Fan and Creator Backlash Forces GeoGuessr to Opt Out of Esports World Cup Festival

GeoGuessr has withdrawn from the Esports World Cup festival after players and map creators slammed the team for participating in the event that will be hosted by Saudi Arabia later this summer.

The Esports World Cup Festival is a multi-week event dedicated to gaming culture that will run alongside the Esports World Cup 2025 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from July 7 to August 24, 2025. Organized by the Esports World Cup Foundation (EWCF), the festival is set to offer multiple activities, including live music performances, retro arcades, anime cafés, cosplay showcases, creator studios, and interactive exhibits.

GeoGuessr was initially slated to host a Last Chance Wildcard Tournament during Week 3 of the festival (July 21–27), offering a $20,000 prize pool and qualification spots for the 2025 GeoGuessr World Championship.

However, due to community backlash and the fact that dozens of the most popular map creators made a supermajority of the most competitively relevant world maps unplayable in protest, the game’s CEO and co-founder, Daniel Antell, announced on X (formerly Twitter) that GeoGuessr will not participate in the EWC’s festival.

“Since Erland, Anton, and I founded GeoGuessr in 2013, we’ve always strived to be a community-first game. Everyone here at the Stockholm office is a passionate GeoGuessr fan, doing our best to build something meaningful, with you and for you. That said, you — our community — have made it clear that this decision does not align with what GeoGuessr stands for,” Antell explained of the withdrawal.