Olympic Esports Games In Saudi Arabia? Disgusting Decision By The IOC

It seems that the esports world did not learn anything from Riot Games’ fiasco. Recently, an announcement was made that the International Olympic Committee partnered with Saudi Arabia to host the Olympic Esports Games. And that will happen for 12 years. 12 years.

Why?

Because they made some investments?

The Esports World Cup was a horrible event. And I am actually quite disgusted to see that teams participated.

Saudi Arabia is a country that should not be supported but it seems that everything boils to money for everyone, right? Let’s take a look at some recent cases that show us how Saudi Arabia actually is:

• A former teacher was sentenced to death due to social media posts (his account had TEN followers). Extra source here.
• His brother sentenced to 20 years for tweets.
• Freedom of speech does not really exist.
• At least 172 people executed in Saudi Arabia in 2023.

I am not even going to talk about other problems, like same sex relationships, how LGBTQ+ people are treated, how women are treated, and so on.

This is what gamers want for an Olympic level event? Seriously?

There are huge problems in gaming right now. Especially in games that have an esports scene. We are looking at Saudi Arabia trying to take advantage of the popularity of esports and the IOC accepted the money without even thinking about anything.

100% disgusted by this.

Originally published at https://adriancruce.com on July 13, 2024.