Recently a very visible significant memeber of the fighting game community was fired for mishandling tournament prize pool funds. Autro Sanchez was taking money that was supposed to go to players and placing it in his own paypal account. He has addressed the situation stating various obsticles that made it difficult for him to pay players out in a timely manner. He states he was not taking the money but holding on to it and as of this writing it seems all the money has been provided to the correct players. There has been recent discussion about the health of the FGC in terms of how lucritive it is to be a top player. The last EVO saw low payouts for first place players. This has many players asking if its even worth it to be a top fighting game player. The FGC might not be popular enough yet to warrant large consistent payouts like other competative games. The current landscape of being a top player is more of a labor of love than a solid long term career. Its one thing for the FGC to just be poor investment, but when you win a tournament and still dont receive your payment the FGC becomes dangerous. These players went to a tourament, were robbed and then months later the robber decided to return the funds (only after being caught). What is wrong with the FGC?
Is the FGC just not professional enough? If there was tighter regulation on tournament funds then these problems could be caught right away. We could have something like a commissioner that oversees all the tournaments and makes them adhere to certain rules. This comission would of course need to be paid out which means less money for the players. Many of the tournaments are run by private groups or companies that dont need to adhere to any governing body. The money the players are getting is already so low (or none at all if you dont make it to top 16 most of the time) that it would seem like more trouble than good to try to establish and enforce these regulations. The FGC is a group of tournaments that run multiple fighting games and the players that participate. This group has a loose complex overlap distributed by region, the streamers that broadcast these tournaments, the players that travel and the personalities that cast the matches. The FGC is not one thing. Regulation and definied standards are not possible to enforce when there is no incentive for individuals entities to require them. The FGC cannot be professional because the FGC is not a community.
Communities are self sustaining enclosures. Communities protect the individuals within that community. Communities help the individuals flourish and they remove all entities that would harm other members of the community. The FGC does not protect its own nor does it provide any path to long term growth and success. The FGC as far as the tournaments go is a tool to syphon money from bad players to good players. Its a cabal of tournament organizers that take a little bit off the top for their hard work of hosting. Its a trap for good players to provide a little bit of attention to the lesser players in order to enact a puesdo ponzi scheme. Ever notice the good players practice with the good players and stay pretty consistent over multiple games. This is a form of maintaing a monopoly of skill and degrades the overall integrity of the competitive circut. Its not illegal, it quite smart. I could see where such a social construct is quite natural considering even top players are not making a lot of money. You get the top why wouldnt you do everything you can to stay there? The FGC is not a community, its a honey pot to take money from weak players. Its not a self sustaining entity, its a parasite.
This doesnt have to always be the case but we can start by removing people that show obvious selfish behavior of the group. Arturo Sanchez should not be allowed at any tournaments for 5 years. If that example is not made then its just another display that the FGC is not a healthy place to be that wants to make sure everyone has fun and is respected. Its a den of wolves and the majority of you are the sheep.
