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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday July 25 2015, @03:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-competitors-are-disqualified dept.

Der Spiegel [in German], supported by Sky News [in English], report:

[translation mine]Ever since young people started earning money playing computer games, a discussion has arisen within Gamer circles: is E-sport, professional computer game playing, really sport? Is mouse-clicking and button pressing at high tempo easier, more challenging, or just as sophisticated as kicking a ball or swimming faster than others?

To put it plainly, whoever games professionally needs exactly as much training, passion, and talent as professionals in classical sports. And that good gamers compete in front of tens of thousands of spectators makes the world hardly better or worse than a football/soccer world championship or the Tour de France.

In any event Gamers may have to think about the issue more than they'd like. The E-Sports League (ESL), in which players of games like "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive," "Fifa," and "League of Legends" compete, has announced that they will be cooperating with the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA). It is supposed to not only prevent doping, but institute concrete testing. ESL has announced that the Counter-Strike competition on August 22-23 in Cologne's Lanxess Arena that skin tests will be conducted.

Additional reporting here and here.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by penguinoid on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:05PM

    by penguinoid (5331) on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:05PM (#213524)

    All high level competitive sports should be banned, because the nature of the competition encourages participants to follow extreme training regimens that are harmful to their health. Therefore, if you care for other people's health you should encourage banning such competition, or at least boycott them.

    However, if you're willing to let people harm themselves just to see them run really fast or kick a ball or whatever, I'd like to point out that they'd actually be doing the world a much more important public service by testing the performance effects of drugs and steroids and other enhancements than just running really fast. So unless you're boycotting or pushing to ban professional sports, your ethics are worse than those who want to allow them to use drugs (harm yourself for my amusement, vs harm yourself to improve our knowledge of medicine).

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by GungnirSniper on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:25PM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:25PM (#213531) Journal

    So coding should be banned because Adderall-Fueled is snorting his pills and a little cocaine?

  • (Score: 1) by jamestrexx on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:32PM

    by jamestrexx (5363) on Saturday July 25 2015, @05:32PM (#213533) Homepage

    It's not the sports that should be banned, but the huge salaries and prizes being payed. It's not for fun anymore but to get as much money as possible.
    Without the financial incentive it goes back to being something about prestige and challenge again.
    Nowadays it's nothing more than human trafficking and it starts with teenagers.