Fighting games as a legitimate competitive venture has grown a lot over the past decade or so. We’ve gone from holding events in arcades and function rooms, to having some of our biggest tournaments in arenas and dedicated esports venues. While the FGC still isn’t as big as other esports genres, we’ve gotten big enough that we’re getting a fair share of much-welcome mainstream attention.
That said, with this kind of growth also brings with it another form of attention: that from government regulators. Now, government regulation itself isn’t bad per se. In fact, it can be welcome when it comes to dealing with thing such as international travel, or deterring shady individuals or organizations. However, the problem lies when regulators simply lump everything together without taking into consideration how each genre’s competitive scene works.
Now you may be wondering why I’m writing this, and not someone like David “UltraDavid” Graham. Well, it’s because this is something that my own local community and I are currently dealing with. Recently, the Games and Amusement Board (GAB) of the Philippine government issued a resolution (Resolution No. 2017-21) that is meant to regulate esports in the country. The resolution covers a number of subjects, the most important of which are in regards to “professional” players in the country, and their need to apply for a two-year license.
The ruling was made mostly with MOBAs such as DOTA2 and League of Legends in mind (though even then, that has caused some controversy with the former’s developer, Valve). As such, a quick look at the regulations shows just how they don’t really work with how fighting game tournaments are run.
The regulations for players required that anyone joining a tournament with a prize pool over PHP 10,000 ($197, or about the price of a tournament-level arcade stick) has to register as a “professional” with the GAB. This includes a PHP 800 ($16) fee, and some drug tests.
Now, the problem with this when it comes to fighting games comes from the fact that not everyone who joins a fighting game tournament is a professional player. Even for major tournaments, which in our case would be Rev Major (a Tekken 7 World Championship event) as well as my own Manila Cup (which is part of the Capcom Pro Tour) the majority of competitors are amateurs. Most people going to these events are just there for the experience, as well as to reconnect with other people in the community.
The requirement is now for these amateur players to register as “professionals.” The registration fee itself costs more than half of what it takes to register for Manila Cup, providing a substantial financial hindrance (especially for a third world country). In addition to this, going by the usual method of taking prize pools from registration fees can easily put smaller tournaments over the PHP 10,000 limit, affecting them as well.
Now, this isn’t the only problem in the new regulations. They also state that anyone attending a tournament outside the country also needs to register. This means that it’s also a barrier for anyone looking to attend Evo, or any similar event abroad.
Fortunately for us, the GAB acknowledged that there was room for improvement with the regulation. A meeting was soon set up in late January (right before Evo Japan) between the GAB and some of the heads of the community. While I’m not at liberty to disclose what was discussed during the meeting, long story short the issues have seemingly been resolved, and again allow the fighting game community do what we’ve done for years now. That is, offer tournaments where anyone and everyone can join, regardless of a player’s status as a “professional” or “amateur.”
The lesson here, then, is that government and other regulatory bodies will eventually try to get involved, and that there is the risk that they won’t necessarily understand the fighting game community well enough to create legislation that makes sense for us. With this in mind, we in the community — whether or not we’re leaders, tournament organizers, or simply just the average player — should be vigilant when it comes to spotting careless regulation, vocal in pointing it out, and cooperative when the chance comes to fix said regulation.
GAB Resolution No. 2017-21 c/o Ren Vitug
