To make a very long story short, ESE is E-Sports Ecosystem, a cryptocurrency that was founded by Lap Chi Duong, a Calgary-based TO who is the president and founder of Canada Cup. ESE was heavily pushed as the next big thing in making tournaments and players not have to lose so much cash going to events and was pushed heavily, being a main sponsorship at Evo and having players like Justin Wong, SherryJenix, Neo, Coach Steve, etc. rock the tag and be sponsored by them.
Go to their website, and take a look for yourselves!
http://www.esportsecosystem.com/
Oh...
Suffice to say, I'm pretty tired of these pretty obviously whack business ventures pumping and dumping into the FGC, hemorrhaging cash, then quietly restructuring or folding with a completely different plan. ESE started off bad when they opened up pre-sale and then closed it almost immediately because of a "significant investment," which is code word in blockchain circles for someone buying up a ton of it just to make it look important so there is demand, and then once people invest, they dump out and make some cash while having an ultimately worthless product. Luckily, this kind of thing stopped working because crypto is a hellscape with no regulation, so the trick isn't new.
Now the common defense is that "Oh, these guys just wanted to make money, what's the harm?" Well, when almost every major sponsor, including Echo Fox, spends thousands of dollars in an FGC investment while having no clue what they're doing and end up bowing out after like a year, this makes every other sponsor with something between their shoulders go "Yeugh..." because they can't figure out how to make any goddamn money either because they don't know any better. So they stay away.
I don't necessarily
want a bunch of corporate money to become the standard, but if people are gonna make any money consistently that's how it's gonna be, and yet there is no quality control, so crappy sponsors like this run wild. It's so frustrating. Further reading from me on the subject:
https://themsfightingwordsblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/money-for-nothing-fgc-e-sports-is-in-desperate-need-of-serious-people/
https://themsfightingwordsblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/loose-screws-its-not-wrong-to-question-fgc-events-people/