Geoguessr retracted this year’s eSports World Cup yesterday following massive protests from players and mapmakers. A wave of protest posts filled the off-cal discrepancy, and announced that many of the most popular maps are set private and that they will announce their withdrawal on Twitter and Discord, behind the game’s CEO.
Geoguessr is everything about players who determine their location on a world map by finding real-world clues in randomly placed photos around the world, and was announced earlier this week as the latest addition to Saudi Arabia’s annual gaming event. Saudi Arabia is a country that is trying to make the world better through ventures like the Sports World Cup, such as the E-Sports World Cup, to distract them from records of human rights abuses.
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In response to this announcement, a collection of about 50 largest cart creators set their work private. This means that players were unable to use them to play the game. One of the creators who spoke to reporter Ryan Feye said the low-end estimate of the total players on these blackout maps is 23.6 million, with many of these maps being used in official tournaments and Team Dale. Think of these maps as players owned in Geoguessr. So, although the game developers clearly own the game itself, the maps are under the control of the person who creates them, allowing this mass privatization.
In a statement released by protesting mapmakers, the group said, “The EWC is a sports washing tool that the Saudi Arabian government uses to distract and hide from the horrifying human rights records. Government targets include LGBT people, apostates, atheists, political opponents, opposition, migrant workers, among Kafala minorities, religious minorities and other religious people. Members of these groups have been accepted for discrimination, imprisonment, torture and even public executions.
You can read the full statement here. The statement further expresses the neglect of the group’s inclusion of Geoguessr to EWC, and further expresses why its members are taking the stance they have. We conclude, “You don’t play games with human rights.”
Additionally, many Geoguessr players have taken to the official Geoguessr Discord channel to enact their own protests in the “Cancel Riyadh Event” to make their own protests. In response to these actions from the community, Geoguessr’s CEO and co-founder announced the removal of Geoguessr from the eSports World Cup.
Their statement “starts by explaining their desire to engage with the Middle Eastern community and spread the core mission of Geoguessul to let everyone explore the world. However, following the community, they say the decision is loud and clear that it “is not aligned with what Geoguessr represents.” You can read the full statement here.
What this shows is that the Geoguessr community has most of its backbone when it comes to standing up for what appears to be right. I wonder if players will likely employ similar tactics to other publishers and studios if Geoguessr can be forced to shift their stance on participating in EWC. That’s something to think about. Meanwhile, praise for the Geoguessr community stands.