India Esports Team May Miss WEC 2022, Medal-Winning Captain Faces Off With Esports Body
Moin Ejaz said that ESFI didn't help them in paying for visas for their trip to the Commonwealth Esports Championships.
Moin Ejaz, the DOTA 2 captain who led India to a Bronze win at the Commonwealth Esports Championships (CEC), held alongside Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, has alleged that roster issues with the Esports Federation of India (ESFI) might lead to India not participating at the upcoming World Esports Championships (WEC), set to be held in Indonesia later this year. Ejaz said in a social media post that the ESFI is “forcing” them to play with the same medal-winning roster at all upcoming tournaments till the Asian Games next year. “We were not informed about that till now,” Ejaz said. The ESFI has strongly condemned the allegation, claiming Ejaz’s claims “are completely baseless”.
Here’s what Ejaz said
On Wednesday, Ejaz posted on Facebook, “ESFI is forcing us to continue playing with the same roster and if we refuse to play they're giving our slot to another team to represent India in all the upcoming events including World Esports Championships being hosted in Bali, Indonesia, and the Asian Games. They're saying that only one team will represent India in all the events leading up to the Asian games which is a period of over one year.”
Calling the decision unfair, Ejaz added, “Everyone should have an equal opportunity to participate in every event. I'll request ESFI to host fair and open qualifiers for all the upcoming events so that everyone has an equal chance of representing India which will also help the DOTA 2 scene in India to grow.”
He further clarified that in a dynamic game like DOTA 2, “any team can be better than the other in a period of time and just selecting one group of players to play all the tournaments for whole next year doesn’t sit right with me.”
How ESFI responded
ESFI is a non-profit that looks to “promote, encourage, organise, educate, train, and control” esports in India. ESFI regularly conducts national qualifiers for all participating global esports events, including the CEC and the WEC.
The organisation shunted Ejaz’s claims as “baseless” and said in a statement that they “lack understanding of the fair working of selection process for any international tournament where countries are represented.”
The gaming body clarified that for the upcoming esports medal tournament at the Asian Games, details of the teams that wish to participate need to be submitted in advance, and the procedure was already completed in April this year. Now, the Asian Games 2022 was originally scheduled to take place in September this year, but owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event has been postponed to September next year.
"The Championship dates have changed but the participating team member names can’t be change [SIC] as per the guideline that is already in place unless unavoidable subject to necessary process and approvals from the respective authorities," ESFI said in its statement.
ESFI argued that this way, the team also gets a whole year to prepare for the upcoming tournament, “so do we keep changing or destabilising that process”?
“The objective and motto of ESFI is to maximise the benefits of working along the same lines,” the organisation said. “Hence our plan for CEC or 14th World Esports Championship and/or any other upcoming international tournament is to send the same team/athletes to prepare and harness them for the biggest challenge of their esports life/career and ESFI is doing everything for the same, this was very well conveyed to all the teams/players and we have conveyed the same in our previous communications also.”
ESFI added that details of the selected team have already been submitted to the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) and Asian Electronic Sports Federation (AESF). “If we keep changing the teams then the purpose gets defeated- our goal is to win and not just participate,” ESFI added.
“We are very well aware that the sports structure is new to our esports community; however, we also would want our community to appreciate that there are some guidelines which any sports federation has to follow,” ESFI said. It clarified that out of the seven esports athletes selected to represent India, three are unable to participate in the WEC 2022. “It will be unfair to other teams who participated in the qualifiers if we keep allowing these roster changes, as they have every right to say that they will also form a new team (which will be a better team). As per the regulations, if the first-place team is not able to go, then the slot is to be given to the second-placed team and so on.”
“All this was very well explained to the DOTA team in detail,” the ESFI added.
Ejaz claims Asian Games roster change was never requested, ESFI Says Ejaz is allegedly ‘playing politics’
In its statement, ESFI noted that it had received a complaint from “one of the team members” that “he is being victimised and Moin is changing the roster on his own and playing politics.”
“Out of nowhere, we recently came to know that there is another roster change. This came to us as a shock as this team got a bronze, and why are we even looking at a roster change and not to forget the underlying genuine intent of giving the same team maximum exposure to get a podium finish at the Asian Games?” ESFI said in the statement.
In a follow-up post on Thursday, Ejaz said that one of the roster members in question, Krish, cannot “participate in any other event with us except for the Asian Games as he currently plays for a professional DOTA 2 team.” Ejaz added, “We had requested a roster change for only the other events, so the point ESFI is making that the same team should continue playing till the Asian games is invalid as our Asian games roster was never affected by this.”
“ESFI has personally called me out saying that I'm doing politics and trying to break apart this team which is further [SIC] from the truth, I would like to ask ESFI to name that teammate who I have traumatised or harassed, and if they can't, to stop spreading these baseless lies.”
Ejaz claims to reveal the ‘dirty truth’ of ESFI
Ejaz also alleged that ESFI asked them to forfeit from participating in the DOTA 2regional qualifiers for the Commonwealth tourney. “When we were literally minutes away from playing our first game as they had lack of funds [SIC] and were not sure if they could be able to send to Birmingham even if we qualify,” Ejaz said in his Facebook post titled “The ugly truth of ESFI”. “It is only after we pleaded and fought with them saying please let us participate and if we qualify we will try to arrange our own sponsor did they let us participate in the qualifiers.”
Ejaz said that ESFI didn’t support the athletes, even after qualifying, in any aspect including visas, “for which we had to pay the fees out of our own pockets.”
“ESFI had told us that they will require a sponsorship in the amount of 10 lakhs approximately to cover our trip to Birmingham and back. We even managed to find a sponsors [SIC] and got the sponsors in contact with ESFI but we did not receive any feedback from them. When we inquired as to what was happening with the sponsorship situation they told us that it was not our concern and that only ESFI will be negotiating with the sponsors even though we were the ones who presented them with this sponsor.”
“In the end they were not able to reach an agreement with the sponsors that we had provided and 2 weeks before the start of the Commonwealth Games they informed us that they were not able to reach an agreement with the sponsors that we had provided, they also forbid us from taking the sponsorship directly saying that the whole event planning will be only be done by ESFI,” Ejaz said.
“At the end of this ordeal they somehow managed to book us tickets to Birmingham and acted as if they were doing us a huge favour by sending us there. After we won the bronze medal ESFI started acting as if they had supported us throughout our journey and facilitated us in achieving this objective when infact they were our biggest hindrance.”
“All this time me and my team members have been putting up with the nonsense that ESFI has been spewing because we considered ourselves helpless and at their mercy. Now it is for the public to decide who is doing politics and who is the real culprit in this scenario,” Ejaz said in conclusion.
Commenting on the plight of esports athletes in India, Shivani Jha, Director, Esports Players Welfare Association (EPWA), said, "The government needs to acknowledge that gaming is a livelihood. In the absence of any regulation and recognised national sports federation, young talent is often left on their own to fetch for themselves. While we have been given surety by central ministers it’s time that something should be done in practicality." EPWA is a non-profit that is dedicated to protecting the rights of esports players in the country.
India defeated New Zealand to clinch bronze in DOTA 2 at the inaugural CEC in August this year. Three games were featured in the tournament — eFootball, DOTA 2, and Rocket League. The Indian eSports contingent reserved its berth for the last two games after emerging victorious in the South Asian regional qualifiers.
ABP Live caught up with Ejaz in August before he left for CEC 2022 . He chatted with us about his journey so far and the challenges that lay ahead. Check out the episode of Tech It Easy podcast below:
Trending News
Top Headlines
