eSports are already rivaling traditional sports in viewership ratings and pro game players are seeing career-ending injuries in the style of their more athletic counterparts. Now, numerous eSports leagues are once again mimicking the world of physical sports in preparing to crack down on the use of performance-enhancing drugs at tournaments.
Widespread use of attention-focusing drugs like Adderall has been something of an open secret in the eSports community for a while; eSports consultant Bjoern Franzen publicly warned of rampant eSports pill-popping last year and an excellent Eurogamer exposé on the problem from April included many anonymous players admitting to widespread drug use. But the issue really came to a head earlier this month when Kory "Semphis" Friesen, a former member of high-profile pro gaming team Cloud9 who was recently let go for poor performance, admitted in a video interview that "we were all on Adderall" during Electronic Sports League (ESL) tournaments. "It's pretty obvious if you listen to the comms," Friesen said, referring to the frenetic, hectic back-and-forth on in-game chat channels.
The interview seems to have been a wake-up call for some eSports leagues to tighten up their drug enforcement. "The integrity of our sport is and always will be our biggest concern," ESL Head of Communications Anna Rozwandowicz told Wired UK . "When we first saw [Friesen's comments], we focused immediately on kickstarting a policy-making process and adjusting the rules."
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