A gaggle of GeoGuessr map creators have pulled their contributions from the sport to protest its participation within the Esports World Cup 2025, calling the match “a sportswashing software utilized by the federal government of Saudi Arabia to distract from and conceal its horrific human rights file.” The protestors say the blackout will maintain till the sport’s writer, GeoGuessr AB, cancels its deliberate Final Probability Wildcard match on the EWC in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from July 21 to 27.
GeoGuessr is a browser sport the place gamers attempt to pinpoint areas utilizing solely Google Road View pictures, and it depends on group mapmakers to remain related. The blackout, which started on Might 21, contains “dozens of creators and their maps, together with a supermajority of the preferred competitively related world maps,” in keeping with a press release the group shared on Reddit. The eliminated maps have been performed tens of tens of millions of occasions.
One of many largest GeoGuessr communities, Plonk It, has additionally eliminated its Map Listing and shared the mapping group’s open letter. That assertion reads in full as follows:
We, the creators of a substantial share of GeoGuessr’s hottest maps, have determined to make our maps unplayable in protest of GeoGuessr AB’s resolution to host a World Championship wildcard tourney on the Esports World Cup (EWC) in Riyadh.
Develop
The EWC is a sportswashing software utilized by the federal government of Saudi Arabia to distract from and conceal its horrific human rights file.
Teams focused by the federal government embody girls, LGBTQ folks, apostates and atheists, political dissenters, migrant employees within the Kafala system, non secular minorities, and lots of others. The subjugation of those teams is intensive and pervasive. Members of those teams are routinely subjected to discrimination, imprisonment, torture, and even public executions. These extreme human rights violations are well-documented and indeniable.
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