Activision Blizzard Sued Over Esports Wages

The United States Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, through the same accuses the video game developer of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act with the rules that the Overwatch League and Call of Duty League ran. In this he is accused of illegally keeping player salaries low, accusing the competitive balance tax and penalizing teams in the Overwatch and Call Of Duty leagues if they exceeded the salary cap.

The government is not going along with that “Esports League Competitive Balance” Tax, it says, intended to penalize teams if they spent more on player salaries than the amount decided by Activision Blizzard.

“Video games and esports are among the most popular and fastest growing forms of entertainment in the world today, and professional esports players, like all workers, deserve the benefits of competition for their services,” said Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Jonathan Kanter.

Activision Blizzard denied the charges, going on to say that they “continue to have the least restrictive player mobility compensation system in all of the major sports leagues.”

“When we launched the Overwatch and Call of Duty leagues, we wanted to create viable career opportunities for players who require minimum salaries and mandatory benefits as part of player contracts,” an Activision Blizzard representative told gamesindustry.biz .”As a league, we also wanted our products to be competitive, so we carefully designed and implemented the Competitive Balance Tax.

Activision Blizzard has recently been indicted on two unfair labor charges, accusing the company of breaking unions and suppressing discussions about working conditions.