Game developers are often encouraged to interact with professional esports players when balancing their games, but there is a curious factor that means the likes of Valve, Ubisoft and the others won’t get quite as much value as they might from those interactions.

It’s a phenomenon we see across multiple games, and can basically be summed up as "skill gatekeeping", and it’s one of the most dangerous ideas in modern gaming.

A recent example comes from Dota 2 pro iceiceice. In an interview with VPEsports, he outlines one of this ambitions for the game, telling interviewer Andreea ‘Div’ Esanu “I hope they can make the game more difficult and complicated, like unreasonably difficult. Because if the game is easy then there will be more people or even kids playing it, like what happened to LOL and Fortnite.”

He is far from the only pro in a big game calling for changes that will create a bigger skill gap between players. In Rainbow Six Siege, reigning Invitational champion and G2 talisman Pengu has been banging the drum for a while to have the one-shot headshot mechanic removed from the game, citing his belief that it is "low skill" and punishes good players who would otherwise have won the gunfight, presumably.

Cater to everyone

While it would definitely help the elite of the game, and presumably Fnatic’s Dota 2 team, to have a more "skill-based" mechanical situation than anything else, the clue is in the very first sentence as to why that would be a terrible idea fundamentally. CSGO has the same issue, as will any game that only caters to the hardcore player, and ignores the needs of the vast majority of gamers today, otherwise known as the casual players.

The massive success of League Of Legends, or even Fortnite plays entirely on this fact, although there is a chasm between the two games in other ways. Epic’s battle royale title allows for amazing clips and gameplay, but doesn’t lock casual or low-skill players into a deal with the devil where they are all prey, and never the predator. You might lose more than you win, but Fortnite at least provides moments any player can enjoy, and League’s success is also partly down to how simple it is to pick up and play.

There is no doubt that pro players, with their thousands of hours in game and massive experience of competition, can be helpful to developers looking to improve their products, but this is one way in which their opinions also have to be qualified. Unintentionally, gatekeeping comes from an understandable place, but also speaks to a lack of empathy for those who aren’t already at the summit of the skill mountain. Preventing casuals having fun is damaging in the extreme, especially when it comes from a respected player like Pengu.

Image credit: Adela Sznajder/ESL