Wait, Did The Olympics Really Just Announce The eSports Games?

In a move set to boil the blood of boomers everywhere, the International Olympic Committee has announced that the first Olympic eSports Games will be held in 2025 in Saudi Arabia. It’s not the first time the Olympics has flirted with video games, but it is the most substantial commitment the Games have made to games so far.

There’s very little details to go on: we don’t know what games will be played, what countries will be represented, or where the games will be held beyond being in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty big moment for the US$2 billion eSports scene, and will go a long way in legitimising the profession to people outside of the video games industry.

The President of the IOC, Thomas Bach, said the eSports community has enthusiastically engaged with the Committee’s efforts, and that the new branch of competition is part of the IOC’s efforts to keep up with the rapid pace of the digital revolution.

The IOC said it is beginning work “immediately” on figuring out the specifics of the event, but, though it’s pretty exciting, there are already a lot of questions.

What about all the guns?

Yeah, it’s a big question as to what titles will actually be represented in the eSports Games, with some of the bigger titles on the market largely revolving around a lot of killing. Fortnite is very stylised, sure, but it still regularly shows Spiderman getting shot in the head and then teabagged.

Massive titles such as Call of Duty, Counter Strike, Battlefield, Apex Legends, Overwatch, and the rest of the shooty ones are regularly trawled out in discussions around if video games promote violent behaviour: whether or not that question has been answered already.

The IOC did note that the eSports Games are being devised in a way that will “address the interest of the eSports community, while respecting the Olympic values” (which are excellence, respect, and friendship), and the Games have previously stated that violent video games don’t belong in the Olympics.

So, yeah, we don’t expect to see any guns on stage next year. It’s more likely to showcase titles such as Rocket League, Gran Turismo, and Street Fighter, as well as games that are already built around sports, such as FIFA or NBA 2K.

In fact, the Olympics already run events based around virtual sports, such as Tennis Clash, Virtual Taekwondo, Chess.com, and Just Dance. Yes, really.

Where it’s being held

Saudi Arabia has made a pretty big push into eSports in the past few years, and has been throwing its wealth around to secure some massive international events: case in point, it hosted the Esports World Cup this year.

The only issue is that a bunch of fans, players and commentators boycotted that event in protest of the Kingdom’s human rights record, which has been pretty awful to a lot of people for a long time, and claim that it’s a case of ‘sportswashing’. As you can imagine, sportswashing is all about distracting from negatives by focusing instead on the values typically engaged in during such international sporting competitions (such as excellence, respect, and friendship, for example).

Esports World Cup Foundation CEO Ralf Reichert told BBC Newsbeat that “everyone is welcome” at the World Cup, and that there would be no discrimination at the event. He went on to say that people should, however, “act locally to respect the local culture”, and for fans and players not to be “explicit” in their criticisms. So basically, don’t call a spade a spade if the spade is giving you money.

The IOC seemed ready to defend its decision to partner with Saudi Arabia by stating in its announcement that the Kingdom has been improving its participation of women in sport over the past decade, and the fact that it signed as 12-year agreement means that, for that time period, Saudi Arabia will likely host every eSports Olympics event.

Whether that leads to 12 years of boycotts remains to be seen.