Performance enhancing drugs have been an issue in regular sports and there have been strict guidelines put into place for most major sports such as football, soccer, basketball, and baseball. However, esports has yet to put anything into place up until now.
The Electronic Sports League (ESL), the oldest and largest of the esports organizations, is joining forces with Nationale Anti Doping Agentur (NADA) based out of Bonn, Germany, to create a fair anti-performance enhancing drug policy. Their combined goal is to try to protect the integrity of the competitions in their games and hopefully all other esports as well. ESL will also work with the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) to help enforce its new policy in other areas of the world as well.
This is arising after a professional gamer announced that him and some of his teammates on their team, Cloud9, used Adderall in a recent $250,000 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament. The team will not be punished at this point because it is four months after the tournament and, even though they said they used the drugs, there is no way for ESL to prove 100 percent that they were on any performance enhancing drugs at the time.
The policy is a good step forward for esports but will, unfortunately, not cover everything yet. There are many other esports communities out there and hopefully they will follow suit and set up their own drug policies to keep the games fair. In regards to its own policy, ESL did have this to say:
[button type=”link” link=”http://www.eslgaming.com/news/esl-leads-anti-ped-initiative-esports-support-nada-2170″ variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: ESL Gaming Network[/button]We will remain proactive in ensuring all professional players and organizations involved in ESL competitions will be kept informed of the initiative’s progress. Updates on changes to tournament rules including the list of banned substances, methods of testing and potential disciplinary actions for players caught using PEDs and/or admitting to having used them will be provided to players via their respective team managers and/or owners.
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
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