It's summer. It's the weekend. It's time to stay up all night watching people be really, really good at computer games. You've got a wide selection to choose from this week, from Dota 2's thriller in Manila to LoL's NA LCS to CS:GO on TV. Enjoy! Don't go outside.

Dota 2: The Manila Major

Dota 2's third Major comes to a close this weekend, and it's shaping up to be a dramatic finish. Can Frankfurt champs OG become the first team to win two Majors? Will Newbee re-establish Chinese dominance? Will Liquid do it? And how high can MVP Phoenix rise? Games begin at 03:00 BST Saturday/19:00 PDT Friday and at the same time the following day. The grand final begins at 08:00 BST/00:00 PDT Sunday. Find the livestream at www.twitch.tv/dotamajor.

Hearthstone: Europe Spring Championship

The first of a run of regional events leading to the World Championship at Blizzcon, the Europe Spring Championship will see some of the best players in the world face off in a single-elimination bracket with $25,000 and a spot at Worlds on the line. Play begins at 17:00 BST/09:00 PDT on both Saturday and Sunday and you can catch the livestream at www.twitch.tv/playhearthstone.

CSGO: ELEAGUE Season 1

CSGO's first cable television league continues on Friday night in the US/early Saturday in Europe. You can catch Astralis vs. CLG at 03:00 BST/19:00 PDT and you'll find the livestream at www.twitch.tv/eleaguetv. Bonus CS:GO fact! Astralis are currently the leading European team heading to the Esports Championship Series in London later in the month, and you can win tickets right here.

League of Legends: North American LCS

The LoL Championship Series is underway once again with a full weekend of play in North America. You can catch games from 20:00 BST/12:00 PDT on both Saturday and Sunday, and there's play on Friday night too if you're quick enough. For more on the storylines running through this season, check out Cassandra's writeup from earlier in the week. For the games themselves, check LoLesports.

Capcom Pro Tour: TWFighter Major 2016/Moscow Fighting Arena 2016

The CPT rolls on to Taiwan and Moscow this weekend. These are both Ranking events, not Premier, but you should expect high-quality play from the top finalists regardless. If you just want to tune in for the SFV top 8, the TWFighter finals begin at 11:30 BST/03:30 PDT on Saturday and you can find the livestream at https://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky. There's only a preliminary schedule available for Moscow Fighting Arena 2016 at the moment, which you can find here the SFV top 8 aren't on until Monday, which probably doesn't count as the weekend, but there you go anyway.

Rocket League: Qualifier 2 Open

These open qualifier games in NA and EU won't be streamed officially, but keep an eye on Twitch for player streams throughout the weekend. The place to find more information about Rocket League esports is here.

Got an eye to catch some top-tier pro CS:GO in the UK? You re in luck. Courtesy of ECS, we ve got ten pairs of MVP tickets to give away for the finals at The SSE Arena, Wembley from June 25-26. Not only will these tickets get you and a friend access to the games on both days, but you ll also receive a limited ECS scarf and entry to a special MVP seating area at centre stage. They re normally priced at 50 per person.

If you win you ll need to make your own way to London and, if you choose to stay overnight, sort out your own accommodation. To enter, all you need to do is answer the question below:

Who is the captain of the highest-placed European team in the Esports Championship Series Season 1?

Mail your answers to pcgamerpro@pcgamer.com and remember to include your full name and email address. The first ten correct answers will each receive a pair of tickets. For more information on the event itself, click here.

The cutoff for this competition is Wednesday June 15 at 12:00 BST.

GL HF!

Click here for our competition terms and conditions.

You'll know the name FMPONE if you've ventured into Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's Steam Workshop he's the mapper behind Cache, Crown, Season, and other environments generally regarded as the best CS:GO community-made maps around. Now, he's detailed his most recent map, Santorini, in a fun making-of video showing how it progressed from a basic greybox into the stonking, believable location you can download here.

If you've not been to Santorini, it's a bomb defusal map set in the identically named Greek island, and sees you battling terrorists intent on destroying the Greek economy.

A couple of years ago, Shawn 'FMPONE' Snelling and Sal 'Volcano' Garrozo (why don't I have a cool online-handle middle name?) detailed the making of Crown, in a three-part series for PC Gamer.

We ve reached the fifth and final article in this series on the different roles within teams in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. This time I ll talk about the in-game leader and the various approaches you might take to captaining your squad to victory.

Different types of in-game leaders

As I see it there are three distinct types of in-game leader and they all have their pros and cons. The first is the leader who spends a lot of time coming up with meticulously-planned executes, or set strats . The good thing about this style is that the entire team understands what you re going to do and the chances of your push to be well timed and executed is a lot higher than if you only kind of know what to do.

The downside is that you can t know for sure what the enemy team will do. They might decide to push a key area of the map and make things difficult for you. One way to deal with this issue is to plan for different potential threats: if they do that we re doing this. If not, we re doing this instead. Another downside is that it is easier to read a team that constantly goes for set strats.

The second style that comes to mind is the kind of leader who likes to run a lot of default rounds where you spread out across the map and gather information before you decide which site to attack and how. With this style you ll rarely run into stacked sites. If done properly you ll almost always attack the weaker side of the map. There are, again, some downsides to this approach. First of all, it takes excellent communication within the team to pull it off. Secondly, your pushes won t be as coordinated as a team that s spent hours running set strats on empty servers. Another risk is that you ll get picked off one by one and end up not being able to go for a proper push at all.

And then we have the third style, if you can call it a distinct style: a combination of the styles mentioned above. Sometimes you ll go for slow defaults and sometimes you ll think you have the read on your opponents and mix things up by going for a set strat.

Your team’s ambition and map pool

When you form a team it s important that you all share the same ambition. If one player wants to play a few games to wind down after a stressful day and another one wants to win international LAN tournaments, then you have a problem. Things will go a lot smoother if you re all on the same page.

CS:GO is a game that takes time to learn and you can t do everything at once. Let s say you have a team that practices three times per week for a couple of hours. If that team tries to include all seven maps in its map pool they ll get to practice each map once or twice per week. Needless to say, that s not going to help them win that online FACEIT tournament you ve got your sights on.

Most leagues and most tournaments use a system in which you take turns banning and picking maps. Unless you play a best of five (which is rare) you ll have at least two bans, meaning that you can have a map pool of five maps and guarantee that you won t play any of the maps you don t practice. Bear in mind that five maps is a pretty large map pool for any team. You can go for four maps and pray that you won t have to play the maps you don t practice.

But which maps should you include in your map pool? That depends on a lot of factors. First of all you need to look at what your strengths are. Maybe you have a sick AWPer that you can play around. Then Dust2 might be a map to consider. I d say that a good approach is a mix of what you think could work in theory and how games actually tend to go. Sometimes you have a strong record on, say, Cobblestone, but you don t really know why. Simply being successful on a map is as good a reason to include it in your map pool as any.

General advice

I ve been an in-game leader on and off for over a decade and I ve played under in-game leaders with varying degrees of experience. One thing I ve noticed that almost all new in-game leaders struggle with is to know what to say at the start of a round. The more I ve played the more I ve come to realize that it s not always necessary to have a detailed plan every time your team spawns in. Call a default setup, take your time and get a feel for what kind of defense the opposing team is running.

It is however crucial that you come up with a plan at some point. A bad plan is better than no plan in most cases. If you re new to in-game leading you can try to start planning for the next round towards the end of the current round. Keep a mental note of how the economy s looking. Let s say you ve lost two rounds in a row and you re about to lose a third one. That means that unless you get the plant you and your teammates will get $2400 next time you spawn. What does that mean? Can you afford to buy? Should you tell your team to save $2000 so that you ll end up with at least $4900 each the round after?

That leads me to my next piece of advice: try to practice one aspect of your in-game leading at a time if you re new, or it s bound to feel overwhelming. You might focus on you mid-round calls in one game, and then managing the team s economy in the next. It takes time, but as you improve in different areas you ll gradually start to feel that it comes more naturally to you.

My third piece of advice is pretty simple. The first time you want to come up with strats for your team, I d recommend you to either get inspired by others or downright steal stuff from pro teams. Watch demos and ask yourself why that team decided to use that smoke at that time. The more you steal, the more inspired you ll be to come up with strategies that are more suitable to the players you have on your team.

Mid-round calls

Making good mid-round calls can win you games. Listen to what your teammates say and try to keep track of all the information you have to give yourself a better chance of making good decisions. If you re new this can be tricky because it s a balance. You don t want your individual game to suffer too much, but at the same time your team needs someone to make the calls.

Let s say you re in a two-versus-two situation on Cache and you play the terrorist side. Both of your players are in mid and you know for a fact that there s a guy on A, because your other teammate just died in A-main. What s the right call? Obviously it depends on what weapons you have, how much time you have left and if your opponents have an AWP or not. But just for the sake of making this example, we ll ignore all of that. The right call in this situation is to quickly go through the vent over to B. You know there s an enemy on A and there s a possibility that there s an enemy on B. That other enemy might as well be in Z-connector or over at A with his friend. If you have to choose between going onto a site where you know there s an enemy and a site where there might be an enemy you should almost always go for the latter.

The information that you have is not limited to what you ve seen and heard this round. You might for example know that the other team managed to save an AWP. Depending on what your plan is you may want to either try to find him or stay away from him. Either way, if you can t see him in mid and he doesn t appear to be peeking on A, chances are he s on B.

The money system

If you want to succeed as an in-game leader it s crucial that you know when to eco, when to quasi buy (to buy but save enough money to be able to buy up the next round) and when to force buy. You ll have to try out different things to see what works for you and your team, but this page is a great resource when learning the different rewards. Just make sure you scroll down to the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive section.

Watch the pros play

As you might know, the Swedish team Ninjas in Pyjamas were extremely dominant during the first year of CS:GO. They went 87-0 in maps won on LAN, a record that probably won t be beaten, ever. After that first period, the team dropped off and gradually got worse up until recently. Admittedly they won a Major in 2014 but they still looked a little shaky. How can a team with that much individual skill go from being completely dominant to not even be considered a top 10 team? The meta game evolved while NiP stayed the same. Just before the MLG Columbus Major earlier this year they hired Bj rn THREAT Pers as their new coach. Because of visa issues he had to stand in as a player for Jacob pyth Mouruj rvi in that tournament. Like expected they weren t close to winning, but something had changed. They looked more structured and you could tell they d been talking things over.

Fast forward a month to Dreamhack Malm , where they played with the full line-up. The tournament was just as stacked with top teams as a major. Now you could definitely tell they had improved. They went on to win the entire thing and this time it wasn t a fluke run. The reason they won was because of their new calm and collected style with great mid-round calls. I highly recommend that you go over to HLTV.org and download a few of NiP s demos from that tournament and compare the games to how they looked before they added THREAT.

Another great strategist is Gabriel FalleN Toledo from Luminosity. He s probably the player who s had the biggest impact on the game in recent times. The way he s transformed the Brazilian CS:GO scene in such a short time is incredible. It started with a team called Keyd Stars who qualified for the ESL One Katowice major in early 2015 where they showed a lot of promise and finished in the top eight. At that time no-one thought Brazil would end up being this powerhouse of a nation in CS:GO.

Now not only has he won the MLG Columbus major with Luminosity but he s also helped out the guys in Tempo Storm with the strategic aspect of the game and as a result they re up and coming. According to HLTV.org s latest ranking Luminosity sits at number one, and Tempo Storm at ten. Needless to say, FalleN is one of the all time greats when it comes to in-game leading. Watch some of Luminosity s games and you ll feel inspired to do great things with your own team.

Find all of our Counter-Strike: Global Offensive guides here:Inferno Counter-Terrorist guideInferno Terrorist guideCache Counter-Terrorist guideCache Terrorist guideOverpass Counter-Terrorist guideOverpass Terrorist guideCobblestone Counter-Terrorist guideCobblestone Terrorist guideTrain Counter-Terrorist guideTrain Terrorist guideMirage Counter-Terrorist guideMirage Terrorist guideDust2 Counter-Terrorist guideDust2 Terrorist guideSupport role guideEntry fragger role guideLurker role guideAWPer role guide

There s loads happening in all sorts of scenes across the world this weekend, from international CS:GO to Dota 2 in Sweden to top-tier StarCraft in Korea. There s also one of the biggest-ever Rocket League prize pots on the line and a massive Street Fighter V tournament underway in Paris. GL HF!

Dota 2: Dreamleague Season 5 PlayoffsAnother long-running Dota 2 league reaches its final stages, this time in Sweden. Top-tier teams including OG will be playing throughout the weekend. Matches begin at 10:00 BST/02:00 PDT on Saturday and at 11:00 BST/03:00 PDT on Sunday. The stakes aren t quite as high as they were at Epicenter, but it s bound to be great Dota nonetheless. You can find the stream here.

CSGO: StarLadder i-League Invitational

There s a lot of great CS:GO happening this weekend, including StarLadder s i-League Invitational in Kiev. Luminosity, Na Vi and Virtus.pro are taking part. Strangely, it s hard to find a definite schedule for this one, but the playoffs are due to conclude on Sunday. Your best bet is to check GosuGamers hub page on European time for the livestream (check the sidebar for info on upcoming matches.)

CSGO: Esports Championship Series

More CS:GO, this time on the other side of the world. A similarly impressive lineup of teams including Astralis, NiP and Fnatic go head-to-head in the USA for a slice of a massive $1,750,000 prize pool. Games begin at 00:00 BST/16:00 PDT (the previous day) on both Saturday and Sunday. Find the livestream here.

StarCraft II: WCS Korea Season 1 Cross Finals 2016

Four of the best SCII players in Korea (and therefore the world) fight to determine a final champion for the region. There s $17,000 at stake for first place as well as 1,000 WCS points. Games begin at 10:00 BST/02:00 PDT on Sunday. Find more information, as well as the stream, on the official site.

Hearthstone: Americas Spring Preliminary

This massive qualifier for the Americas Spring Championship is open to all, but expect to see a lot of well-known faces too. The top 128 in the region will duke it out across the weekend, starting at 18:00 BST/10:00 PDT each day. It ll be streamed on Twitch.

Rocket League: Qualifier 1 Online Final

One guy in last week s comments asked, and we ve delivered! Rocket League s inaugural esports, er, league has reached its first moneyed final, with the conclusion of qualifier 1 in Europe and North America playing out over the next few days. The $5000 pot might seem modest by modern standards, but this is early days for an exciting new esport. Find more information, and the livestream, on the official Rocket League esports site.

Capcom Pro Tour: StunFest

France has produced some impressive Street Fighter V players of late, so it s only appropriate that Paris is the next stop on the Capcom Pro Tour. Andi Hamilton looked forward to StunFest in his most recent column, and anticipates great things for the event. Play begins at 19:00 BST/11:00 PDT on Saturday and at 18:00 BST/10:00 PDT on Sunday. A word of warning: the initial livestream has been a bit flaky, particularly when it comes to SFV. Hopefully they ll have sorted it out by the time the top 8 rolls around. In either case, you can find more info and the livestream here.

Smite: Spring Split

Smite s European and North American Spring Split enters week eight with another round of play this weekend. You ll find matches starting at 18:00 BST/10:00 PDT on both Saturday and Sunday, with Europe leading the charge on Saturday followed by NA on Sunday. Schedule and livestream details can be found on the HiRezTV site.

Friday s announcement of the World Esports Association, WESA, could ve gone smoother. A leaked logo earlier in the week prompted widespread speculation, and even in the immediate aftermath of the official announcement it was tough to find a clear explanation of what this new sports federation would actually do. In part this is the fault of WESA itself. I was at the launch in London, and my experience was of a number of good ideas struggling to make themselves heard above the furore.

There are a bunch of different ways to say we want to create a more stable and professional conversation around esports , after all, and we ve started FIFA is only one of them although it just happens to be the one that makes people think about corruption and bad governance. It feels like they ve been fighting fires from minute one as a consequence of mishandling a few key points.

On the other hand, the way the conversation around WESA has developed demonstrates, with bittersweet irony, why something like WESA is necessary. The esports community likes to hold court in Reddit and on Twitter. YouTube and the press are used as soundboards that start public fights elsewhere on social media. And I m not just talking about fans: the last few days have seen senior industry figures including members of WESA get drawn into a mess of he-said-she-said. This is an industry used to conducting its affairs through DMs and private Skype channels, where transparency (i.e, a leaked chat log) is usually a consequence of a fight getting out of hand.

WESA s most appealing stated aim is its desire to structure and professionalise exactly this kind of conversation; to provide a way for esports orgs to talk to one another in a way that avoids exactly this kind of unhappy fallout. I don t think that s a crazy idea, in and of itself.

What, how, why

Here s a broad outline: WESA is a committee featuring eight large esports organisations (Fnatic, NiP, Na Vi, Virtus.pro, G2, EnVyUs, FaZe and mousesports) and one tournament organiser (ESL). Representatives for these organisations are joined by a representative from a player council. WESA is distinct from other sports federations in that it gives players direct representation independent of their teams.

Motions brought to the committee will require a 75% majority vote to pass, and any policies brought into being by WESA will only be applicable to WESA members and WESA-sanctioned leagues. WESA members will be able to play in non-WESA leagues, and non-members will be able to play in leagues that WESA oversees.

WESA itself will not run events or leagues at all, but given the connection to ESL it s not surprising that the CS:GO Pro League is the first to be sanctioned by WESA. Areas of consideration suggested to me on Friday range from anti-doping to anti-gambling, broadcast rights, scheduling and legal dispute resolution.

To that latter end, WESA will also operate an arbitration court designed specifically for esports. They boast that this will be able to operate via video chat, return a verdict within 48 hours, and allow disputes to be resolved independent of the complex web of national jurisdictions that esports has traditionally struggled to navigate.

The association will fund itself with membership fees (the board would not specify how much this is) and by taking a revenue share of the leagues that it sanctions. This share is split evenly between all member organisations.

Almost all of it has precedent within conventional sport (WESA s first league commissioner, Pietro Fringuelli, was previously a legal advisor to the German Bundesliga) and the failings of similar organisations, like FIFA, does not necessarily mean that this also will fail. Associations and unions are not de facto corrupt, and all governance is imperfect to a degree. If esports is to become more structured, that has to start somewhere. There is no perfect external authority to be consulted for an industry this new, with this many unique considerations. To that end, I understand why WESA has formed in the way that it has.

Cause for concern

The controversy surrounding WESA, then, comes from a few different places: concern about who is involved in WESA and how much power they ll have; the motivations that drive its members; the failure of previous initiatives like this; a general distrust of centralised governance. I put these concerns to James Kennigit Lampkin, VP of Pro Gaming for ESL.

You look back at an organisation like G7 Lampkin says. These teams came together and said we re going to work together, we re going to unionise against organisers and leagues . Then other people tried it. And it always failed. Why did it always fail? Because every single time a new game comes out, that relationship set resets. Those team owners are incentivised to be ultra-competitive in the space, get the best players they can, go after each other shady stuff happens. When you say to team owners, hey just go work together , consistently over the last decade it didn t work.

Creating a stable structure that can produce guidelines that would survive the death of any given game was one of WESA s founding ideas. That was the thought behind the structure Lampkin says. Instead of having teams operate by themselves and organisers operate by themselves, maybe we could actually create something sustainable that doesn't get destroyed the second a new game comes out.

This sentiment is echoed by Fnatic s Patrik cArn S ttermon, who was captain of the Fnatic CS:GO team for six years. You cannot really expect, in esports, that a title we play today will be around in a hundred years. But nevertheless we feel like a game can have longer longevity than it has today. In order to stimulate such, we need to get organised. We need to set standards. We need to ensure that the professional circuit that we are very much part of is well-defined, predictable, that sponsors can understand the scheduling and so on. This has not been the case in CSGO in particular.

A lot of what WESA seeks to do (arbitration being the exception) already happens unofficially in some form or another. Esports orgs talk to one another in order to agree on schedules, players talk to each other about how they are treated, and how they d like to be treated, and so on. At its most benign, WESA seeks to make these processes more transparent and consistent.

Teams, and players, have come together in very unofficial ways Lampkin says. We deal with a player union in Dota and a player union in CS:GO. But the significance of those unions is fairly small the Dota union, for example, exploded because of a Twitter fight between two players. An entire union destroyed because of a Twitter fight between two players. If we're talking about how to make this work, it has to be official.

[WESA] will govern and form regulation, but it will form regulation on itself, really Lampkin says. It's a collective partnership that brings stakeholders to the table.

Both S ttermon and Lampkin acknowledge that skepticism is a likely response to any initiative like this. There will be questions asked S ttermon says. The community will be like, is this good for us? There have been projects that appear to be similar from the get go people have an inherent caution when it comes to uniting stakeholders, particularly when there are some dominant forces. People think we re just coming in and making a power grab and trying to control the entire space. That is by no means the ambition we have here at all.

The ESL-ephant in the room

Given WESA s stated aim to professionalise communication in the industry, the question of who has been invited to participate in that process is a primary concern. There are a lot of high-profile teams already involved, but many that aren t. Most notably absent, however, are the other tournament organisers: MLG, DreamHack, FACEIT, and so on. As far as WESA s launch incarnation is concerned, ESL speaks for that entire aspect of the industry. This is clearly questionable, and the hardest thing about WESA to accept on trust.

What we said was, if we're going to build this structure in WESA, then you're inherently required to balance ESL's power in that system ESL s Lampkin says. Because otherwise, as fans say, it looks like ESL's just going to try to dominate everything. That is specifically why we built it with players and teams with so much power. Certainly ESL as an organiser love our own events, but when you bring all these other people in who counterbalance that view, you get a system that allows for us to have a proper communication structure with other organisers and with non-member teams.

The structure of WESA, Lampkin argues, prevents ESL from operating with the kind of impunity that concerned fans have suggested. Even so, there are understandable concerns about how ESL might influence the association s priorities, or take advantage of these new clearer lines of communication. To that end, Lampkin asks that people wait and see.

What it comes down to is the actions of the association he says. If all the WESA teams pull out of ELEAGUE tomorrow, then you can quickly go and say 'hey, yeah, this was a terrible idea.' The point is that if, theoretically, ESL runs into the WESA board room and says 'we're shutting down everything!' The players say 'no, we're boycotting you' and the team owners walk out of the room and the entire organisation crumbles immediately. Because it requires consensus! That's the entire point of the system.

Even so, the question but why isn t anyone else directly involved should be asked. Lampkin s answer surprised me. ESL was in negotiations with other organisers he says. Not all other organisers, but we were in negotiations. Hey, is there a way for us to align our interests.' And after months of this process, hmm-ing and ha-ing, we came to the realisation that, no, it fails. As leagues, we are too competitive with each other across the esports ecosystem.

Lampkin didn t offer a specific explanation for why these discussions failed, so in that sense this remains another aspect of this difficult subject that the community is being asked to take on trust. We tried, but we re the only people who want to make this happen is the message here. And it s easy to be cynical about that message.

When I spoke to Fnatic s Patrik S ttermon, however, he independently verified Lampkin s sentiment. We set out, as teams, to talk to tournament organisers a few years ago he says. Through that process, eventually we learned that what we can accomplish with ESL is superior to the other discussions we had. This doesn t mean that those guys are cancelled out or not in consideration going forward. In fact, we hope to set a great standard and maybe stimulate other regions to set up something similar. Maybe we can work together.

There's always, I see it in esports press, I see it from fans, and I see it from our competitors, this implication that we're bulldozing or crushing Lampkin says. What we're saying is, no. What we're doing is we're working. This is an open playing field. There is nothing stopping any organiser from building systems, fighting doping, fighting corruption, fighting against match-fixing. Anybody can go and do that, it's just the case that ESL has been a bit ahead of the pack on a lot of this stuff. Look at the esports integrity initiative we had, AnyKey, WESA these are initiatives that we put forward with others to create a better structure within esports. Because literally we cannot do it by ourselves.

This, at least, is something that can be independently assessed. ESL have repeatedly expressed an interest in professionalising esports no other tournament organiser has been as public about anti-doping, for example, or diversity. This does not mean that their involvement in WESA is altruistic, but it does lend credence to Lampkin s notion that ESL happens to be the organisation with the most drive when it comes to these issues. This might sound unfair, particularly if you re working for one of ESL s rivals: in which case the onus is on those organisations to prove that they re just as engaged.

Put it this way: if WESA is successful in creating a system of governance that makes CS:GO players richer, safer and happier, and attaches that primarily to ESL events, then ESL will definitely benefit and that is worth being circumspect about. However: players will also be richer, safer and happier. That should make it harder for tournament organisers of all kinds, including ESL, to offer players anything less than the good deal that they ve become accustomed to. This is a best-case scenario, perhaps, but it illustrates why a pragmatic approach, even one that seems compromised, has the potential to exert a positive influence over the esports industry as a whole.

This product is very close to my heart S ttermon says. Esports has been vastly changing, but some stuff hasn t changed in pace with the rest of the industry. Like player representation, benefits, broadcasting rights stuff you normally see in conventional sports that have been around for a long time.

Players and teams

If long-term players want these things, and they are not being provided for in the industry as it currently operates, then they will go looking for it. It s worth considering that WESA has been established with a focus on CS:GO that seems to have been the main criteria governing which teams were initially invited and the CS:GO scene is probably the most open to this kind of structure. There s little publisher oversight, a lot of different stakeholders, and little stability.

CS:GO is, I think, the one game where there's an opportunity for team owners to start to manage themselves without excuse the analogy without a parent says Lampkin. [WESA] is not a reporting-upwards relationship, it's a consensus-building organisation.

This is the sense that I get from S ttermon, too: CS:GO both needs better governance and is open to it. He cites League of Legends as an attractive model.

I think there's a lot of learning to take from Riot S ttermon says. How they set up the LCS. The LCS has proven to be a very successful formula for teams, there's a schedule, there's a transfer window, the fans are really hype. That's similar to the sports world, and sports have had a much longer time to figure these things out.

It s easy to see where the appeal of WESA may lie for teams like Fnatic. Reliable prize pools, regulations and schedules are good for business, and they are specifically good at attracting major sponsors that might be put off by esports wild west reputation. If WESA (or an initiative like it) succeeds, then the parties involved stand to benefit tremendously. But and this is a really important but stability and profitability translates directly into a better experience for players and viewers. If you want more events near you, better support for semi-pro teams, more regular games, then all of that stems from a healthier business. I m not saying that WESA can or will achieve this, but it s important to understand the contours of the area between trying to make esports more viable and trying to take over the industry.

Through WESA, however, these organisations many of them a decade or more old have an opportunity to become the official governing heart of the CS:GO scene. They may well prove to be benevolent governors, but they ll still define the environment that players operate within. The growth of the Dota 2 scene makes for a useful contrast, here. The vast prize pools associated with the International, coupled with Valve s preference for working directly with players rather than teams, has created a highly unstable environment. The influence of the traditional esports orgs has been on the wane since 2014, when a number of teams split up and reassembled under new banners. This has been a mixed blessing: more freedom has, on occasion, meant more freedom to get screwed over . But players have largely been in charge of their own destinies.

As prize pools in CS:GO increase, it s not surprising that the old orgs are looking for ways to increase their significance in the eyes of their players before the scene goes the way of Dota. If they re trying to do that by offering the players a better deal as part of a WESA member org than they d get on their own, however, then it s hard to say that this is necessarily a bad thing.

Long-term viability

I suspect the discussion around WESA will change dramatically the moment they either (a) screw up or (b) solve a major problem for players. The former would prove the cynicism of the last few days warranted. The latter would suggest that ESL et al deserve more benefit of the doubt than they ve been getting.

Beyond that, the organisation s first challenge is creating meaningful regulations that create more stability and better quality of life for players within the CS:GO scene. That is far easier said than done, and likely the work of months if not years. But if they can do that and that s another big but then the next step is to apply WESA s learnings to other esports. S ttermon is confident that this is possible.

It s inevitable to capture the learnings and apply the learnings across the board, right? He says. Not only in future Counter-Strike leagues but within our organisation across other games. That doesn t mean it has to be a forceful approach it s about getting in the same room, understanding the opportunity and how we can collaborate together. The intention is to very much be open minded, include as many stakeholders as possible, but not forgoing the intention to professionalise the space we want to do this in a sustainable fashion.

Lampkin argues that WESA doesn t need to take over the industry to be effective that it can be just as useful as a positive example independent of other organisations, and that they would be happy for this to be the case. I don t think Riot needs WESA, right? He says. But what we see is a lot of problems that we look to solve are either not the core competency of a lot of game publishers, so the goal for us is, we provide the solution even if we re not engaged with that publisher through WESA if we ve figured out how to solve anti-doping, or we ve figured out how to solve gambling issues, then just copy us! It s an open market.

Despite the talk of the LCS, there s a little of Valve s logic to this stance. WESA will either succeed because its ideas work, Lampkin argues, or fail because they don t and either is good for the industry as a whole. The only way WESA works is if it has the buy-in of players and teams he says. It's the only way it works. I can go and ask nicely for a team to join but if they don't want to join they don't have to join. It's entirely based on the value proposition that we as a group here have created to try to stabilise things and create a better structure.

There is a long, tough journey ahead for WESA. The association has been founded in a culture that was primed to reject it from the start, and it may yet prove that this is justified. Yet I worry that this same culture might prevent WESA, or an organisation like it, from being effective despite best intentions. If every attempt to establish standards is treated like a conspiracy, and every attempt to make esports more profitable treated like a scandal, then the conversation within the industry between teams and showrunners, teams and players, organisations and fans has almost nowhere to go.

It s important to ask tough questions. As the esports industry matures, however, these are questions that need answering too: who is going to offer players a secure career path? Who is going to prevent another crash? Who is going to ensure that the rights of players don t get trampled as the business becomes more profitable? WESA may not prove to have all, or any, of the answers. In that case, the question becomes: who does?