Heroes of the Storm Global Championship to Offer Crowdfunding For Payouts

In a move similar to what has been used in many Dota 2 competitions over the years, crowdfunding will be utilized in the upcoming Heroes of the Storm Global Championship event. Blizzard and Twitch have set up a new partnership called HGC Cheer.

This is where people can send Cheer funds to the championship as a means of showing one’s support of an individual team. The teams that are the most successful in the program will get a part of the overall cut.

The HGC Cheer feature will be offered for all 32 teams competing in the HGC. These include the eight teams that will each compete the North American, European, Chinese and Korean regions.

The feature will start working on August 1 and will be good for the HGC although it may expand to other events over time.

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This marks the first time that Blizzard has gotten into the field of crowdfunding for getting funds for its eSports competitions. Valve has been supporting crowdfunding for an extensive time with Dota 2 as more than $20 million was raised for a prize fund for a recent event. Riot Games has also delved into the crowdfunding scene for League of Legends competitions in recent time and is expected to expand its offerings for crowdfunding.

How Cheering Works

The Cheer feature on Twitch work in that a player will send a series of Bits to a team. This allows a person to send a message to a particular team. The Bits used in Twitch are considered to be virtual currency in some form.

People can send messages to individual teams in the competition as they see fit with a series of Bits sent to each one. Teams will get half of one cent for each Bit that people use to cheer them with. This allows for teams to get the funds that they are looking for when competing in different events.

People who use certain amounts of bits can also qualify to get into some special rewards. In particular, people can earn special team-specific rewards that can be used within individual games being offered on the site. These include rewards that people may use as they are playing the games that they are interested in along the Blizzard network.

Each Twitch user can also track their favorite teams on their profiles. The cheers they send can also go towards community-wide goals that might be set up by individual teams as a means of helping to support various funding functions within the community.

It is unclear as to how much money could be raised for the upcoming HGC event. If the move with Twitch proves to be successful then there is a chance that such crowdfunding efforts will become stronger on some of the other Blizzard-oriented eSports competitions held throughout the year.

The Heroes of the Storm competition series will continue on August 4 as the Western Clash takes place. This comes as European teams, particularly Fnatic, have been dominant in the Heroes world throughout much of this past season.

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