I didn't expect you to understand @aggroed, but I appreciate the attempt at addressing my issues. It comes down to this on the fee issue.

#1 there are many ways to keep 8000 people from entering a tournament (how bout starting with their ELO rankings to qualify for it?) ... So charging a fee to enter and saying that's handling the 8000 people issue is a hollow argument. A fee will do the trick for sure, but there are other ways that don't require you breaking the promises you made to people.

#2 What promise did you break in this case? How about first you said 70% of the pack sales would be given back out in the tourneys as prizes. Then when you realized that you had to have other expenses factored in, you changed it to 30% of the pack sales would be given back as prizes.

I do not EVER remember you saying that people would have to buy their cards to play and THEN pony up money as entry fee in order to claim their potential at that pot. Its just wrong. We bought the cards, we earned the right to the prize pool that was paid for with the sales of those cards. Period. To require more money to be spent once the product has already been purchased in order to get something promised is the definition a scam. I'm not accusing you of running a scam, but you should think long and hard about the implications of how this appears. Today you determined that the large prize pools go to the 5 steem payers, what about tomorrow or next month, will you make them pay 100 steem to enter to get the money that was paid in by the previous card buyers?... When you can just do whatever the hell you want and think everyone should be ok with it, then just where is the limit?

You are in effect giving the money from the card sales to the people that have enough money to pay your entry fee, all in the guise of keeping out 8000 people from entering. Considering your team can do amazing things, why don't you try to simply add a person's elo rating from the daily quests as the entry criteria? If a person is a bronze level player in the quests, they can only enter the bronze level tourneys? That would solve the problem right there. Any excuse as to why you are going to give away the prize money that has been "paid in" by the past card buyers to only those that can afford or want to "buy-in again" is simply wrong.

I'm not going to waste a lot of time here debating if @aggroed is a bad marketing person or not. But I will say that the numbers don't lie. Not the numbers you like to throw out like 12000 accounts with a steemmonster card in them, but the numbers of active players that are playing the game, the number of packs that have been selling, and the number of active buyers you have in the secondary market. Ohh and one more set of numbers, how many players have left the game out of disenchantment? Those are the numbers you should be measuring. I know you know them, as does Matt. You can't gloss over those when you give yourself the report card, you can pretend that there are "other" factors when making excuses, but the bottom line is those numbers are flat out ugly. You've lost some really great people and someone should take some responsibility for that (at least that's how it happens in the real world).

Ok that's enough for me and we can agree that we will never see eye to eye on this. The sad thing is I'm trying to help your organization by stopping you from making a very very bad mistake. If I didn't care, I would've left quietly and not said a word. I will live through this loss of my personal investment as I have done many many times in the past. But I wanted to see you all succeed. I wanted to be see the friends I've met here do well. Sadly if you don't get it, then there's not much else I can do.

I've said my peace and tried to help you, so take it however you want because I did try. But I'll leave you with one thought that you had mentioned in the past that I knew also to be true. The value of the currency is only dependent on the faith in the people that control it. Your currency is the steemmonster cards and if you look at it objectively, you should be searching for ways to increase that faith and not destroy it. Contrary to your spin, its not the market that's pulling Steemonster cards down, its the faith in you that's been shaken.

ps... It took a lot to push me over the edge, but you did it. I just hope you don't lose the next guy that comes along and wants to help. And btw, for the record I look at ALL aspects of your stakeholders. You are totally wrong when you assume I only look at things from one point of view. I ran organizations with over 1000 employees. You learn to look at all aspects, which is EXACTLY why I know you are fucking up. I have thought it through and that's exactly why I'm pointing it out. Its a wound that will severely hurt you and may end up killing your organization.