Cover Image Courtesy: StarLadder | Thumbnail Image Courtesy: James Banks
Esports has certainly been growing at an unprecedented pace and while NA and EU regions have been the leader for a long time now, the focus seems to have diverted towards China and the rest of Asia. But despite the immense growth shown on paper, and calculations evaluating the industry to touch the Billion dollar mark soon, there are various problems at the ground level that are not dancing to the tunes of ‘positive growth’ of the industry.
The constant failure of some tournament organizers to pay the talents they hire on time was once again highlighted with James Banks - Esport Commentator, Host, and Journalist, taking to Twitter to vent out about his current position, where he sometimes gets paid after 6+ months from the completion of the tournament.
He revealed his poor financial condition as his payments are often delayed by 3, 5 or even 6 months and how he is tired of always chasing people, begging for money that he has worked for.
Continuing further, he explains how trapped he feels because if he goes all out and says who it is that owes him money, they will not hire him in the future, and if he continues to stay quite well then he will go on suffering in silence."
About taking names, he goes on to say that “For all of those saying call them out, I did that with Unikrn and I’m still owed 10k euros which I will never ever see! It’s disgusting.”
So instead of calling them out, Banks suggested the other talents that they should all create something to solve this, as all of them have struggled with something similar on all levels.
Banks goes on to point that it’s not just talents but also many teams that suffer from delayed payments of their prize money, which takes more time to be processed than it should.
He reveals how tough it is for him to publicly speak about all this as he suffers from anxiety and depression, predicting that 2020 might see his retirement from esports as these tournament organizers will see all of this and instead of apologising and owning up to their mistake will simply choose to not hire him.
Finally, while talking about his personal family issues he reveals that he will be shining more light on that in an interview with Blake Panasiewicz - Host, Interviewer, and Mental Skills Coach, in December. He goes on to give a few examples of various tournament organizers that do a fantastic job like WePlay!, Eden Esports, ESL, and Copenhagen Games, concluding by saying that, “let’s not start a witch-hunt, I just want to get US talent across ALL games to work together on this wider issue!”
James Banks tweeted out a lot that he has personally suffered this year or in the past as well, there might be many more out there with similar or worst experiences, and with the industry growing at such a rapid pace if the base is unsettled it will not be long before all of it implodes.
These problems need to be taken care of, and the solution needs to be permanent instead of being a temporary fix, cause the cracks will appear again no matter how well one tries to mend them.
Let’s see if Banks call to other talents is heard and how do they work together to take care of this issue which might be suppressing the growth of a lot of other talents.
