Speed Gaming’s player contracts and salary details posted online: is this okay?

Or at least that’s what I thought the first time I saw links to Speed Gaming’s contracts posted on Facebook.

What caused this posting of detailed contracts (and by that I mean a downloadable PDF of said contract) is a blog post by Jonathan ‘Loda’ Berg, where he shared his thoughts about how a lack of a proper eSports infrastructure prevented players from going professional.

Some teams just don’t have the option to play full time. They will always have to juggle different responsibilities with Dota, not because they want, but because they have to make some money to survive pretty much. E-sports is growing rapidly, and Dota is growing rapidly. But still most pro players don’t even make enough to live off, far from it even.

Loda also shared a link to an article about legitimizing eSports and supported the idea of publicizing team contracts.

I’ve always been someone who felt strongly for legitimizing eSports. Although I am in no way a professional player, organizer or caster, I have come to love the industry enough to want to see it grow to the same level as we see regular sports industries. But of course, we can’t ignore how eSports is a source of living for both players and organizations, so both need a sense of security that will keep them investing not only money, but also time and effort.

At the moment, there are players who sign non-disclosure agreements (NDA) along with their contracts. This prohibits them from discussing their salaries with one another. This is mentioned in Loda’s blog post and in the article he shared, and is a point he felt strongly against, since the NDA keeps a player from figuring out his value as a professional, and keeps him in the dark.

His point is proved by industry talk over the years, of how there are players who are not getting properly compensated for their efforts, and about organizations paying for non-professional players. Personally, I think transparency is very important if a healthy relationship is to be formed between players, organizations, and sponsors. However, I also believe in confidentiality.

In a recent post on GosuGamers, it turns out that the players were not consulted by the organization. This was confirmed by Weh Sing “SingSing” Yuen on his stream. In the same article, the CEO Marco A. Fernandez posted a comment under the name ‘Thyton’:

The use of the word ‘authorize’ on the Facebook post is rather misleading. Since the contract is an agreement between the organization and the players, it seems like consent ought to be given by both parties before anything is posted. I don’t know about you, but if I had an agreement with someone else, I know I’d like to be consulted before details of that agreement get shared with random people, especially if it involves details about my income.

So what’s my stand on publicizing player contracts? Well, as far as I’m concerned, I think there are contract details that should be kept between the two parties involved. Only some details should be made public, and that only according to what both parties deem fit. For example, a player should be free to discuss his salary with other players if he wants to. However, if he doesn’t feel like telling it to that random guy across the coffee shop then he has the right to that, too. Sharing when you feel like it and tossing the exact numbers out there in broad daylight for the public to see are two different things. For the latter, no one has control over who sees that contract or for what purpose they use that information, and this could work against the parties involved.