The largest transition in esports history has been upon us, the successful pro-gamer
Nal_rA got a wooping
$200,000 for switching to team KTF. Nal_rA has been doing very well recently, getting to the finals of the three recent tournaments he has participated in and winning two of those. Together with NaDa he is generally considered the best Starcraft player at the moment. KTF also recruited the prominent zerg player
YellOw, giving him a salary of $85,000 per year. So KTF are looking very strong, with players such as the aforementioned Nal_rA and Yellow, as well as Chojja, Reach and Sync.
Shortly after Nal_rA and Yellow joined KTF, Boxer's team, 4U, announced a new sponsor. It is the largest telecom company in Korea, SK Telecom, who will be sponsoring the team. The contract with
Boxer is said to be even better than the $200,000 Nal_rA got, but no numbers have been mentioned. Apart from that salary, the team will also get a 3550 sq office and a 12 seat van.
The official rankings made by the Korea E-Sports Association have been updated. Worth mentioning is Nal_rA who is the first Protoss player ever to reach the top2 and WCG winner
Ogogo who was not ranked in the previous update is now at #9. He is also the only one on the list who does not belong to a team. All the players except
Grrrr... and
Elky are Koreans, though both Grrr and Elky live and play in Korea.
01 NaDa
02 Nal_rA
03 Yellow
04 XellOs
04 BoxeR
06 Zeus
07 Kingdom
08 Chojja
09 Ogogo
09 iloveoov
11 Silent_Control
12 Reach
13 Junwi_[saM]
14 HOT.Forever
15 Sync
16 IntoTheRainbow
17 ElkY
18 GoodFriend
19 Jinsu
20 TheMarine
21 JJu
22 Grrrr...
23 TheWind
24 SC_Side
25 Gorush
26 ForU
27 kOs
28 Eros~Rage
29 ChRh
30 ArtOfHan
If you ever wished you could hear BoxeR, NaDa, Yellow, ToSsGirL, TheMarine and the other pro-gamers sing, your dream has come true. They have released an album with only pro-gamers singing. How good it sounds? Well, I best let you decide that for yourself :) (note that you need a player capable of streaming wma to listen to them, such as Windows Media player)
Sources: KeSPA,
StarcraftGamers,
WGTour and
Team Liquid