It’s very easy to not do something. You can simply say no, even and perhaps especially when an arm of the Esports World Cup, a vehicle for Saudi government sportswashing, comes to you and asks you to speak at a conference that organizers clearly hope will confer mainstream credibility, because esports is a niche field even at max audience capacity. Anyway, a bunch of video game industry luminaries, including Hideo Kojima, said yes.
The New Global Sport Conference, which also took place alongside the Esports World Cup in 2023 and 2024, is being billed as “the premier global platform for industry leaders at the intersection of gaming, esports and sport” where CEOs, founders, and investors “drive groundbreaking initiatives shaping the future of these dynamic industries.” In other words, it’s a networking event for rich people – some of whom might be harder up for cash than usual, relatively speaking, due to the current state of the video game industry.
“NGSC plays a vital role in advancing Saudi Arabia's 2030 vision, aligning with our National Gaming and Esports Strategy to position Riyadh as the global capital of esports and a hub for innovation, talent, and opportunity,” Saudi esports federation president Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan al Saud says in a blurb on NGSC's website.
Previous years’ iterations have featured bigwigs from companies like Sony, Sega, and Bungie, as well as a bunch of esports types and investors, but Kojima is easily NGSC’s biggest get in terms of pure name value. This year he’s joined by the likes of Activision COO Joshua Taub, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, Sega president Shuji Utsumi, Sony CSO Toshimoto Mitomo, Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada, former gaming exec and current soccer team owner Peter Moore, and chess champion Magnus Carlsen, among others. I hope they all have a great time this weekend.
In other news, a new report from Human Rights Watch and Middle East Democracy Center says that 2025 has seen Saudi authorities carry out an “unprecedented surge in executions,” notable among them Turki al-Jasser, a journalist known for exposing corruption within the Saudi royal family.
“Behind closed doors, Saudi Arabia is executing peaceful activists and journalists following politicized trials,” said Middle East Democracy Center’s Abdullah Alaoudh. “These state-sanctioned killings are an assault on basic human rights and dignity that the world cannot afford to ignore.”
