Why a Donald Trump presidency could ruin the fun for Esports fans and players

Many people around the world were shocked when it was announced that Donald Trump was elected as the President of United States November 9, settling the race to the favor of the Republican nominee defeating his closest opponents Hilary Clinton in the nationwide elections. Without diving deep into politics what interests us as a video games community is what this presidency might mean to the industry, and here are several reasons why you should be worried:

• Economics Impact – With a lot of esports prize money being in dollar donations, the impact of the currency dropping after Trump’s presidency was announced could leave some competitors short changed.
• Free Trade – Trump has said he’ll put a 45% import tax on goods from China, with major peripheral manufacturers manufacturing there goods there, prices are likely to go up.
• Immigration – It’s regularly reported that esports players already struggle to get access to international events taking place in the US, with new immigration rules proposed by Trump, players getting turned away at the border could become an even more common problem.
• Video Games – A Tweet by Trump in 2012 said that he blamed video games for creating monsters. A lot of senior gaming analysts are concerned that if he still thinks that way, the regulation of esports in North America could be impacted.

It remains to be seen if these points still stand or not. Afterall, the Esports market is being valued at hundreds of millions so from a business point of view it doesn’t make sense to make it more difficult to organize USA based video games competitions. We will have to wait and see.