When e-sports gets big enough where it requires its own separate regulation body to monitor and enforce anti-doping measures and maintain safe spaces, then it’s probably time for trolls, spammers, hackers and cheaters to hang up their boots and find another hobby, because a governing body means that the e-sports market is more corporate than ever before.

According to Gamespot, the Electronic Sports League has announced that they’ve partnered with various popular e-sports teams such as Fnatic, Natus Vincere, EnVyUs, Virtus.Pro, G2 Esports, Faze, mousesports, and Ninjas in Pyjamas, along with various other third-party authorities to make up the World Esports Association.

The group is designed to work somewhat as an independent body to perform drug tests, prohibit hacking and cheating in professional tournaments, and limit disruptive behavior such as match fixing and illegal gambling.

According to a statement issued by WESA…

“WESA is an open and inclusive organisation that will further professionalize esports by introducing elements of player representation, standardised regulations, and revenue sharing for teams,” “WESA will seek to create predictable schedules for fans, players, organisers and broadcasters, and for the first time bring all stakeholders to the discussion table.”

The whole point of the organization is to work out things like table sizes, curbing corruption involving cheating and match fixing, as well as organizing doping tests to prevent those popping pills from gaining an advantage like a guy popping Viagra in a public porn contest.

The main idea is to further legitimatize e-sports by establishing more regulations in hopes of preventing the general public at large from looking down on the electronic sports league as a lesser sport. However, it’s hard to get gamers to not look down on e-sports as a lesser sport.

Anyway, according to WESA, they’ve been at the table for an awfully long time trying to get all this stuff sorted, stating…

“The formation of WESA concludes over a year of negotiation between many teams and organisers, and it aims to bring much needed structure to a crowded esports ecosystem,”[…] “The ESL Pro League for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will be the first professional esports competition that will be played under WESA regulations.”

Other popular games played throughout the ESL circuit includes Mortal Kombat X, Dota 2 and League of Legends. It’s likely that the ESL will want to standardize these policies across the board to make e-sports look more appealing to non-gaming investors. The whole e-sports industry is expected to boom with 1.4 billion fans in 2017 and will be worth more than $4 billion by 2018.

(Main image courtesy of TweakTown)