Still think playing videogames competitively shouldn’t be considered a sport? Think again, because nothing legitimises an activity as a sport quite like people using drugs to gain a competitive edge.
That’s exactly what has happened with eSports. In an interview with Cory “Semphis” Friesen earlier this year that revealed the player and his team had been using Adderall – a “psychostimulant” that treats attention deficit disorder by helping people focus for hours on end – at a competition where players were competing for prize money of around $250k.
In the same interview, the interviewer says “Everyone does Adderall at ESN events, right?” to which Friesen responds with “Yeah”, so according to at least one source, doping is commonplace.
Off the back of that confession, The Electronic Sports League, the biggest eSports organisation in the world with over five million members, has announced it will be conducting random drug testing at all of its events going forward, “in order to maintain the spirit of fair play within eSports”.
The measure has been introduced to gather evidence of wrongdoing and to presumably punish transgressors, because as of right now Gizmodo says Friesen and his team won’t be facing any sort of disciplinary action. That’s because apart from his admission, there is no physical evidence of wrongdoing, and that likely wouldn’t stand up in court.
So now eSports, too, can be added to the list of games with its share of doping scandals, where competitors drug themselves to the gills in the hopes of gaining an edge over the competition, all for the sake of money.
If that’s not a sport, I don’t know what is.
[Source – Gizmodo, Image – via Wikimedia Commons]
