Pro Magic Player Protests World Championships, Hoping To Change The Pro Scene
By Alex Chen | January 01, 0001
Magic: The Gathering pro player Gerry Thompson says he is protesting this weekend’s World Championship event, the game’s most prestigious tournament, citing complaints about how Magic publisher Wizards of the Coast is handling its pro scene.(new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c&cid=872d12ce-453b-4870-845f-955919887e1b'; cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c" }).render("79703296e5134c75a2db6e1b64762017"); }); Thompson is a two-time winner of Magic’s Grand Prix and, in 2016, he earned first place at the Pro Tour. Achieving that level of success with the ever-changing card game’s constructed format requires a significant amount of time studying Magic sets, learning opponents’ strategies and building decks. In a Reddit post today, Thompson wrote that one of the difficulties with the pro scene is that Wizards of the Coast does not pay professional players a living wage. For ten years, Thompson has had concerns over the way Wizards of the Coast handles Magic’s pro scene, he told Kotaku over the phone from his hotel room in Las Vegas, where the tournament is currently underway. Now, he said, “enough is enough.” When asked why he initiated the protest on the day of the tournament, Thompson said, “I knew I was gonna do this for about a month and a half. . . Me doing this the day of the event means the tournament is going to be short rummy satta a player. It is going to be a thing. Even if people don’t see my Reddit post or tweet, people are going to ask why there are 23 players. It was calculated.” Magic players can earn money from prize pools, and sometimes, Wizards of the Coast pays for travel and appearance fees for certain high-level players. The company doesn’t pay players a salary, however. Thompson conceded that this should not be a requirement, but he went on to write in his post, “If the goal is to sell the dream of playing on the Pro Tour, there should be something in place to make that worth achieving. Between qualifying becoming more and more difficult, especially with the goal posts continually changing, and the lack of reward at the top, the message currently being sent is ‘don’t waste your time.’” Thompson added that he, and other pros, have had to pay for their own flights