The relative power of players. teams, and esports organizations in Smite.

With EmilZy's recently announcing his retirement and him bringing the discussion of Organizations and their very questionable negotiating practice I wanted to discuss the history and current state of the relative bargaining power of players and organizations throughout smite.



Initially in Smite esports almost all the power was with the players. Players qualified into an SPL spot and they did not need an org. Many of these players did sign with an org because of the benefits but it was certainly not mandatory. Players had the power in this scenario.



Now how players are signed to orgs is a team of 5 players will email their roster and their pitch to an org and sometimes an org will say maybe this player instead of this one and then if the org likes the team they can start negotiating. In this scenario as one can see orgs have a lot of power. Almost all of it in fact. A near complete reversal of how it used to be.



Which is better?



This is a very complex topic and one I am not sure if I am qualified to fully discuss but I certainly do have some reservations about the current system and I believe things could be improved.



With the first system mentioned, one generally got better teams in the SPL than they did now. I do not mean that parity was higher or better back in S2 or whatever because it wasn't. What I mean is of the available players, when players had to qualify into a spot the SPL teams were generally the made of the best available players more so than they are now.



Why is this?



Because players have to actually qualify you are testing their actual merit for the league before the league even starts. Many times orgs do not know as much about the pro players as other pro players, and because of this can choose weaker teams than some available. For example, orgs may choose teams off name recognition, or community presence and less so off how good a player is because it is hard to really know how good a player is in Smite, especially if you're not playing ranked, or scrimming, or watching a lot of SPL and SML. Org owners don't really know the "up and comers" so you end up with bigger more established names that may not actually be better than some lesser known players. I pretty much qualified to SPL in S2 entirely this way. Because I knew my team was good enough to qualify even above teams that had much "bigger" names.



But there are disadvantages to this in terms of competitiveness. Teams were and still are made entirely as groups of 5. Many time teams based around friendship are made. And many times this can be very good for team environment and the like but it can also be bad in that players that may not really be as good get on a team because they are friends with them.



However, this still occurs in the current system. This is not a "relic" of the old player power system. This still happens. Orgs aren't individual assembling teams, its still a group of 5 players. Just now they pitch themselves to an org instead of qualifying. So an org makes a decision on the merit of the players instead of a tournament or round robin making that decision.



There are obviously advantages to the current system or we would not be using it. Having orgs in the league guaranteed brings more exposure to Smite through social media and the like (not all orgs have been great with this with Smite). Orgs can handle the in person moving process (hypothetically) much better than a group of 5 players and HiRez alone. And they add a sense of legitimacy to the league. Seeing an actual org in the top spot instead of insert meme team name definitely gives Smite a more legitimate and professional appearance. In addition an online/in person qualification process would be very awkward with cross region.



But there are some very definite problems with the current system. As I mentioned earlier I believe it leads to slightly worse teams. But the more pressing issue is how orgs negotiate contracts and how they provide for their players. As EmilZy discussed some orgs have a group chat they have basically discussed expectations for salary of players. I don't know what else to call this besides an extremely blatant abuse of their power. Because if one does not sign with an org they are not in the SPL. This means orgs can lowball teams and teams will often just take it because if they don't get in the SPL they're fucked. They just want that security. This is even more of a problem cutting the SPL to 8 teams. There are some genuinely good SPL caliber players that will not be in the SPL and it will not be their choice. With such a high supply and the orgs having extreme bargaining power they can kinda railroad players into pretty poor deals. Another consequence of this is because the org has the spot they can just wait. Just wait til the deadline. Offer a team the minimum and call it good. That team has no choice but to accept or they're not playing SPL! This was definitely something that was kinda done last year by some orgs.



And another really big issue with some of the orgs is that their supposed expertise and outside resources that should be used to make the process of moving to Atlanta and visas and getting a house an promoting Smite and all of that doesn't really materialize(want to emphasize SOME).

Last year after rampant visa issues and me hearing countless horror stories and nightmares of how teams found houses I could not have been more disappointed in our system. Some teams players didn't have five actual bedrooms. They just didn't. The org just said no. So a player would sleep in the dining room. That was his room. Many players didn't get visas until half way through the year. I believe a player last year didn't get a player's visa all year. Other players didn't get one until the second split or later. And if you don't have a players visa you can't get paid while you're in America. So multiple players last year just didn't get paid for however many months of the season until they went back to the country they came from. These were not isolated incidents. Stuff like this was happening all the time. And to add to the fact that nearly all the money that some of these orgs put into Smite is coming from HiRez themselves. It is literally free money.



The reason stuff like this can happen is because of very poor "regulation" of the orgs in Smite. Part of it appears to be that not many orgs are interested in Smite so it is hard for HiRez to get another really big org to take that spot so the current org can kinda just go ligma. And its hard to do anything about it. Ideally HiRez could set very strict rules regarding the orgs and just kick them out if it goes bad. And they have made some moves toward that this year especially regarding visas. But when there appears to be a somewhat limited demand for SPL spots and not that many bigger legitimate orgs it is hard to be able bargain and enforce these ideal rules.



For me the biggest issue is in the negotiation process. Because its an effective oligopoly and there is no player's union if an org just waits they can fuck some team of players every year without fail. Because those players have no choice. It comes off as very predatory.



I would like to see an attempt at stricter rules for orgs in how they treat players mid year. I believe there was a lot of issues with this last year and I think its something that should be looked at. In addition to this some change in how player's sign with orgs or something. I don't know the ideal system for this and its a very hard topic to figure out the ideal labor market in a closed system where players are in groups of five. Also potentially discussion treating players as individuals and not a group of five. I am unsure if this will help and I have no idea (doubt) that orgs would ever invest enough money in Smite for this to really be viable but its a discussion that should be had. I do also believe if orgs invested more money into actually scouting players there would be a better chance lesser known players could be discovered and less so off name recognition.



(Really want to reinforce this is SOME orgs. I have heard great things about some of the orgs and really not so great things about some of the others)



TL;DR: Orgs are an effective oligopoly in how teams are currently signed in Smite. Because of this orgs have a lot of power and some have abused it. The move away from player qualification has generally led to weaker teams in Smite than possible. Some changes in terms of enforcing how orgs treat players during the season and how contracts are negotiated are needed and potentially moving towards treating players as individuals and orgs having actual scouting in Smite could increase competition.

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