The International Olympic Committee has voted for the creation of the first Olympic Esports Games, only without the games people care about.
While esports has been a fixture of the gaming landscape for years now, its path to being recognised as a sport by the Olympics has been a somewhat slow crawl.
The first major step came with the creation of the Olympic Esports Series, which was first held in Singapore in June 2023. The event faced criticism, however, over the choice of games on the line-up, which ranged from Gran Turismo 7, a version of Fortnite where you shoot targets instead of people, Just Dance, and obscure oddities like Tic Tac Bow and Zwift.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has now taken a significant step forward in its esports push by officially approving the creation of the Olympic Esports Games, although the games involved are still not what you’d expect.
The standalone event is set to take place in 2025 in Saudi Arabia, which is currently hosting the first ever Esports World Cup. An exact date and venue is yet to be decided, but it comes as part of a 12-year agreement between the IOC and the country to host the event.
The Olympic Esports Games will act as a standalone event outside of the actual Olympics, and it’s currently unclear whether winners will actually receive medals (participants in the Olympic Esports Series last year won small trophies instead).
Speaking about the announcement, IOC president Thomas Bach said: ‘This is truly a new era for the IOC. With the confirmation by the IOC Session of the creation of the Olympic Esports Games, we are keeping up with the pace of the digital revolution.
‘The esports community, represented in our Esports Commission, has enthusiastically engaged with this initiative. This is further proof of the attractivity of the Olympic brand and the values it stands for among young people.’
As for what games could be on the line-up, don’t expect any first person shooters. The IOC previously stated games like Counter-Strike, Call Of Duty, and Rainbow Six Siege, will ‘never be part of Olympic Esports’ as they involve ‘visible violence’ using weapons.
It’s unclear though if this stance extends to fighting games like Street Fighter 6. Capcom’s fighter was part of a separate exhibition event during Olympic Esports Week last year, but it was omitted from the main Olympics Esports Series line-up.
No one in the IOC seems willing to acknowledge that the games featured in last year’s event have little or no competitive community around them, with several being so obscure most people have never heard of them.
It’s like if you replaced actual Olympic sports with Tiddlywinks and an egg and spoon race, and seems hypocritical given sports such as boxing and karate have been part of the Olympics for decades.
The IOC has entered a new era with the creation of the Olympic Esports Games, with the first-ever edition being held in Saudi Arabia in 2025, as the proposal was endorsed by the IOC executive board unanimously. Read all about it ð https://t.co/rRZDrIWZE9 pic.twitter.com/Pe0lCTRGYs
— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) July 23, 2024
The representation of esports at the 2022 Commonwealth Games might also be an indicator of what to expect, which included tournaments in Dota 2, eFootball, and Rocket League.
Aside from the line-up, the decision to host the event in Saudi Arabia might be a bigger concern for some. The country’s human rights record, especially in regards to freedom of speech and LGBTQ+ people, has led to some blowback against the current Esports World Cup.