The board members of the GEF with Singapore’s Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Grace Fu (centre). Credit: Straits Times

Recently, the Global Esports Federation was announced in Singapore to much fanfare, and not a lot of enthusiasm from the esport community.

Paul “Redeye” Chaloner is a British esports host who has worked some of the biggest tournaments in esports, including The International for Dota 2.

Today, we will try to understand why the Global Esports Federation (which we will shorten to the GEF) has received such a cool response, and why it means it probably won’t see a lot of success in realising its goals.

The Board

Let’s first look at who exactly sits on the board of directors, which was apparently the biggest announcement of the entire ceremony.

The president is Mr Chris Chan, who is also secretary-general of the Singapore National Olympics Council, which is in charge of all Singaporean national sports teams. This is a rather “meh” decision: obviously, given the GEF’s founding in Singapore and apparent links to the government (given Minister Grace Fu’s attendance at the ceremony), they would want a Singaporean in charge. No major objections to this appointment.

The GEF also has 3 vice-presidents. One of them is Ms Charmaine Crooks, who represented Canada at the Olympics and won a silver medal in 1984 with the 4x400m relay team. A quick Google search also reveals that she is apparently a voting member of the International Olympic Committee, whatever that means. Sure, another member with extensive links to traditional sports. Given its goals to “ establish an athlete commission, with a focus on athlete well-being, development of standards for fair play, career support, and education to ensure safe, doping-free and ethically compliant practices” (a hefty goal indeed), as well as to “ develop world-class governance structures and guidelines for the GEF”, it makes sense to have someone with the relevant experience on the board.

The second vice-president is Mr Wei Jizhong, who is “ an honorary life vice-president of the Olympic Council of Asia”. This starts to concern me, because even though Mr Wei has given a couple of talks on esports in China, we now have 3 out of the 4 highest positions on the GEF being filled by people who are in the traditional sports industry, and zero of those appear to have any relevant experience in esports. That’s quite worrying for an organisation that brands itself as being “comprised of world-class experts with significant breadth of experience”. I honestly do not see what exactly Mr Wei brings to the table in terms of helping to develop esports, or being “ the voice and authority for the worldwide e-sports movement”, as Mr Chan put it.

At least the fourth and final vice-president does have something to do with esports. He is Mr Edward Cheng, vice-president of Tencent, which was the GEF’s global founding partner. Tencent, of course, is a gigantic corporation that has some kind of stake in almost every esport on the globe, and is responsible for a couple more as well. But how can esports trust a federation where just 1 of its top 4 members actually seems to know anything about esports?

Tencent’s Involvement

Ironically enough, the member of the board with the most obvious links to esports was the one that came under the most fire from the community. This may seem surprising, until you consider the fact that there surely is a conflict of interest somewhere in having a member of a company that literally owns several esports titles on the board of a organisation that wants to lead esports globally. With trust in Chinese technology and Tencent at an all-time low especially among Western audiences, many were asking themselves the same question: How do I know that Tencent will not use their influence to benefit the esports they own through this federation? What could their motive be in helping to found a federation for esports?

Tencent vice-president Edward Cheng, who is also vice-chairman of the GEF. Credit: Tencent Holdings

If you are unfamiliar with the state of Tencent’s esports holdings, you may be surprised at the information I will present. According to Business Insider, Tencent currently outright owns Riot Games, which is the developer of League of Legends, the biggest esport in the world. It also owns 40% of Epic Games, who are responsible for Fortnite, the best-known esport in the world. It also owns 84% of Supercell, the developer for beloved mobile game such as Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, and Brawl Stars.

Not only that, but Tencent also happens to have minority stakes in Activision (publisher of Call of Duty) and Ubisoft (publisher of Rainbow Six Siege). This means they basically have a stake in every major esport in the world, apart from those run by Valve (Counter Strike and Dota 2) and Psyonix (Rocket League). I would count Super Smash Bros among those who have escaped the far-reaching arm of Tencent, but its developer Nintendo doesn’t support the esport scene anyway.

Then there are the mobile games to consider. Tencent is the developer for Arena of Valor, one of the biggest mobile esport games, which was featured at the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games. It’s also the entry point for many developers seeking to get their games into China’s massive market. Long story short, Tencent has a ridiculous amount of power in the gaming world.

Will Tencent use their power to skew the actions or motives of this new federation? Probably not, but one can never be quite sure.

The Goals of the GEF

Let’s move away from Chinese conglomerates and onto the target audience of this new federation. Who exactly is the GEF trying to help?

The short answer is, no one. See, esports has been doing quite well for some time before the GEF came along. One often hears in the news about new valuations upwards of a billion for the esports industry, or about the ridiculous amounts of money to be made. And if we look at the GEF’s objectives:

None of these seem exceptionally useful, or like services which are not already in place. Let’s go down the list one by one.

National esports federations (it is esports and not e-sports, come on GEF, what are you doing) are not very useful in the esports context. If we look at national sports federations, they mainly exist to coordinate the selection and sending of athletes to represent the nation at various international competitions, such as the Olympics, World Cup for various sports, and regional Games. Nothing of that sort exists in esports, with the exception of Overwatch, which has an Overwatch World Cup every year. It would be nice to have the government fund the national team’s trip, but is it really necessary to have a national esports federation just for one tournament in one esport?

Currently, esports teams are made up of players from across the globe, and owned by companies, with almost no tournaments in which players represent their home countries. That alone removes the entire impetus for having a national federation.

Evil Geniuses’ Dota 2 roster for TI9 featured a Pakistani, a Swede, an Israeli, a Canadian, and a Dane. This diversity is typical of many teams today.

And sure, national federations can play other important roles like taking care of players’ well-being, or providing facilities for players to practice, but the unfortunate truth of the matter is that in esports this is basically like saying you will provide them with a LAN cafe to use for free. It already exists and you are only making the facilities more convenient, instead of providing something which players would actually need. Maybe I’m short-sighted or lacking in imagination, but I can’t think of anything a national esports federation would provide that would genuinely be appreciated.

This particular goal just really seems like a checkbox for getting esports into the Olympics. One problem: esports doesn’t actually want to be in the Olympics. For quite some time now esports has been shifting away from trying to follow traditional sports models, or get into the Olympics. With strong opposition from both the International Olympic Committee and esports community, it just doesn’t make sense to want to get esports in the Olympics.

This particular article from Reuters also points out that many of the biggest esport tournaments, like Counter-Strike majors or Dota 2’s majors and The International, clash with the Games. Players just aren’t willing to give up winning their game’s biggest prize (especially when The International has a prize pool of more than $30m) for a medal. For example, multiple members of the Thai Dota 2 team, and Singapore’s biggest esports star Daryl “iceiceice” Koh gave the SEA Games a miss to play in a Dota 2 major which was going on at the same time, and which featured a $1 million prize pool. It may seem strange to people who are used to seeing the Olympic Games as the pinnacle of sporting competition, but these players do have contracts with their teams, and we can also point to several examples, such as in soccer, of clubs not releasing their players to join the national team outside of specified international windows.

League of Legends being played as a demonstration sport at the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia. Credit: Straits Times.

Next, to establish an athlete commission. It’s questionable what exactly the GEF can do for “athlete well-being”, given that many top players live with their team in teamhouses or have their facilities controlled by the teams they play for. As career support, it’s again hard to think of things the GEF could do to help, especially given the vagueness of the term, as I am not aware of any equivalent in traditional sports.

There have been several instances of players being caught cheating or match-fixing, but to date I am not aware of any instance in which players have been punished for using banned substances. This could be due to low awareness of this problem, but generally players know that the effect of substances such as Adderall is inconsistent and may not actually boost performance in the server, and doping is not considered a problem in esports at the moment.

Third, to convene and stage esports competitions and conventions. One wonders why a global federation is necessary for accomplishing this, especially when there is an uncountable number of conventions and competitions across the globe.

Fourth, to develop “world-class governance structures and guidelines” for the GEF. I don’t know what this means, but it sounds to me like just coming up with a rule book for how the GEF should operate.

Finally, to create, develop and stage the Global Esport Games. Cool, so now you want to be a tournament organiser for multiple esports? Unfortunately, that was already done 3 years ago in 2016, by Tencent rival Alibaba no less. They created the World Electronic Sports Games, including several esports like Dota 2, Counter-Strike, and Hearthstone. If we go even further back, the Koreans hosted something called the World Cyber Games (aka the Esports Olympics), which started in 2000. Sorry GEF, but you’re a little late to the party.

The World Cyber Games stage in 2004. Credit: Peter Kaminski/Wikimedia

Just A General Impression Of Incompetency

The GEF got off to a rocky start with its very first tweet. It a video that showcased the skyline of Singapore, a lady running with earphones in, a bunch of people with VR headsets, someone playing tennis in VR, someone getting ready to drive a race car in VR, someone doing yoga in VR-wait, why is there so much VR in this video? Isn’t esports played primarily with PCs, or consoles?

Fionn is an esports journalist for ESPN.

It’s not until a minute and 8 seconds in that I finally identify something that looks remotely like esports: a bunch of guys with headphones around their neck. Even that is a bit suspicious, because nobody uses wireless headphones in esports, and they’re not mobile gamers either because those guys usually use earphones, or earbuds, whatever they’re called. A quick look at the comments reveals a significant number of people who are as confused as I am at the reasoning for this video.

There is currently no major VR esport (although they do exist), so I do not understand the rationale for including so much of it in this video. Nor do I understand the inclusion of a jogging lady, or students using VR to learn, or sports teams encouraging each other.

This, coupled with the board of directors I just described, makes for an overwhelming sense that the GEF does not actually know how esports work, or at least does not have enough people who know. That’s a very dangerous feeling, because you give people the impression that you are incompetent, and as they say, perception is reality. As @leppen360 aptly puts it in the image above, the road for the GEF to get respect from the esports community has already become extremely steep, right from its very first tweet.

Doomed…For Now

I said the GEF was doomed to fail, but only for now. There is no precedent for a global esports federation ever being something beyond an event organiser, but perhaps with the gigantic backing of Tencent and some inspired moves, the GEF could turn itself around. There is always hope for a better tomorrow. The real question is, who in esports wants to see this particular tomorrow?

The writer is an esports journalist for Akshon Esports.