Category: Tournaments

PbNation has made another post going into more detail about the whole NPPL issue.

Here’s the deal. The NPPL excluded films crews to film the center court, and only the center court, for the Boston NPPL. PbNation didn’t like this because it affects MWAG (they can give other reasons, but it’s MWAG), so they decide to exclude the NPPL in their forums by censoring NPPL sites like NPPLLive.com and NPPL.tv and closing the NPPL forum, though that’s now up in the air.

Seems kinda childish and hypocritical to me. It’s like a kid getting his bottle taken away, so he takes the other kid’s toy away to make it even.

Let’s just go through some of the absolutely ridiculous statements he made.

We are and have been 100% in support of paintball leagues, including the NPPL.

That’s why we’re censoring NPPL sites and possibly closing the NPPL forums, because we support them.

Cutting media is not growing the sport it is going backwards.

Last time I checked, NPPLLive.com was media. You’re cutting them from the site. Seems like you’re causing the sport to go backwards.

MWAG didn’t ask us to do anything.

Possibly, but if it was some other company that you weren’t “best friends” with, would you still do this? Nope, you wouldn’t give them the time of the day.

Excluding isn’t the right thing to do.

Like excluding the NPPL from your forums?

PbNation placing the NPPL on the swear filter is a symbolic act at best as it will have almost no impact on the operations of the league, players or industry.

So when you add something to the swear filter, it doesn’t affect them? So I guess that whole Virtue crap was just a ruse.

I think I need to reconsider completing closing the NPPL forum. I’ll certainly do that in the next few days and as you know the NPPL forum is still open and was never closed.

Translation: I don’t have as much power over everyone as I thought I did, so I’m going to keep the NPPL forum open, since I almost screwed myself over and almost lost a lot of users.

So PbNation, fix it. Remove the sites from the swear filter and don’t touch the NPPL forum. You really are just digging yourself a deeper hole and pissing more people off with all of your shenanigans. If you keep it up, there will be a site to take your place just like you took PbCity’s place.

Aww, it’s so sad to see such a cute couple break it off, but that’s just what PbNation is doing. They’ve had enough of the NPPL and all their shenanigans.

So what was it that finally caused them to break it off? The NPPL won’t allow people to film the center court due to their deal with Fox Sports. Yes, a forum that doesn’t film anything and has no use for center court filming is banning the NPPL from their forum because of it.

That sounds a little weird, doesn’t it? But they say that it’s hurting Monkey With A Gun productions and they’ve had a long standing relationship with them.

But people are completely behind PbNation, saying it’s a great move. Really? Great move? Come on, now. You think they did this for the “greater good”.

If I know Ed, which I’m going to say I do, he did this for nothing other than money. PbNation has a business relationship with MWAG. They give them a forum and sell their DVDs, which I’m sure they’re making a decent profit from. If MWAG can’t film, it’ll take longer and be harder to make their next DVD, which means they can’t sell it, which, in turn, means PbNation doesn’t make any profit from selling it.

It’s all about money kids. The NPPL did the Fox Sports deal for money, and PbNation bans NPPL for money. Hell, they could also be pissed that they aren’t getting a cut from the Fox Sports.

The reason why Fox Sports wants exclusive use of the field is because if other people film, they could release films of the games before it airs causing less people to watch it on TV.

How many of you would watch a football game if you could’ve watched it hours or days before?

I wouldn’t. I completely understand why they wanted the rights. They are making a decent sized investment in this, and they don’t want some random guy showing up and taking away viewers.

But here’s the thing, does the NPPL need PbNation? Nope. They’ll be on TV soon enough, and people will look for the NPPL after watching. They aren’t going to look for PbNation or even know what it is.

Personally, I think it’s time for NPPL, or more precisely their parent company, Pacific Paintball, to get involved in the whole web game. The just bought PB2X. Buying or creating a forum or “social networking site” definitely isn’t out of their reach. And with 2 larger companies like the NPPL and PB2X backing it, it can probably succeed pretty quickly.

Does PbNation need the NPPL? Yes, probably. It definitely won’t be in their favor in the long run. A good amount of users go to the NPPL forum everyday. Some might stick around, but a lot will just migrate to one of the other forums out there that allows the NPPL. It’s not like it won’t be hard to find another.

Banning the largest paintball tournament series? Yeah, slick move PbNation. You’ve put your own money grubbing interests over your users yet again.