South Korea Proposes Law To Protect Esports Players (esportsobserver.com) 35
On May 18, a South Korean politician put forward a bill that would stop esports tournament organizers and stakeholders from unilaterally terminating tournaments without first informing participants and other principles involved in the event. The Esports Observer reports: The bill, "The Heroes of the Storm Law," was put forward to parliament by Congressman Dong-su Yoo of the Democratic Party of Korea, as first reported in Naver Sports. As Yoo explained, the bill is to prevent a game publishers' unilateral termination of an esports competition, and would require the game publisher or distribution company (which owns the copyright of the game, or has the rights to operate an event) to inform involved parties several months in advance if they are planning to shut down an esports competition.
The "HOTS Law" was inspired by an incident that traces back to December 2018, when Blizzard Entertainment shut down Heroes Global Championship (HGC) and Heroes of the Dorm. The decision was made by Blizzard President J. Allen Brack and infuriated many esports organizations, players, and coaches because they were not informed of the cancelation prior to the announcement. South Korean team Gen.G Esports was one of the best Heroes of The Storm teams at the time and were forced out of jobs because of it.
The "HOTS Law" was inspired by an incident that traces back to December 2018, when Blizzard Entertainment shut down Heroes Global Championship (HGC) and Heroes of the Dorm. The decision was made by Blizzard President J. Allen Brack and infuriated many esports organizations, players, and coaches because they were not informed of the cancelation prior to the announcement. South Korean team Gen.G Esports was one of the best Heroes of The Storm teams at the time and were forced out of jobs because of it.
Training costs... (Score:2)
The problem here is that terminating a eSport event after it being announced means the players training for it have wasted their resources. So, there needs to be a protection act causing the gamemaker that pulls the license to have to pay out the value of the event to the teams involved.
Just think of the mess the Olympic athletes have to go through. The Winter teams had to adjust their schedules after the 1998 start of the new schedule... and don't forget the Pandemic delayed 2020NE events starting soon.
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Re:Training costs... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, someone must compensate them for the time they spent, uh... sitting in comfy chairs and playing video games with their friends.
All sport are primarily games of recreation and are easy to ridicule. Car driving, bowling, archery, golf, there are lots of non-strenuous, barely physical sports.
That said, to become the best in the world at anything requires practice and skill, whether it’s basketball, tiddlywinks, knitting, or electronic games.
Anyone who can do anything in a level that exceeds most other humans is specially skilled and deserving of respect for that skill, whatever it may be.
Sure, there will be a large group of unskilled people raising their own self-esteem by declaring “pfffft, who cares, it’s not a real sport”, but it’s certainly more than most people do, and secure people don’t tend to belittle others anyway.
Playing a game, and playing a game competitively, are two different animals. You’d realize this if you ever set out to become the best at anything. There are a lot of people in the world, and it’s hard to be truly good, at anything,
Good for South Korea.
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eSports is all about gear. Do you have the low latency Internet connection? Do you you have the ton of monitors? Do you have the video cards to drive them all? Do you have the pink gaming chair with the D. Va logo? Do you have the stuff for grief play so you keep monetized on Twitch? Do you have the latest glowing keyboard and the latest mouse?
eSports is just like any modern gaming. It is about P2W.
As for skills, that is a joke. It is more about making sure you have the FOTM character before it gets
Re:Training costs... (Score:4, Insightful)
Buy me the best computer equipment, sit me next to the server and give me the top gear on the planet.
Now put me up against any of the top eSports players on a 4 year old laptop connecting from the other side of the country.
I'm still going to lose. So are you. It's not because of gear, it's because of skill, muscle memory, reaction times, tactics, teamwork and a deep understanding and knowledge of the game, its mechanics and how to not only win but prevent the opposition from winning.
Take WoW for example. It doesn't matter how good a PC we buy you, whether you play the highest DPS class in the game, if we give you the best equipment available for that class. You're still going to stand in the fucking fire.
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tournaments need to local lan with local servers and no out side internet drm (maybe just the big events)
others maybe an online private server with any drm stuff on that private server as well.
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If your livelihood can be nullified by an arbitrary decision at Blizzard, maybe it's time to rethink your livelihood, or at least have a contingency plan.
If you want to go the institutional-sports route, that means massive public funding. You could try regulating Blizzard, like this law does. I suspect it requires massive subsidies to ensure compliance, unless Gen.G Esports makes up a large part of Blizzard's revenue. Do they? I'd love to know, give me sources.
Re:Training costs... (Score:4)
If your livelihood can be nullified by an arbitrary decision at Blizzard, maybe it's time to rethink your livelihood, or at least have a contingency plan.
Any livelihood can be terminated by an arbitrary decision of someone some where. Why is this any different?
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Unions take the power of arbitrary shutdown away from owners and managers... so this is threatening the game makers to stick to the plan or there won't be eSports anymore.
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Not really. Any owner can still shutdown any business they want to at any time. In many states the business owner, or manager, has the right to fire any one for any reason, by law.
Also this law isn't threatening to "eSports" at all. If "eSports" is as lucrative as people say it is, it will carry on with our without game makers support. If I wanted to carry out a WoW world tournament, there is really nothing Blizzard could do to stop me. I'm sure there might be some trademark issues that couldn't
Public performance of copyrighted game (Score:2)
If I wanted to carry out a WoW world tournament, there is really nothing Blizzard could do to stop me.
Blizzard can assert, and has asserted [wikipedia.org], its exclusive public performance right under copyright against unauthorized tournaments.
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All sport are primarily games of recreation and are easy to ridicule.
Very few people go out and play sports for fun in adulthood.
Car driving, bowling, archery, golf, there are lots of non-strenuous, barely physical sports.
If you think racing is not strenuous, you know fuck all about racing. Ditto for bowling, frankly, although the strain is pretty well restricted to arms and part of the back. Archery can be, but usually isn't when you're talking about target shooting.
Sure, there will be a large group of unskilled people raising their own self-esteem by declaring âoepfffft, who cares, itâ(TM)s not a real sportâ,
I wouldn't bother to write a comment saying that, but I still firmly have that opinion. It's not that it's not competitive, it's that their skills are fucking worthless. A computer can do a better job a
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The point of bringing up non-strenuous sports is to underline that it's not the base difficulty of the task but doing so at a competitive level which makes it hard. Still, sports like bowling and racing are not strenuous compared to full contact sports played even by amateurs.
AFAIK your claims about AI players outperforming real ones have only been confirmed in situations where the bots receive all their information from a tailored API. Force the bot to use real peripherals with real world observation and
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eSports are just like real sports. Participants are not fat asses sitting around in front of a computer all day.
They actually train - strict diets (no junk food, but proper nutrition), exercise routines, and then hours in a chair playing the game. This will take up a good chunk of the day and is a full time job.
The people competing at the top literally are at the top. The entry
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The article is about video game publishers using copyright to shut down tournaments, as Nintendo sought in 2013 [polygon.com]. Your analogy to the stock market would be apt if there were some private business using an exclusive right to shut down stock trading. Which exclusive right might this be?
Is this thing on? (Score:2)
Hey, I'm the only commenter is see on the last two stories... is Slashdot still on?
What? (Score:1)
I have a better idea, lets just shut down esports because they're not really sport at all. Sitting on ass all day behind a keyboard does not make you a Olympian or anything close to one.
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I have a better idea, lets just shut down esports because they're not really sport at all. Sitting on ass all day behind a keyboard does not make you a Olympian or anything close to one.
Because throwing a shot-put and curling are valuable skills. You realize that the competition pool for video gamers is orders of magnitude more than most “real” sports, and is thus harder to become elite at doing it.
That said, I do agree with you. We should shut down everything that you don’t like. I feel
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Because throwing a shot-put and curling are valuable skills.
Well, curling certainly isn't, but throwing a shot-put is certainly a valuable skill. After the collapse of civilization, when brass and primers become scarce, throwing things at people is going to come back into vogue.
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Even better idea, let's shut down all pro-sports full stop. They are just the modern day equivalent of the circuses in "bread and circuses" and are a tool for the rich and powerful to distract the lower classes from their plight while making them pay for it themselves.
Even look at the idea of "pro sports lead to scholarships and wealth opportunities for many lower class people" and compare that to the idea of "if the gladiator slave fights well and pleases the lords, then one day he may be set free and giv
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There's nothing particularly wrong with sports, E or otherwise, as entertainment. What irks me is the delusion, and the insistence of the deluded, that it's anything other than just entertainment and that we should view it in some way as special and above the rest. Why do we care more if Lance Armstrong uses steroids than we do if Lady Gaga smokes pot? (She's claimed it makes her more creative... "performance enhancing" in other words). We don't drug test The Rolling Stones, and suspend Keith Richards f
Heroes of the storm or dorm? (Score:1)
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the summary is pretty much the whole TFA. I had to look, there is literally no additional context in the TFA.
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The game is called "Heroes of the Storm". The tournament was called "Heroes of the Dorm".
To protect esports players (Score:1)
Wait, read that last line again... slowly (Score:2)
"forced out of jobs"?!?! WTF has this world come to? Since when is this a "job"?
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What else do you call it when you perform a service and get paid for it?
Do the people playing for the NBA not have jobs? Do the people that support them not have jobs?
I mean all I do it poke buttons on my desk to make a screen flash different colors, does that count as a job?
players need an union like other sports. NFL, MLB, (Score:2)
players need an union like other sports. NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, ect.
They needed as the owners want to take an big cut of the funds and give the players very little.