After alleged failed funds from Players First, Ladies’s Automobile Ball (WCB), a main ladies’s Rocket League event sequence, is being extremely criticized by gamers on-line. As of November 2023, key group members are calling for a totally new league.
February 2023 noticed Gamers First, a Texas-based esports group, take management of the WCB league from its predecessors, Kansas Metropolis Pioneers (KCP). This midseason takeover occurred as a result of KCP’s lack of ability to pay out any prize cash. Nevertheless, lacking funds have continued to plague the group.
On Nov. 11, the COO at Resolve Esports Jeff Simpkins revealed screenshots of obvious Discord conversations with the CEO of Players First, Kenny Vaccaro, on X (previously generally known as Twitter). These screenshots have been accompanied by scathing commentary on how the group has pushed gamers to boycotts and threats simply to instigate dialog.
Within the revealed screenshots, Vaccaro claims to have personally paid the cash KCP couldn’t give to opponents. He additionally highlights a number of difficulties with elevating funds for the league, referencing an undisclosed future plan to assist collaborating organizations monetize.
Nevertheless, knowledgeable ladies’s Rocket League participant revealed that in actuality opponents are “actually fed up,” with the league employees having “no thought” about what the way forward for the league holds. A report from Esports Insider on Nov. 14 additionally reveals that employees members at Players First haven’t been paid themselves.
Funds for the Aug. 20 WCB Championship have been promised after 30 days. This meant funds have been due Sept. 19, however nonetheless had not been paid in November. According to Simpkins, “This ongoing over promising and below delivering from [Gamers First] isn’t honest and massively undermines the arduous work that these ladies put into the season.”
As of Nov 14, neither Vaccaro nor Players First have publicly addressed the screenshots or clarified whether or not all funds have gone via.
Additional damning Players First is the obvious prioritization of different initiatives over paying gamers and employees what they’re owed. Oct. 27 noticed Players First launch a brand new WCB merchandise retailer, with no clear indication that the cash will assist fund the ladies’s scene.
Because the controversy unfolded, gamers began calling for an entire overhaul of ladies’s competitions in Rocket League. A number of ladies, together with skilled WCB participant for Endpoint, Evie “Slumpii,” Leonard have expressed that the one means ladies’s Rocket League tournaments might be revitalized is thru Epic Video games or Psyonix creating, supporting, or sponsoring their very own league to create stability. These gamers hope this transfer will resemble Riot Video games’ funding in VALORANT Recreation Changers and would create a wholly new league, separating from the WCB model totally.
Though no help from Rocket League builders or publishers has been introduced, group religion in Players First to supply a profitable ladies’s esports circuit has considerably decreased, placing the way forward for WCB and different ladies’s tournaments into query.
Common supervisor for Detonate Esports and the one lady remaining on the WCB employees group, CatJeans, summarised that “The illustration of the group WCB serves is now not there,” and “Ladies’s Rocket League deserves higher than this.”
The ladies’s Rocket League esports group is clearly anticipating change, for higher or for worse.
