Stop exaggerating, Kluge. COH2.ORG, LLC is a partnership. It is owned in parts by myself, Seb, and Marco. After OCF, Janne252 was made a partner. We distribute a portion our earnings after a year to the owners (it's pointless to do them more often because the amounts are so small). I will admit that this has been a losing venture for us owners with regards to time spent versus money earned, on quite a grand scale. But, and I know this is hard for you to accept because it goes against your entire campaign to smear us, we do it because we love it.
I personally am in a unique position. I made good money in New York, had an incredible living situation (I built out an artist's loft and lived practically rent-free for 7 years in Brooklyn), and also made good money at a digital craft firm here in Berlin when I arrived. Since then, I have focused my efforts on COH2.ORG. Over the last 3 years, I've lost significant personal savings. This is my decision, and I don't regret it. I am immensely proud of what we've accomplished here.
COH2.ORG had never asked for anything from our users or this community until OCF. We waited around for over a year for this "$18,000 ESL Event" that Relic announced at Gamescom 2014 and nothing happened. Finally we gave up on Relic and called on the community to fund an event. The response was overwhelming. We were straight up about where the contributions would go, saying clearly on the donation page that 50% would go to the prize pool and 50% would go to COH2.ORG. We also told all of our orange staff in advance that we would not be able to pay them. The $10.8k that we raised from over 1000 people speaks the loudest, much louder than the few of you that are trying to smear us as greedy bastards. This community loves what we do because we put our heart and soul into it.
We're also transparent. Try asking Relic/SEGA/ESL about how much of a commission SEGA is paying to ESL to host these cups. Try asking Relic the details of their marketing budget, or how much it cost to fly Quinn to London to speak with a historian (nice idea, but they totally botched the stream), or do a live action trailer. All we are asking for is a tiny tiny tiny portion of that budget to help us exist. When we negotiated SNF5 with SEGA, the plan was to continue SNF and make it a regular thing.
i guess relic had two options
a) pay esl for organizing a good tournement with volunteer community casters
b) pay coh2.org to organize a probably even better tournement.
What about option c) support both?
If COH2.ORG could become a viable venture, where we could first pay the owners/coders even half of what they are worth, then we would love to expand this organization and start paying other contributors such as media managers, refs, writers, editors, moderators, artists. I am the biggest proponent of people getting credit for what they do and I value the contributions that we have all made to this site greatly.