Tobi Lutke, Shopify CEO, Turns Out To Be An Esports Fan

Several days ago, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke tweeted this message:

What Does It Mean for StarCraft

As an esport, StarCraft and StarCraft 2 are not even nearly as popular as they were some 7-8 years ago. With the rise of other, more entertaining esports, such as Dota 2, League of Legends and so on, a highly technical game such as StarCraft was bound to lose ground and most of its player base.

Because of the delicate situation it finds itself in, StarCraft could obviously benefit from any kind of divine intervention from the outside world. Because the scene itself is quite limited in what it can do to compete with today’s esports giants. The difficulty and brutality of the game (trust me, going 1v1 against someone in SC2 is a form of intellectual MMA) make it far less appealing than a game like Fortnite. Which is one of the reasons why Fortnite has over 250 million players while StarCraft 2 only has hundreds of thousands.

What Does It Mean for Esports

Events like this remind us of something that will turn out to be truer and truer as the years go by: esports has a lot of fans around the world. And as those fans age, some of them will hold quite a bit of power in society. And guess what that will mean for an industry that already has over 450 million fans around the globe.

Of course, Tobi’s intervention may not mean much for the scene in the short run, but it does signal a possibility that many are not even taking into account. Which is this: if things don’t naturally happen on their own, people with power can make them happen. Examples include Valve’s 2011 decision to offer a prize pool of $1.6 million for the first edition of The International. Or Epic Game’s decision (although it’s only speculation) to ask Drake to help a streamer like Ninja and draw a massive amount of attention to their game.