According to former Overwatch League pro, xQc, a surprise contract nearly led to players being forced into a Union. This might seem a little bit familiar to long-time readers at Esports Talk. That’s because our own Xan covered this in the CDL! Scump spoke out about shady CDL contracts and fines last year, and now we’re back, but for the Overwatch League instead! It sounds like the players were very close to unionization, according to the streamer. What do we know?

We first saw xQc in the Overwatch League, and he came out to talk about a contract that almost led to a Union when talking to HasanAbi. xQc may not have been on the pro stage long, but he still made an impact. A few years later, and now he’s talking about very interesting topics like contracts. The interesting thing about this is that the players almost came together for a union in the Overwatch League before the first match happened, according to xQc!

Apparently, Blizzard handed the players a “big a** contract”, as said by xQc:

“When I got into the Overwatch League, we all signed our own contracts with our own [organization] and then went to the media day. At the end of the conference, they gave us these big a** contracts. Every player had to sign to accept the official Overwatch League agreement.”

There was no real chance to read it, it sounds like. The way it was described, Blizzard demanded a signature on the spot, and not everybody agreed with it. So thanks to this, xQc and the Overwatch League players talked about the contract and talked about a union.

The way Blizzard handled this was good (for Blizzard) – the players didn’t even have a real chance to organize or form a union. They had to sign right away, after signing with their own orgs. A contract stating what a professional player can or cannot do is pretty standard, but this was done in an incredibly shady way. Esports players have talked about unions for years, but nothing ever seems to come of it in Overwatch. Call of Duty, unsurprisingly, still lacks a real players union too.

We can hope something like that comes to pass, though, because players need to be protected from the greed or shameless practices of people above them.