An eSports group has been forced to justify their decisions when people noticed that their listing for a Finnish qualifying tournament for the popular card game Hearthstone specified that only MALE Finns were allowed to enter.

The organising group, the Finnish eSports Federation have pointed to the organisers of the event the tournament is a qualifier for – a South Korean group called the International e-Sports Federation – as they are the people who are responsible for the restrictions. As part of their efforts to get eSports taken seriously as ‘real sport’, IeSF separates their tournaments between the sexes – guys against guys and women against women.

“In accordance with the International e-Sports Federation’s (IeSF) tournament regulations, since the main tournament event is open to male players only. This is to avoid possible conflicts (e.g. a female player eliminating a male player during RO8) among other things.” said head admin of the qualifier Markus “Olodyn” Koskivirta in a statement made to PC Gamer. He then went on to say that the reason the entries are restricted is because if they allowed the tournament to be for both sexes, the winner could ultimately be female and then unable to progress to the next stage of the competition because of the IeSF’s rules.

The problem is that if you look over all of the qualifiers being played, there IS no Hearthstone tournament for the female players to compete in. Only two qualifiers are being run for women – Starcraft 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2, while men get the afore-mentioned Hearthstone, Starcraft 2, Ultimate Street Fighter IV and Dota 2. It all just seems very strange.

Koskivirta adds that they are actively campaigning to get both sexes involved in tournaments together, but for now the Hearthstone tournament is remaining male-only until the IeSF changes their policies.

As a female gamer and a Hearthstone player myself, I can’t say that the idea of segregating the sexes in eSport makes much sense to me. It isn’t a necessary thing required for it to be taken seriously, and how can someone truly be the ‘best’ in a tournament if they haven’t had all the opportunity to play against everyone able to compete at that level of play? Gamers and the gaming community are often seen as being very sexist towards women and stories such as these don’t really help to dispel that image.