In a conversation with an eSports pro player at Wargaming.net’s League Grand Finals, head of European eSports, Nicolas Passemard, said Wargaming would like to create a union for pro players.
“We are thinking about creating a pro player union, so the players will be able receive assistance from us. We don’t want it to become a Wargaming organisation,” Passemard said. “We want the pro players to run it for the pro players, but we want to help them with things like legal advice and extra security so that they are better protected.”
A union for pro gamers has been widely discussed since the beginning of eSports, but Passemard says the necessity of a union is becoming more and more apparent.
“It comes from a need to do something. We faced a few issues and incidents, and of course we didn’t like that because these incidents were not in favour of the players. So at a point we have to make a decision, either we get more directly involved or we keep having issues. We still want the players and the teams to lead a life of their own, because if we help them too much or if we do things for them they kind of lose the warm feeling of doing it themselves or they lose motivation, but in the end we had to do something. So we looked at some options and the best one is to help the pro players create a union for themselves. We have to do it, there will be issues, maybe we aren’t ready [for a players union] but we will find a way.”
Passemard refused to give more specific details about the union, but more information will likely arise as the idea develops.
