i was on daiiono's fantastic format "geoguessr pointless" the other day, check it out!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCAF...

finally a good reason to post something here - improved my acw 100k speedrun time by almost 10 minutes yesterday!
youtu.be/PPgVnYWk6fo

GeoGuessr is withdrawing from the Esports World Cup, Thanks you for your patience over the last few hours. I have and important message from our CEO and co-founder. Hi everyone, I’ve seen your reactions over the past few days regarding our decision to participate in the Esports World Cup in Riyadh. When we made that decision, it was with positive intentions. To engage with our community in the Middle East and to spread GeoGuessr’s core mission of let everyone Explore the World. 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. So, when you tell us we’ve got it wrong we take it seriously. That’s why we’ve made the decision to withdraw from participating in the Esports World Cup in Riyadh. We will come back with information on how the wildcards will be distributed as soon as possible. Thank you for speaking up and sharing your thoughts. /Daniel

BREAKING UPDATE: GeoGuessr is withdrawing from the Esports World Cup due to the protests.

We, the creators of a considerable share of GeoGuessr's most popular maps, have decided to make our maps unplayable in protest of GeoGuess AB's decision to host a World Championship wildcard tourney at the Esports World Cup (EWC) in Riyadh. The EWC is a sportswashing tool used by the government of Saudi Arabia to distract from and conceal its horrific human rights record. Groups targeted by the government include women, LGBTQ people, apostates and atheists, political dissenters, migrant workers in the Kafala system, religious minorities, and many others. The subjugation of these groups is extensive and pervasive. Members of these groups are routinely subjected to discrimination, imprisonment, torture, and even public executions. These severe human rights violations are well-documented and indisputable. By participating in the EWC, GeoGuessr is contributing to that sportswashing agenda, which is designed to take attention away from Saudi Arabia's human rights violations.

The GeoGuess community is diverse and includes many members of groups that would be harshly persecuted were they to live in Saudi Arabia. In solidarity with those currently residing in Saudi Arabia while being subject to oppression, as well as members of the community who would feel and be unsafe attending the tournament in Riyadh, we have decided to black out our maps by replacing all their previous locations with random garbage locations, rendering them unplayable. This blackout includes dozens of creators and their maps, including a supermajority of the most popular competitively relevant world maps. It will continue until we see action from GeoGuess; specifically, we demand that GeoGuess cancels its wildcard event in Saudi Arabia and commits to not hosting any events there as long as it continues its oppressive regime. You don't play games with human rights. Thank you for reading. The GeoGuess mapping community

BREAKING NOW: "all major world maps" on the online game GeoGuessr have been privated in protest of GeoGuessr's decision to participate in the Esports World Cup in Riyadh.

map creators write that the EWC is used by Saudi Arabia "to distract from and conceal its horrific human rights record."

full: