The FNPPA needs to be rebuilt again
As someone who has followed the Fortnite Competitive scene from it’s birth and the Esports scene since 2016 when I bought my first PC after moving to the UK, I was always surprised by the lack of unions in Esports. As someone who has worked in a student union, I know how important Unions are to the employee in an organization.
Traditional Sports Leagues across the world. These unions establish healthy working conditions for the players. They set a minimum and maximum wage, some rules for the players and teams to follow and protect their rights. Most of the player unions can be seen in franchised leagues like the NBA. These players have the power to cause a lockout and not play. With the contract they have with the NBA, the owners cannot conduct games during this time. We do not anything close to a player’s union in any esports title.
The first problem we see Is the massive fragmentation in terms of games. There are many devs that have games that are esports titles, and then there are the big 4 Esports titles publishers- Riot Games, Epic Games, Activision-Blizzard, and Valve. This fragmentation is the reason why we have never had a singular players union across all games. Each publisher/developer has their own set of rules and regulations or lack thereof which does not help either. The second issue is that the game is owned by the developers/publishers. In traditional sports, nobody owns American football or Basketball. You too can create your own league with your own rules and monetization model. The third problem that stands out is developers not allowing player unions. The final issue is players not wanting a players association. They fear that having a salary cap is detrimental to their earning potential(Which it is), but it helps prolong their careers. The NBA salary cap protects the owners from themselves by not letting them overspend and bankrupt themselves. A salary cap would protect the league from shutting down early.
The Overwatch League does have a salary cap, in fact it has two- a soft cap and a hard cap. The soft cap is a limit which every team is expected to follow and the hard cap has a tax system wherein every dollar spent over the soft cap, the team gives an extra dollar to the league which is redistributed to the other teams at the end of the season. This however has come into scrutiny because the OWL does not have a player union and could cause Activision Blizzard to get into more legal trouble than it already is in.
Now some games have their own players unions but they are closer to players associations, if you can even call them that. The League of Legends players association is owned and funded by Riot Games which is a direct conflict of interest. They can possibly influence decisions and therefore this union has no real power. The legal team for this union also works for Riot Games. The only thing it does is help players against their orgs to a certain extent.
The next example of an esports union would be in CSGO. The CSPPA ( Counter Strike Pro Players Association) is the first example of what started as a proper union. It was started after the North American CSGO team owners tried to form the PEA, a franchised NA only CSGO league. The players wanted to play in other events too while the owners wanted the PEA to have a financial deal that tournament organizers like ESL did not provide at the time. Players like Sean Garres led action against the PEA and got it shut before it could even shut( Something which might been the start of the death of NA CSGO). An idea for a CSGO union has always existed. Richard Lewis tried to form one called EPA( No, not the Environmental Protection Agency) but was unsuccessful.
SirScoots joined in a voluntary role as an advisor and Sean Gares as a player advisor. Mads Oland, who has previously worked with the Danish Football Union has successfully led strike action before joined as CEO. While the Union still exists, it’s a shell of its former self, with allegations of being a talent agency and in making the players give up their image rights as well.
Now where does the FNPPA sit in all of this? The FNPPA seems more like an Old Boys Club or if anything just like the CSPPA except much worse. It has been non communicative of its proceedings. Nobody even knows if it still exists. Some of the people on the board don’t even play Fortnite anymore, let alone Casually. Some of the pros on the board have no idea of how a Union functions. There is no option of membership, and it only represents North America and Europe. There’s no player from Asia, Middle East, Oceania and Brazil on the board. Hell, the FNPPA doesn’t even know that the Chinese Fortnite players who qualified for the World Cup got scammed out of their winnings by their orgs.
The FNPPA needs serious rebuilding. There needs to be a constitution and it needs to be registered as a charity. It needs people experienced in Unionisation on their board. It needs retired players on its board instead of active ones so that there’s no conflict of interest. It needs to guide young pros in signing contracts and help them instead of focusing on just working with Epic. It needs to push Epic to have org cosmetics. It needs to represent players from all regions by letting any pro with a salary join in as a member with voting rights. It needs to rebuilt… From Scratch, before it’s too late.