Wizards of the Coast will end its partnership with Judge Academy on October 13, 2023, after four years.
The Judge Academy, a training platform for organized play Judges, was opened up on October 1, 2019 (see “Judge Academy“). It was founded by Tim Shields, owner of Cascade Games LLC., and the initial plan for this platform was to train Judges for Magic: The Gathering and KeyForge, with Judges paying a fee to maintain their status, then expand out to other e-sports and tabletop games. They would also be responsible for community initiatives, such as judge organization and sending out the Judge Foils.
In some sense, the Judge Academy’s full training program may have never completely gotten completely to its feet until mid-2022. Two of the four years that the Judge Academy was in charge of the Judge program were under the yoke of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rolling world shutdowns involved. The shutdowns made any training that Judges would have to receive at on-site sanctioned events more tricky to schedule because multiple conventions were cancelled or delayed and WotC had suspended major events during this time frame (see “Wizards of the Coast Suspends WPN Qualifiers“). Additionally, KeyForge, the second game they were intially to train Judges for, experienced production problems during COVID-19 and was eventually moved from Fantasy Flight Games onto Christian Petersen’s Ghost Galaxy (see “Christian Petersen Company Acquires ‘KeyForge’“).
WotC stated that it is currently working on a new framework for Magic: The Gathering judging with tournament organizers and stores. While they work on a plan to replace the Judge Academy, they expect business as usual at major events, like MagicCon and Regional Championships, as many large-scale event organizers have existing contracts with Judges that will be largely unaffected by the change. WotC did not mention judging on the FLGS level for RCQ events in the press statement.
Source: ICv2
