Saudi-sponsored Apex undermines the game's gay-friendly ethos
The Esports World Cup threatens the inclusive community Respawn and EA worked hard to build
In the past, Respawn Entertainment has been an outspoken advocate for women, minorities, and the LGBTQ community. Respawn employees have marched in Gay Pride parades. Players received free Pride badges for Pride month. EA celebrates Pride month too, and has claimed that “as a company, we are united that Trans Rights are Human Rights. Women’s Rights are Human Rights. Our support is unwavering for our people, our players, and our LGBTQ+ communities.”
But EA’s decision to allow Apex Legends esports at the Saudi World Cup shows that support for the game’s LGBTQ community is far from unwavering. It’s wobbly at best, exposing a gap between the gay-friendly sentiment of their corporate communications and how they actually behave.
If you read this newsletter, I probably don’t have to tell you why it isn’t great for a gay-friendly game to feature in a Saudi-sponsored esports tournament. But let’s do a quick recap anyway: in Saudi Arabia, being gay is illegal. Gay people there are regularly given long prison sentences or sentenced to hundreds of lashes for the crime of just being who they are. These lashings are so nasty that they have to be carried out over a period of weeks or months–doing them all at once risks killing the person on the spot. By the way! The death penalty is also a legal punishment for homosexual behavior.
Apex Legends, with its large cast of gay characters, would have been illegal to develop in Saudi Arabia. Advocacy for gay rights is illegal in Saudi Arabia as well, making EA and Respawn’s statements supporting Pride month punishable under Saudi law. This makes Riyadh a spectacularly bad venue for competitive Apex.
Interestingly, EA’s rules for Apex community tournaments explicitly ban sponsorships that contain discriminatory content. But those rules must not apply if the sponsor is the House of Saud—a 1.4 trillion dollar family doing everything it can to make people forget they cut a Washington Post journalist into pieces and put him in a car trunk a few short years ago.
Unfortunately, Tom Bull over at esports.gg chose to focus on how this tournament “breathed an extra lease of life into the Apex Legends scene and helped to fix a key weakness of the last two years.” At what cost?
Is it worth it if it undermines the inclusive community this scene worked years to build—the same one that largely rejected Nicholas “Nickmercs” Kolcheff’s bigotry last year? Is it worth it if it ostracizes and causes deep pain to Apex players who are gay? It’s hard to imagine that people like Erika Ishii, the pansexual and genderfluid voice actor who plays Valkyrie, would feel safe at the Esports World Cup, for example.
But for every person who understands the stakes of this situation, it seems like there’s someone else who simply couldn’t care less, or thinks this is abstract fearmongering:
So I reached out to a prominent figure in the competitive Apex community who is gay, offering them anonymity because people who speak out about these kinds of topics are regularly threatened or doxxed. Here’s what she had to say:
“I’m disappointed and saddened that Apex will be part of the EWC. I think it’s wrong to grow the esport via sacrificing the LGBTQ members of the community—nobody should have to risk their life or freedom to attend a LAN, especially those who rely on Apex as their livelihood. Esports winter is hurting everybody, and we shouldn't pay our way out using blood money that will only help a few.”
EA has had no problem taking action on political grounds in the past. Lest we forget, players in Russia are still banned from competing in the ALGS due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But both EA and Respawn were quiet in the wake of the Esports World Cup announcement.
Their silence says a lot. It says that they’re willing to do business with a country that murders and imprisons journalists. A country where women need a male member of their household to give them permission to get married. A country whose idea of social reform is letting women drive cars.
By signing off on the Esports World Cup, these companies have not only given their tacit endorsement to a religious dictatorship: they’ve also shown that their support for gay rights doesn’t amount to much when there’s cash on the line.
I know there are some EA employees who subscribe to the newsletter, and I also know that this decision was above your paygrade and that many of you probably agree with me. If you’d like to say something about it, on or off the record, let me know.