The lawsuit filed against Activision over the Call of Duty League is going into arbitration.
As shared by CharlieIntel, the judge involved in this case has dismissed the lawsuit, filed by H3CZ and Scump, against Activision Blizzard. The arbitration process will allow the arbitrator, not a courtroom or a judge, to “decide final decisions on the dispute between both parties.”
For those who need a refresher, Hector ‘H3CZ’ Rodriguez and Seth ‘Scump’ Abner sued Activision Blizzard about three weeks ago, well after Microsoft finalized their acquisition of the gaming giant.
H3CZ is CEO of OpTic Gaming, while Scump was an esports player in Team OpTic. The pair sued Activision because of what they call an “unlawful 100 percent monopoly”over the Call Of Duty League.
H3CZ and Scump claim that because of the monopoly, the two were forced into a financially compromising situation, just so that they can keep playing in the league. And their suit goes into detail on the situation that was imposed on them by Activision themselves.
When Activision launched the league in 2019, they disallowed all other tournaments being run by third parties in favor of their own. They also charged esports teams franchising fees to compete. H3CZ and Scump now revealed that OpTic had to pay $ 27.5 million to Activision to compete, and then agreed to share half of their merchandise and event ticket sales to the company.
Furthermore, Activision wanted control over how OpTic did business on their own. They gave themselves the exclusive rights to the biggest advertising partners for the league. Subsequently, they controlled what sponsorships OpTic could get into, and they did not allow OpTic’s players to play in other leagues outside their own.
The suit definitely raises questions about how Activision has been controlling Call of Duty’s esports teams, a discreetly hostile relationship compared to how Capcom or even Nintendo does business with their competitive communities. Obviously, if this lawsuit didn’t come about, we wouldn’t even know that Activision was charging their esports teams for the privilege of playing Call of Duty. Similar criticism has been leveled at the Blizzard side of the company for how they handle the Overwatch League.
But it also raises concerns about the viability of esports as a business in general. While OpTic is in the right to claim the situation is leveled heavily against their favor, there are other sports where league organizers have similar arrangements, and they can handle such arrangements just fine. And that’s because there’s big money in those sports.
Arbitration will generally allow both sides to get a faster resolution, and will also be generally cheaper. Hopefully OpTic can get a favorable outcome out of this and Activision Blizzard and Microsoft may learn something about how to deal with their esports partners in the future.
