The eSports Federation, founded in March 2012 by nine Korean progaming teams, will cease operations effective January 28th, reports eSports journalist Ethan_Ahn. The news doesn't come as too big a surprise as after a handful of departures and team disbandments, the organization was down to just two members.
?eSF came to be two years ago when StarTale, IM, Prime, MVP, oGs, NS HoSeo, FXO, TSL and ZeNEX came together to found an organization whose goal was to promote eSports and secure rights for its members in the wake of KeSPA's involvement with the scene. eSF was promoted as an open organization, allowing for all players regardless of their affiliation to participate in eSF (i.e. GomTV) governed events.
Although eSF suffered some blows to its lineup of teams in 2012(oGs disbanding in May and ZeNEX getting assimilated by StarTale in July), it was in 2013 that their more serious troubles began. In August 2013, KeSPA barred their players from competing in the GSL Season 4 preliminaries (an eSF event) citing scheduling difficulties, which in turn led to eSF boycotting out of OSL Season 1 (a KeSPA event). An agreement was reached the very next day but the competition between the two parties as well as eSF's inner turmoils never ceased.
While the "KeSPA vs eSF" rivalry continued to grow into one of the biggest stories in 2013 in terms of the SC2 tournament scene, eSF continued to grow smaller. In September, three of eSF's founding members, namely IM, MVP and Prime left eSF. With SlayerS' disbandment in November 2012 and TSL's in January 2013, eSF was now down to but a handful of members and although they welcomed ex-KeSPA's SouL, they were forced to run their team league (the GSTL) with just five teams, of which Axiom-Acer was not even an eSF member. Shortly after the completion of the team league, fOu and SouL announced their dissolution and eSF were thus down to just StarTale and Azubu.
eSF disbanding. 28th Jan(KST)
— Judah (@Ethan_Ahn) January 28, 2014
With the described events in mind, the news that eSF will cease operations came as no surprise. With the GSTL dead due to lack of teams and with KeSPA's door now open to everyone who wants to join, the eSF's mission has come to an end. It remains to be seen whether Azubu and StarTale will continue to function on their own or will seek to join KeSPA, the latter sounding more probable. The full statement of eSF can be found below:
"Hello esports fans.
The eSports Federation was founded in March of 2012 to help protect the rights and interests of StarCraft 2 teams and progamers. Through cooperation with our chairman company in GomTV, we sponsored the GSTL, planned online preliminaries for foreign tournaments like MLG and IPL, and tried to create Dota2 teams to diversify eSports disciplines.
However, with the industry going through rough times recently, and because teams could not solve their financial problems, it came to a situation where many teams disbanded. Additionally, it has come to be that the GSTL cannot be held anymore.
The eSF has put the rights and interests of the players first, and is working on getting the players signed to KeSPA and international teams. Also, we are cooperating with KeSPA so that players can attend educational seminars etc. so eSF players can receive KeSPA progamer licenses.
We would like to thank GOM eXP's Mr. Kwak Jong Wook who gave the federation so much help, and send out a heartfelt thank you to the eSF teams, staff, and players. Also, we want to thank the developers, media, and members of the community.
The eSF is disbanding as of January 28th.
We apologize for being unable to live up to the expectations of the fans, and we thank all of you for giving us your endless love and support."
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