Olympics eSports Week Ditches CS: GO For A Mobile Game | Olympics eSports Controversy

eSports are usually associated with massively popular multiplayer games such as DotA 2, League of Legends, CS: Go, and even a few battle royale titles. These titles are what define the genre. All of these games have played their part in making the eSports scene as big as it is today.

However, recently a mobile game out of nowhere became an official eSports title. Yes, we’re talking about the “Tic Tac Bow.” Owing to the committee at Olympics’ eSports department, Tic Tac Bow is now part of Olympics eSport week. But that isn’t the only confusing title selected for the highly anticipated eSports week. You can check out the video below for a quick overview of all the bizarre yet beautiful picks chosen by the Olympics eSports committee.

Chess

Before we get into the more bizarre picks, let’s discuss the less confusing titles. The first one is Chess. Chess will be part of the online competition for Olympic eSports week. Alongside Chess, Gran Turismo has also been selected. Both of the games have a fairly large eSports scene, with Chess having millions of players playing with each other online due to the board game’s massive popularity.

Gran Turismo

Gran Turismo, on the other hand, is easily one of the best and most popular racing simulators out there. In the past, Gran Turismo was also featured in an event called the GT Academy, where the top players got a chance to practice for actual racing events. However, out of all the picks for the Olympic eSports week, these two are the only ones with a legitimate eSport scene.

Just Dance

Just Dance is also one of the selected eSports titles. The game has a very niche competitive scene and is fun to play overall. However, in terms of viewership, Just Dance doesn’t hold a candle to most of the other eSports titles. Nothing justifies the game being qualified as an eSports, but Just Dance isn’t the only game that doesn’t deserve to be up there.

Power Pros Baseball

Power Pros Baseball, or WBSC eBaseball, is also going to be part of the Olympics eSports week. Yes, the funny-looking video game where toons play virtual baseball. The game is currently available to purchase for a single American dollar, and even that price is a little too much for the game. If anyone wants to watch baseball, they’d prefer real people play the game instead of funny-looking characters with terrible graphics.

Tennis Cash

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, behold! A pay-to-win mobile game is now an official eSports title. The game is filled with microtransactions to the brim and is massively unbalanced. The winner of the game is determined easily by the amount of money you have spent on the game. At this point, the committee at the Olympics is just picking the weirdest games that relate to physical sports. But it’s going to get worse.

Virtual Taekwondo

This game, developed by Refract Technologies, is very niche and requires somewhat of a skill barrier to getting into. Ultimately, it is just a game where two players compete in Taekwondo, but virtually. While it is an effective way to make sure the players don’t get hurt, watching two people battle in a virtual space with sub-par graphics isn’t going to be entertaining. Virtual Taekwondo was first a browser game but was later ported to mobile.

Tic Tac Bow

The final game to be selected for the Olympics eSports week is none other than a mobile game with about 150 downloads during the time it was selected. Tic Tac Toe, being a below-average mobile game with stupid gameplay and graphics, got selected over other massively popular games that millions of people play every day, such as CS: GO.

While you may have already figured out something fishy is going on over here, let us tell you one more thing. The game is “coincidentally” also developed by the same studio as Virtual Taekwondo, Refract Technologies. There’s more to it than just that. The founder of Refract Technologies is also an active committee member of the Global eSports Federation.

Many of the hints point towards that this game was specifically made to be a part of Olympic eSports week. There might be a lot of things going on behind the scenes for the selection of eSports titles that we’re not aware of yet. But all we can do at this point is hope that we don’t get to see these games the next time.

Takeaway

One of the major issues with the selection of Olympic eSports week titles is the fact that the people on the committee might’ve taken the word “eSports” quite literally. No one wants to watch players play mobile games for a gold medal when millions of people would love to see players compete for Gold in actual eSports titles, such as Valorant or DotA 2.

Except for Chess, all the selected games represent a physical sport that is already played at the Olympics event. While it may be fun to watch Chess and Gran Turismo players compete for a Gold medal, all of the other games are barely even worth watching. But, there might be more than what meets the eye for the selection of all these games, and that is something only time will tell.

The 9 selected games are available with open pools currently, and the finals will be held live in Singapore in June. While it may be true that there’s not much point in watching people play obscure mobile games on the big screen, there is nothing we can do about it except pray that they do not make the same mistakes again.