{"id":32928,"date":"2018-07-13T17:52:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-13T17:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/322059"},"modified":"2018-07-13T17:52:00","modified_gmt":"2018-07-13T17:52:00","slug":"japan-is-taking-steps-to-legalize-paid-esports-tournaments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/07\/13\/japan-is-taking-steps-to-legalize-paid-esports-tournaments\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan is taking steps to legalize paid esports tournaments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Laws aimed at illegal gambling have long prevented Japanese esports events from offering cash prizes, but the country is looking to change that through a licensing program that exempts some players from those very laws.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2018-02-08\/at-long-last-japan-finally-oks-video-gaming-as-a-profession\">As Bloomberg reports<\/a>, this is both a shifting moment for Japanese esports competitors and for game companies themselves. Developers and publishers in Japan stand to make a significant amount of money by selling tickets, advertising, broadcast rights, and merch for major esports competitions. Until now, Japan was closed off to those opportunities.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Japanese government will issue a select few\u00a0licenses to a \u201cfew dozen players\u201d that rank well in an esports event this weekend. Those licenses then permit those players to compete in paid video game events in the future.<\/p>\n<p>This weekend\u2019s event will see players will compete for professional licenses in <em>Winning Eleven 2018 (<\/em>AKA<em> Pro Evolution Soccer 2018<\/em> in the West)<em>,<\/em> <em>Call of Duty: WWII,<\/em> <em>Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition<\/em>, and <em>Tekken 7<\/em>, along with the smartphone games <em>Puzzle &amp; Dragons<\/em> and <em>Monster Strike<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Lawmakers formed an esport-centric coalition last year called the JeSU to handle matters relating to Japan\u2019s esports industry late last year, following rumblings that competitive video games could be featured in future Olympic events. The licensing program in the fruit of that committee&#8217;s efforts, and mirrors programs in place for professional golf, baseball, and tennis.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first big step,\u201d JeSU vice president Hirokazu Hamamura told Bloomberg.\u00a0\u201cWhat\u2019s really important for the esports movement is whether our players can become stars. And I think that\u2019s coming.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Laws aimed at illegal gambling have long prevented Japanese esports events from offering cash prizes, but the country is looking to change that through a licensing program that exempts some players from those very laws. As Bloomberg reports, this is both a shifting moment for Japanese esports competitors and for game companies themselves. Developers and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}