Rebirth is fine, but I get eight hundred dollars right from the start?

Is it difficult to manage an esports club?

The answer is not difficult.

To put it simply, it's just a matter of setting a strict set of rules and regulations, creating a scientific training plan, assembling a team of knowledgeable coaches, and having a manager familiar with business dealings to handle logistics and sponsorships.

Once you achieve even a little success, maintaining a healthy business model is not a problem at all.

So here's the question.

If it's not difficult, why did the esports scene in the past repeatedly see such messy incidents as players disobeying management, AFKing in ranked games, drinking heavily late at night, using PCs, and even tackling or refusing to train?

Because the "difficulty" of management is never just on paper.

You can write "No other games are allowed during training," "No smoking or drinking allowed," and "No unauthorized departures allowed" on the management regulations—it takes less than three minutes to write these lines.

But to turn those few lines into reality, to get a group of eighteen or nineteen-year-old, hormone-fueled, internet-addicted teenagers who have just been pulled out of internet cafes to obediently follow them, the difficulty increases more than tenfold.

Not to mention esports in his previous life, for a long time his starting point was not "business" at all.

What is it?

It's a personal hobby of the rich second generation.

The young master of a wealthy family likes to play video games and thinks it would be cool to form a team and compete in tournaments, so he impulsively spends money to get one.

The boss himself leads by example, playing games with his teammates until 3 a.m. today, and tomorrow, after getting drunk, he'll put his arm around a player's shoulder and say, "Brother, play well, if you lose, it's on me."

How can you talk about strict management of a team like this?

The boss himself is the biggest rule-breaker, so how dare the manager say "no"?

In the following years, as esports gained increasing popularity, capital began to flow in on a large scale.

Money has come in, and commercialization has increased, but the problem is that years of unchecked growth have ruined the foundation of the entire industry.

From players to coaches to management, there is a general lack of something called "professionalism".

What is professional awareness?

Wearing a team uniform and taking a group photo doesn't make you professional.

Professionalism doesn't mean you pay athletes salaries and social security contributions.

It means that your entire mindset, behavior, and professional attitude must be switched from "I'm playing games" to "I'm working."

Looking at the current situation, most of the players from around 2012 simply do not have the ability to switch between these roles.

Their motivation for playing professionally is simple;

No more school! Now I can play games legitimately and even get paid for them.

When you talk to them about career planning, competitive performance management, and team discipline, what they're thinking is—

"My rank is higher than yours, what right do you have to tell me what to do?"

Not every player has the desire to win.

Not every player is willing to sacrifice their own stats and playstyle for the team.

Not every player can accept being criticized by the coach, having their problems pointed out by their teammates, or having their salary deducted by the management.

Many people become professional gamers because of the "freedom"—the freedom to play games, the freedom to stay up all night, the freedom to smoke and swear.

You then tell him: He must get up on time, train for more than ten hours, cannot go out to play casually, and must review and reflect on his mistakes if he loses.

Then why is he still playing professionally? He feels you've taken away his freedom.

So the reason why so many clubs were poorly managed in the past was not because the system was flawed, but because it couldn't be effectively implemented.

Because that's how the top-level managers got their positions.

If you dare to punish him, he'll dare to cause trouble.

If you dare to bench him, he'll dare to post long essays on Weibo.

To put it bluntly, if the management doesn't have enough backbone, the players won't take you seriously.

All of this was disrupted by the emergence of the first true game-changer in the domestic League of Legends esports scene in 2014 – EDG.

EDG was the first to realize that if LPL wanted to become a proper league, it had to take a professional approach.

How to specialize?

Learn LCK.

Learn from the Korean training system, the Korean management model, and the Korean professional attitude that "winning is the only standard."

EDG maximized the intensity of their training matches, fixed their schedules, linked Rank scores to performance, and wrote player conduct guidelines into their contracts—not just as a formality, but as a genuine military-style management system that was strictly enforced.

So?

EDG has dominated the LPL league since 2014.

Five years, three championships, MSI champion, multiple appearances at the World Championship, and finally, in 2021, he realized his dream of winning the World Championship.

It wasn't because they were lucky, but because they got a head start—while others were still just having fun, they were already training to professional standards.

The difference lies in the difference between professional awareness and a "dimensional reduction attack".

Let's go back to HWG.

Since Lin Shu knows the importance of professional management, and he has the "Number One in the National Server" title that other management teams can only dream of, which gives him a special advantage over his players, what is he waiting for?

Of course, the first thing to do is to set up the management system as soon as possible.

Conducting trial training, assigning tasks, signing contracts, and developing management manuals—these might seem like making a mountain out of a molehill in 2012.

But Lin Shu himself knew that he wasn't writing rules for a new team; he was laying the foundation for a future.

After all, if you can't even manage a bunch of seventeen or eighteen-year-olds, how can you expect to build an aircraft carrier that can ultimately win the e-commerce war?

For HWG, Lin Shu's core requirements for his team are "discipline first, training is king, form is paramount, and the team is more important than the individual."

There are no "celebrity privileges" or "dean's exemption rights".

No matter how high your score or how skillful your gameplay is, you're still only one-fifth of the team.

Lin Shu never intended to open this door from the very beginning.

Some people might ask;

Lin Shu, you are the number one player in the national server, and you are both a boss and a mentor. If you want to be a privileged player, who would dare to say a word against it?

You can completely make yourself the core and let the other four people revolve around you, creating a "four-protect-one" strategy that will last forever.

Lin Shu had considered this script.

It's fair to say that if Lin Shu wanted to, with his current personal talent, understanding of the game, and knowledge of some talented players, if he were determined to become the ultimate demon king in this timeline, building a super team every year and ruling the entire league for more than a decade, it wouldn't be a difficult task at all.

But it is not necessary.

We can't do that.

Why?

What he wants is not ten or eight championships, but the long-term survival of the esports ecosystem.

League of Legends professional esports, limited by the game itself, is inherently inferior to traditional sports like basketball and football, which can transcend centuries and be passed down through generations.

If you make others run alongside you for three to five years and still see no hope, who would want to play with you?

The final outcome is basically that the audience leaves, the sponsors leave, the sponsors all leave, and the league collapses.

Lin Shu's fundamental goal was never to win the championship.