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Alibaba wants esports at Olympic games, but nothing violent

Alibaba wants esports at Olympic games, but nothing violent

Chinese tech giant and Olympic Games sponsor Alibaba has said that it is all for esports appearing at the global clash of the sporting titans, so long as they're not violent.

That's according to Bloomberg, which reports that CEO of the firm's AliSports division Zhang Dazhong says that it is pushing for non-violent games such as sports and racing titles to be at the Olympics.

The focus on a lack of violence excludes many of the world's biggest competitive games from the market, such as Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, CS:GO, League of Legends and Overwatch.

Though, given the scrutiny that video games are under from all corners of the globe right now, having a number of non-violent titles in one of the most-watched sporting events in any given year, this could actually be a PR blessing for the global games market.

“In our communication with the Olympics committee, we’ve come to have a better understanding of their values, which is to promote peace,” Zhang said.

“That’s why for the future development of esports, we will focus more on titles that are actually related to sports, instead of games that focus on violence and slaughter.”

He continued: “We think as a third party esports organizer we’re a better match for principles that the Olympics promotes, which is fairness. If you’re a games producer, you’re suspected of only pushing your games for your own benefit.”

Alibaba has invested a whopping $47m into esports in the last financial year.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.