Well for one, /v/ isn't hardcore, the massive amounts of ass pained complaining about shit like Doom Eternal pretty much proved that.
Two, esports were the end goal of local/niche competitive scenes in whatever game you could think of. My dad used to tell me he'd go to Tribes 1 LANs playing against teams that used to take that game seriously. However, what was good and fun for a social competitive environment in the game you loved soon got tainted with overarching greed. The inherent spotlight put on players that would rape you in game turned an entire generation of gamers into a bunch of drooling retards that thought there was enough space for them to make it into the literal .01% of all players. It ruined casual gaming, and 'competitive ranked' was filled with people that had massive egos and zero credentials. The esports scenes in question turning to whatever fragile sponsorships they could get. The whole entire sphere of streaming that launched from good players with no personality destroying lobbies so all the kids that worshipped them tried to copy the exact same shit and wasted their lives. It not only ruined the player ecosystem, but it also ruined a lot of future game design. The rape of RTS has still yet to be undone.
Like the idea of it all is simple and cool on the surface. What if people watched high level video game content? And we could get paid for it? Any kid would think that's sick. Except the larger you get the more the soul gets sucked out of your scene. Ah yes, thank you Geico for this ASSFAGGOTS replay. Oh no did that player say a swear??? ADVERTISER-SAMA GET DOWN!!!