This week, the Gamers8 event will continue in Riyadh, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, hosting a Street Fighter 6 invitational tournament with a total prize pool of a cool $1 million, including $400 thousand for first place, and even last place clearing $5 thousand. That is 20 times the amount promised to the first place winner of Evolution 2023, for comparison. The event, hosted by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF)-owned Savvy Gaming Group and the Saudi Esports Federation, is one of many hosted through an 8-week period that started in July. Over $45 million in prizes are expected given out across the various games being featured, which included Tekken 7 as well.
Suffice to say, this is big, big money, probably more than fighting games, nay, the Esports world in general has seen in quite some time. And boy, do they sure need it! Times have been hard, and Esports is currently reaping what it has sown for over-evaluations, insane spending, and inexplicable metrics. It is exactly the kind of situation in which desperation – for cash, for survival – is born, and there will always be someone willing to hand over a fraction of their riches to desperate people in exchange for whatever it is that they want.
Enter The House of Saud and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).
As fossil fuels continue their slow transition out the door, Saudi Arabia’s leader, his Royal Highness Mohammed bin Salman bin Adbdulaziz (MBS), has consistently advocated for a reformation of the country’s social, economic, and cultural aims. His crown jewel is Saudi Vision 2030, which is essentially his plan to diversify the Kingdom’s investment portfolio away from majority oil-based revenue streams and more towards technology and cultural activities like sports. As the leader of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, MBS has control over the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), whose total assets are worth somewhere in the $700 billion range, to direct towards these new investments as he and the council see fit.
To detail all of where the PIF has its tentacles would require a blog unto itself. In his bid to escape a reliance on fossil fuels, MBS has set his sights far and wide. Not all of them will be successful, but therein lies the nuance of a grand initiative like his – every little bit helps. Obviously the economic headwinds would be nice to have, but as one can see, Saudi Arabia is a fabulously wealthy nation – the Vision 2030 plan is as much about amassing cultural and political capital as much as capital itself. If Saudi Arabia is to become the global powerhouse that MBS envisions, it will need to be the place to go if you’re a young, talented professional with specialties in tech, finance, or sports, which the Kingdom lacks. So how do you convince people from the west to come live in and/or work for Saudi Arabia?
Simple: buy controlling stakes in all the shit they like.
In just a couple years, the PIF, through its subsidiary Savvy, has purchased both ESL and Faceit, the two biggest Esports organizations in the world, and merged them into one company known as EFG. This also includes Dreamhack, which was an ESL brand. Despite claims from Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, the chairman of the Saudi Esports Federation, that ESL Faceit Group, the new company, is an “international” group, the owners are Savvy Games, and Savvy Games’ website makes very clear who’s in charge:
Gamers8 is the culmination of that strategy, a weeks-long event with big production, big money, and big statements about what the KSA can do for gamers. It is Vision 2030 right to its very core, and is in every way a shot across the bow at all Esports endeavors to come and see what is hot in the Kingdom. Even the date is a flex – less than a week after Evolution, the FGC’s biggest tournament, they’re hosting an invitational with 20 times what Evo offered for first place? The battle lines have been drawn, make no mistake. Amidst a brutal correction, Esports orgs have seen their reliance on large cash flows from friendly investors shore up greatly. In order to continue to exist under the thumbs of dictatorial publishers, many feel that the only way through is to kneel at the feet of the PIF, whose funds are basically unlimited and are not solely motivated by the bottom line. In a way, it’s a restoration of the status quo, of unquestioned capital and lavish salaries, an injunction on their slow-moving death.
But is the juice worth the squeeze?
It has often been the defense of such Faustian deals as these that the business is hard to pass up. ‘You’ve got to hand it to the Crown,’ they’ll say, ‘they drive a hard bargain’. But do they? It seems to me that the reason Esports got into dire straits is because people who were not very bright that couldn’t manage a Taco Bell got a blank check to continue to make horrible decisions and cratered the space. Salaries more in league with the average NBA player than they were the actual value created by the job. Million-dollar training facilities that would make your local Football club blush. Valuations that were brought about by inflated and sometimes outright false data, often pushed by the orgs themselves.
Cash influxes sans significant reform and scaling down rarely seem to solve the actual root problems, and I have no reason to believe that PIF money is going to be any different. Not only that, but the PIF is actively trying to monopolize the space. There’s been reporting that Gamers8 broadcast talent was being offered 25-40% more money than what was the general going rate. Why would that be the case if it wasn’t to smoke out the competition? ‘Healthy ecosystem’, my ass. Still don’t believe it? Here’s a quote from Savvy CEO Brian Ward at an internal town hall, as reported by journalist Mikhail Klimentov:
“Completely unassailable by any competitor”. So I’m supposed to believe that the best alternative to the bloated, unsustainable Esports world we have is one in which the government of Saudi Arabia owns publishers, orgs, and teams? Well, I guess MBS is a gamer, so at least we have that!
I’m so sure these silver-spoon royals know exactly what drives the culture.
Prince Faisal would also maintain that a monopoly is out of reach, as Esports exist on the whims of the publishers, who control the IP and therefore any rights to both operate and broadcast a tournament. While this is broadly true, the PIF also invested over $4 billion to acquire stakes ranging above 5% in Activision-Blizzard, Take-Two Interactive, Ubisoft, and Capcom, all of which have their own Esports leagues or circuits. It is entirely possible that by 2025, the PIF will be responsible for the vast majority of Esports tournaments in the world.
The idea that, once again, more money will somehow snap these orgs out of extreme dysfunction and let the publishers lose their iron grip on IP and broadcast rights is pure poppycock. It didn’t work before, and it certainly will not work now, even if the money faucet lost its ‘off’ switch. The only outcome that is foreseeable is one in which the KSA becomes the hub for Esports and games publishing that they clearly want to be, and everyone falls in line whether they want to or not.
Which, of course, comes the most obvious negative to the package.
It’s been written so much as to be redundant, but the KSA is an authoritarian monarchy, whose Salafist strain of Sunni Islam is one of the most extreme of the Muslim nations, and who follow Sharia law to such a degree that apostasy is an offense punishable by death, homosexuality is a jailable offense, and women are subjugated under a male guardianship program. The reason they can invest untold billions in this space and not expect a return is because a good chunk of the reasoning is purely political – in order to get young Western professionals to come in and help build up the country as a technological gaming powerhouse, they need those pros to want to come. And, in tune with the nature of the Kingdom’s laws, the way to do that is by force and ownership.
I thought it was important to establish the totality of what the KSA is doing first, as I didn’t want to give the impression that the answer was simple. Whether or not one agrees with the operational decisions of these Esports companies, the reality is they have a responsibility to provide for the people they employ, which means they need to find a way to keep the lights on. Although it is of their own making, the only way most of these companies can do that is direct cash infusions from people who won’t ask a lot of questions. KSA, by hook or crook, is quite literally a gold mine.
Indeed, I can empathize with someone who, say, has a family and has chosen a career in Esports. It may be the dream job, but the universe doesn’t care, and has served up a cold reality. There is a choice between giving up on a dream and the potential financial stability it could provide, or doing what you need to to provide and ignoring the philosophical and ethical quandaries it invites. I, truly, genuinely get it.
I empathize.
I do not sympathize.
The prizes alone for Gamers8 are massive, but they are also offering bonuses based on team performance. If you could stand to win an extra $1.5 million just by nature of having a diverse squad of players who play multiple games, in addition to bonuses from social media promotion, it would be a dereliction of duty to not send your players there. And if it makes you a craven hypocrite, just throw money (that you’re guaranteed to make back) at the issue and say you’re sorry, but you had to do it. Fuck you, pay me!
Before I get too far up on my high horse, I want to acknowledge that the conversation is largely philosophical, with no easily defined answer of right or wrong on an individual level. I’m a loud voice on the internet just giving my opinion on a complex issue. The people who will be oppressed in the KSA are going to be regardless if one chooses to play in, broadcast for, or watch the Gamers8 tournament, and participation is absolutely not necessarily a true reflection of what an individual’s personal philosophy might be. While the debate may be philosophical in nature, however, that doesn’t make it any less important, as the culture and values of any disparate communal group are a large part of why people want to participate, and philosophical disagreements can come between that.
There are plenty of people who cannot and do not make a connection between doing a paid job for a company owned by the KSA government and a whitewashing of that government’s actions by normalizing them as friendly investors. I obviously disagree, but I think that’s important to acknowledge – the slave morality logic clearly doesn’t work at scale to convince people of what I believe. So I’d rather just lay out my argument, which one could agree or disagree with, in order to hopefully start a conversation.
So, for me personally, I meant what I said: I empathize with those who take the money with their hat in their hand. Esports was not the land of milk and honey it was propped up to be, and it doesn’t look like Saudi investment is going away anytime soon. As mentioned earlier, it is very possible that the near future may contain an ecosystem in which some aspect of an esports tournament, whether it be the broadcast, the organizers or the prize money, will come from a PIF-aligned company. At that point, one could resist and make do with more ideologically-friendly talent, but is that sustainable? It’s truly a difficult quandary to be in, but the world is naturally full of zero-sum situations that are anchored on both ends by decent people acting in good faith who have to make hard decisions. Resiliency is a strong trait, and it needs to be harnessed to get through these kinds of situations.
This is where my sympathy wanes.
If one has to make a difficult decision that, while made in good faith and not reflective of the total values they hold, alienates some in the communities they are a part in, tough shit. Part of that resilience I talked about is owning the decision one makes and its natural, predictable consequences. In this contextual example, one of these may be that some of those belonging to the groups that the KSA actively disenfranchises and subjugates, such as women or queer people, may no longer see you or the community in the same light. For them, taking money from a country that willingly, knowingly disenfranchises them because they see them as lesser could be interpreted as a sign that you care more about potential earnings than you do their basic civil liberties It also means that, in participation of this vast economic and cultural rebrand that the KSA is attempting, your participation is an acceptance of the terms that the KSA has set – we are better than we were, we are progressive, we are a safe haven for all. This is simply not true, and participating in the pitch for that lie to me, is immoral. Is it true that there is a 1:1 comparison between state-sanctioned bigotry and being a part of an Esports broadcast of said state? No, but again, this is a philosophical difference that speaks to larger communal principles, and not necessarily about the individual themselves. One can disagree, but they can’t close Pandora’s Box. Moreover, the question of whether an act is moral or not is definitively not answered by following up with a far less complex moral action, considered “good,” and considering that penance of some kind for the previous act.
That is exactly why I find the Team Liquid posts linked earlier to be so nauseating. It’s the ultimate form of having their cake and eating it too. It’s true that they are part of the ESL Louvre Agreement, which was a financial commitment from a host of Esports orgs’ Counter Strike: Global Offensive teams and ESL to prop up a global ESL tour, and they signed it before the PIF takeover of ESL. If there was a signed commitment that would have been nearly impossible to back out of without significant loss, that’s understandable. But when Riyadh came calling for Gamers8, they had no trouble signing up, once again posting an apology video for doing so. How many times can you shuffle back up like Oliver Twist with his bowl and expect people to feel bad for you? Trying to claim the moral high ground is impossible, and I think doing so makes one look far worse than if they had simply taken the money and kept quiet about it.
Worse still, one could get the impression that working for ESL/EFG and Savvy requires one to toe the line and know their place before criticizing Saudi Arabia. Take Jess “JessGOAT” Bolden for example. A talented caster and former coach for Rainbow Six: Siege, Bolden was invited to participate in the 2022 Gamers8 event, but after announcing that she would, received “serious messages”, including people being burned alive, that intimidated her into withdrawing from the event. One year later, Bolden participated in the 2023 event, and in her defense of this act she recalled having made “statements about others attending that were completely unfair and not opinions I hold anymore,” going so far as to go to reps of EFG and personally “express deep shame” for the “emotional” comments she had made in 2022.
The comments?
“Out of all of the places in your entire region that you probably shouldn’t hold something, Saudi Arabia is absolutely one of them. It’s so funny to me because people are going to find excuses for it. Like every fucking excuse under the sun they can find and then the people that worked it are going to be like, ‘I needed the opportunity.’ Shut the fuck up.”
Things can sure change in a year!
This hand-wringing justification for why the attending has a greater moral purpose than a simple exchange of services for cash is endlessly annoying. But I would still wager it at least has a greater potential for philosophical disagreement than a host of other woefully disingenuous arguments that crop up around taking KSA money:
- “Will you attend US Tournaments knowing they committed war crimes and have civil rights offenses? What a hypocrite!”
It is important to bear in mind that EFG is explicitly operated by the Saudi PIF, which is controlled by the Council of Economic and Developmental Affairs, who operates as the right arm of its leader, his Royal Highness Mohammed bin Salman bin Adbdulaziz, the Crown Prince, Prime Minister, and de-facto ruler of the entire nation. Savvy Games is also operated by the Saudi PIF. Gamers8 is put on by the Saudi Arabian Federation for Electronic and Intellectual Sports, which is a department of the government run by Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud. There is no discernible difference between the PIF and the Kingdom itself, which in essence makes all these organizations extended wings of the Saudi Arabian state.
No major American tournament or organization is chaired by Sleepy Joe, his cabinet, or anyone on Capitol Hill. This is not to deny the atrocities committed by the US government here and abroad, but to separate them from its citizenry. The idea that a tournament run by Americans in America has the same gravitas and implications that one that runs with the express permission and parameters laid out by the head of state, for the purposes of a cultural, social, and economic diversification process, is ludicrous. A tournament being held in Saudi Arabia by some non-Al Saud affiliated bloke would not have the same degree of pushback, it’s the explicit government involvement that skeeves people. And when that line has been muddied here by, say, the introduction of the US Army into Esports ventures or promotion, I have roundly and loudly criticized those endeavors. Please stop making this argument, it makes you look foolish.
- “This Western Chauvinism is so problematic, it really speaks to a lack of empathy and xenophobia towards the Arab world that you would center a Western viewpoint and propaganda over this marginalized group”
Get back, Loretta. Maybe there are some who believe the worst aspects of the House of Saud are inherent to Arabs as a race, or to Islam as a religion, but I’m not one of them, and not once has that been a point of argument. The monarchy of Saudi Arabia is getting the criticism, not its populace, and to claim that the very well-documented history of civil rights abuses in the KSA is solely the work of Western propaganda agents is so unserious it doesn’t deserve a response. Imagine uWu small-beaning a goddamn hereditary monarchy, my God.
- “No one asked about your stupid political opinions, we just want to see people play games!”
I’m not going to use the tired notion of “everything is political,” but I will say that when a nation’s leadership decides to put in motion a wide-reaching economic and cultural plan in order to shift the balance of global entertainment power in their favor, being a willing participant in that plan is pretty political! Especially when, as mentioned earlier, it’s pretty impossible to separate the Saudi royal family, and by proxy the will of the entire government apparatus, from that of the firms they explicitly own and operate through their sovereign fund. In order to participate in events like Gamers8, one needs to understand that they are participating in an explicit political endeavor that is intended to entice people to become a tourist or seek work in the industries that the country is hoping to build up. That comes with all the baggage of the monarchy’s less defensible endeavors, like it or not. I didn’t make it political, they did. Don’t shoot the messenger!
- “Boycotts don’t work and it would hurt us worse to not engage than hand Esports over to people who don’t give a shit”
First of all, there’s nothing to hand over, that’s kind of why we’re in this mess to begin with! The KSA saw an opportunity to “roll up” (their CEO’s words!) a flailing industry that was totally rudderless and used it for their own gain. Esports has been handed over, you just don’t see it yet. And number two, some boycotts have been ineffective, but some, like when Riot Games entered into a partnership with the KSA’s proposed Neom supercity, were incredibly effective, to the point that the deal was called off. How did that work? Staff at Riot and casters and other broadcast talent for League of Legends balked at the deal and refused to participate in any Saudi-backed endeavor. The result? Deal’s dead in less than a week. Boycotts can work, but it’s hard, which I think is the real point people want to say but lack the courage to do so.
On that last note, I would mention that it’s been more than a little sad that in fighting game circles, Saudi Arabian-owned tournaments have more or less ceased to be an issue. Tekken 7’s Gamers8 tournament came and went without much controversy, and Street Fighter 6 likely will too. There’s just zero political will to fight this, and while I believe it’s likely mostly to do with the fact that it’s so much jack you can’t turn it down and most people are demoralized over how much they can really affect, I think it puts a sort of sour note over the really high feelings from Evo 2023.
With a prize pot over twenty times what Evo can offer, there’s just no way even our biggest tournament could compete with what the KSA can offer. And just like with Esports salaries, players will likely begin to be more choosy if they can get a better pay somewhere else. The fact that Gamers8 happened so close to Evo should again be a wakeup call, but even if you hear it, what can you do?
The only hope is that the broadcast teams, like with Riot, would draw the line and say they wouldn’t work at a KSA-sponsored event. Even still, that same broadcast talent who would stand up for the community and plan a boycott of Evo for it being run by a disgraced figure will also gladly pose for a picture with and praise a member of the Saudi royal family and government, a government which recently sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for retweets. I don’t think we’re going to get much help there, either!
Truly though, perhaps I’m being too hard on individuals. The concept of “selling out” has been pretty radically defanged by this point; people love to say ‘get that bag’ unironically as the world gets smaller and smaller every day. And there’s certainly a chance that there are plenty of people associated with the FGCs who have quietly turned down offers like this and haven’t made that public. But in the end, I still believe there is a pretty rigid line to be drawn for what is and isn’t morally objectionable – Maybe that’s me being self-righteous. After all, I don’t base my livelihood on Esports, so judging from a perspective far outside that may come across as boorish, naive, misguided, and ignorant most of all.
But I think I’ll take that risk, because I truly don’t like the alternative – that the pursuit of temporary bags of cash has eclipsed any sense of a shared community with values or some sort of ethos. I’ve been told for decades now that once it was possible for individuals to make big money, that rising tide would lift every ship. But year after year I’m consistently let down over the fact that that has not happened. How many tournaments have shuttered for good after the pandemic? How many will continue to drop out of the arms race that is extremely high production value and a demand for bigger venues? How many more Esports teams will continue laying off staff because they can’t afford to pay exorbitant player salaries and the rest of the team?
None of these questions are answered by Saudi blood money, and yet I’m told it is for the greater good that that must be shared upon by the extremely small number of professionals that can earn it, or Esports is done for. Call me crazy, but that just seems like an excuse to keep ignoring the problems under the hood.
Them's fighting words!! 
Leave a reply to Maybe I Just Don’t Get it – Them's fighting words!! Cancel reply