MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Former StarCraft II player Lee “Flash” Young-ho has claimed that salaries for players in Korea were capped at 70 million won, which is roughly $60,000.
The revelation came during a livestream on Afreeca TV, which was then translated by Yahoo eSports. In the video Flash claims that teams and organisation restricted the amount players could earn in order to put money into other eSports such as League of Legends.
“Now that I’m done with StarCraft, I can talk about it. The most regrettable thing, Zest was really awesome, right? It doesn’t matter how good you are, in StarCraft 2 [the administrators] set the pay cap to 70 million won, they’re not going to give you more than that,” Flash said.
“When I retired, I was so sad when I heard this. Even though he’s doing really well, it’s a sad reality that he’s only making 70 million won. The reality is that [the administrators] had to invest mostly in League of Legends.”
“They set it to 70 million. The most a person gets is 75,000,000, maybe. That’s what the salary is, no matter how well you do.”
Flash later went on to say that just before he retired in late 2015 he was earning 100 million won, but that was because he was one of the biggest names in the world and had a good relationship with his team. He also said that it is “really sad” that LoL players in the country regularly break 100 million won but it effectively never happens for StarCraft players.
