PureBlue · @TMPureblue
9th Feb 2017 from TwitLonger
A sport owned by a company
By PureBlue
In this text, I will have focus on the CSCO Scene, but for the most, the article can relate to other E-sports as well.
When we look at the future of E-sports, it is quite bright. The number of viewers is sky rocking compared to just 2 or 3 years ago and the amount of money being pumped into games like CSGO, Dota and LOL is higher than ever. We have companies like Valve, Blizzard and Riot Games to thank for that. But E-sports in general is highly dependable on these founders of the games. We don’t know if Valve, all of a sudden, will stop developing on CSGO or when/if they will release a new version of the game series. What if Valve decides to stop their engagement in funding and producing the majors? And is it really up to Valve to decide who gets banned from the pro scene and who doesn’t? Shouldn’t it, in the perfect world, be a special E-sports court, without any interests economically speaking? All of these factors creates a unique situation, where a company is in the middle and controls an entire E-sport.
I think the situation, as it is right now, is pretty unstable economically. We need some independent authorities like football has FIFA and Tennis has ITF. The teams also need reassurance that the game will be developed on for the next years, so that they know what to expect. This will make it easier for teams to sign longer contracts with both players and sponsors, as we now know that there will be an E-sport next year as well. This will bring stability and transparency to the teams, as well as to all other economically dependable parties in CSGO.
As of right now, Valve is deciding who should be banned, on what groundwork and for how long. If you know the basics about democracy, you should know, that the power should be divided. In Denmark for example, the power is divided in a legislative, an executive and a judiciary unit. This brings legal certainty for the nations citizens. A famous example of how valve are working, is the IBuyPower betting scandal. Valve was ruling in this case and was doing it without any previous convictions or any written law against match fixing. They were doing judgement without any other legal tools, then their common sense, their own interests and the voice of the people. The problem with this way of judging, is the uncertainty in not knowing when you are doing something wrong. Clearly the iBP team knew they were doing something wrong, but they did not know the consequence of their actions. This is an unacceptable way of dealing with situations like that and the judicial system in E-sports must be changed soon, if we want E-sports to continue to be growing.
To some up my points of view, we need transparency from valve. Not just what patch they are working on, but a reassurance that the game is still being worked on next year and that their engagement is not stopping all of a sudden. We also need a higher legal certainty and to get that, we need democracy.
Thank you for reading this and I hope you like it.