Doping in Esports

As professional esports has grown rapidly in popularity in recent years, many of the integrity issues present in traditional professional sports now appear in the competitive video gaming space. While match-fixing incidents in esports have grabbed headlines for years, the industry now wrestles with a new form of cheating – a widespread doping problem. Unlike the battle that traditional sports organisations have waged against anabolic agents and peptide hormones, esports’s battle is mainly against cognition-enhancing stimulants like Adderall and Vyvanse – drugs often bought and sold at esports tournaments. Although a small number of esports organisations have begun to implement policies to eradicate the doping rumours plaguing the esports industry, the majority of leagues have shied away from enacting meaningful anti-doping regulations. At present, professional esports wrestles with how to uphold fairness in competition while not discriminating against those competitors who have a legitimate medical need for the same cognition-enhancing drugs that can be used in esports to gain an advantage.