If yesterday's article (that can be found here) about the Hearthstone qualifier in Finland with access restricted to only the male sex made your blood boil then be angry no more. The International eSports Federation have changed their mind and the male-only tournament will now be open to both male and female players. Result!
The scandal began on Tuesday when a flier for the event was passed about online, specifically on a sub-Reddit with the entry restrictions highlighted. The Finnish organisers then replied to the criticisms by revealing that they were only in place due to the IeSF's own rules that split tournaments between male and female players as an attempt to get eSports taken seriously as sport. Upon hearing the outcry from the gaming community and the gaming press Blizzard themselves got involved, making it clear that they wouldn't stand for such restrictions of entry and would in fact prohibit any event that tried to as they wouldn't want to be seen to promote the exclusion of women from the gaming community. Upon hearing the opinions the IeSF held an emergency meeting of their board to make a decision on what should be done.
“IeSF shall have two event categories: "Open for All" events and events that are reserved for women. The events which were initially set aside as the male division will now be open to all genders, and the events which were initially set as the female division will remain as they were.” read the statement that they released declaring the change of the rules.
They further justified that the female-only events were staying as they were to encourage more women into eSports with the hopes that they would eventually grow in confidence enough to move to the Open for All events and make eSports less a less male-dominated industry of the gaming community.
Just shows what we as a community can do when we seek to go against the sexist stereotype that gamers often get tarred with