trying to introduce NFTs into their orbit. Maybe someday mainstream consumers will realize there is a difference between truly owning that duck head skin and the Bored Ape PFP tech bros use as an avatar on Twitter… erm… X. 

- Brandon Painter (Private Lobby)

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