No women allowed at upcoming Hearthstone tournament

The International e-Sports Federation's (IeSF) 6th e-Sports World Championship will take place this November, but if you're a woman looking to compete in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, you're apparently out of luck. Hearthstone, in addition to Ultra Street Fighter 4 and Dota 2, will be open to male entrants only according to a statement on the IeSF's Facebook page.

Though the South Korea-based federation has been enacting this practice for some time "...in accordance with international sports authorities, as part of our effort to promote e-Sports as a legitimate sports," the matter was brought to light via this Reddit post yesterday morning. The post links to an info page for a qualifier event being held at the Assembly Summer 2014 event in Finland later this month, which, in line with the larger tournament to which it is attached, is a male-only affair by default.

In a statement to PC Gamer this morning, Markus "Olodyn" Koskivirta, who is running the Finland qualifier, pointed out that all the other tournaments being run at Assembly Summer 2014 are "open to all genders," and that "the Finnish eSports Federation is currently lobbying for the equal rights of male and female players in the IeSF tournaments," meaning that despite hosting a qualifier for the IeSF's event, they clearly don't share the organization's approach to tournament organization.

Scroll down the IeSF Facebook page a bit, and you'll see their rationalizations for segregating the player-base by gender:

While I appreciate the goal of giving strong female competitors a platform for promotion, the competitive chess example is problematic in that there is no men-only league in that game. There's a league populated largely by men, sure, but women like Hungarian chess grandmaster Judit Polgar can, and do compete freely alongside their male counterparts, something a female Hearthstone player could never do in IeSF's competition.

In fact, another important distinction is that IeSF's event doesn't provide female Hearthstone players a way to compete at all, against anyone. All other competitive gaming events, such as the Evolution Championship Series, or The International, are open to both genders.

So what then is the good reason for the IeSF to exclude women from competing in Hearthstone, Dota 2, and Ultra Street Fighter 4? The answer is simple really:

There isn't one.

Vincent Ingenito is IGN's third newest recruit, and third biggest MOBA fan. He also doesn't suck at fighting games. To hear him nerd out about them and other games, follow him on Twitter.