Amapá, Bahia, Ceará, Paraíba and Paraná have already sanctioned their laws, while the Federal District, Espírito Santo, Goiás, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro have proposals in process.
The Senate regulation bill, authored by senator Roberto Rocha (PSDB-MA), in turn, met with strong resistance from the gaming community. A series of public hearings, then, was called at the request of another senator, Leila Barros (Cidadania-DF). The hearings, however, ceased with the pandemic, and with that the bill's processing is suspended.
Although there are small differences between the projects, in common with them is the intention to equate electronic games with traditional sports. While this would open up the possibility of awarding government grants to athletes and allow confederations to seek public funding, the laws would have the potential to mandate that any video game competition had to be authorized by some recognized confederation. And that's where one of the main problems lies.
"Electronic games, eSports, only exist because there are games. And games only exist because there are companies, the so-called 'publishers', that produce the games. They hold all the rights over the games, whether broadcast or of the game itself," says Nicolle Merhy, CEO of Black Dragons, one of the most traditional electronic sports clubs in the country.
"With that in mind, there is no way to regulate how it is being asked. They (parliamentary) are ignoring a fact that should not be ignored: eSport is not similar to football, basketball or any other sport. It is a case apart, because there's a third person in that link, who owns the game," adds Mehry.
Author of the book 'Introduction to the Study of Esports Law', lawyer Antonio Carlos Bratefixe Junior reinforces this point: "Unlike traditional sports, confederations would need to integrate other parties, such as game developers," he emphasizes. "I don't see the need for specific regulations, because there is no doubt that electronic sport is considered a sport. What can be done is adaptations (to the laws that already exist and are applied in the scenario)."
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Data from Pesquisa Games Brasil (PGB) show that 72% of Brazilians play electronic games. With the expansion of games and smartphones, the activity also proved to be very democratic, with almost half of practitioners (49.7%) being between classes C and E. Women are the majority among players, totaling 51.5%.
"Brazil is currently one of the great centers of electronic sports. The country is number three in the audience, second only to China and the United States as a consumer of electronic sports," points out Bratefixe.
Co-founder of BBL Esports, an entertainment holding that brings together different elements of the gamer universe, Leo De Biase is a staunch critic of the regulatory proposals that spread throughout the country's legislative houses. He points out that the good numbers of the gamer universe speak for themselves, and wanting to regulate without listening to the various parties involved can have bad consequences.
"The risk is that these states have problems regarding the encouragement of electronic sports or the gamer population that live in them. It is noteworthy that regulation or excessive laws can make the market, their costs and their distribution very expensive, affecting directly in the pockets of consumers, in addition to compromising the proper functioning of the segment that is seen today," emphasizes De Biase.
Leo was one of the signatories of the 'Open Letter of the Brazilian Ecosystem of Electronic Sports', published in July with representatives of over 11 entities linked to the sector. Among other things, the text says that "the existing confederations and federations in Brazil that claim to be representatives of Brazilian electronic sports do not represent us." And there are countless of them.
For Bratefixe Junior, the role of the confederations could be another. "Today I don't see the need for a confederation to organize and develop electronic games or competitions. I see the requirement of a confederation as the state's vision to make another part of the development of electronic games, which is accessibility, inclusion social, bring this to the needier classes," he suggests.
"There is another scenario, which is the development of new athletes, the training of young people, the possibility of them having access to devices for playing electronic games, because you need cell phones, computers, and you don't always have access to these devices," concludes Bratefixe Junior.
Source: Estadão
