Being self employed is a huge privilege not a choice you can just make. He has financial responsibilities where he can't just drop his career and bet it all on streaming. It takes a lot of effort and luck to become a self employed streamer, and he's talked about before how if he could he'd watch party every masters event with plat chat, as obviously, working from the comfort of your own home, surrounded by your friends and family is WAYY better. But he also followed that up with the obvious fact that plat chat doesn't bring in enough money to where he could make a living doing it full time all the time.

The entire study of ethics on how responsible on is for the actions of a company they work for is a whole other thing that has literally been debated for years on end now,

But the simple reality is there isn't any morally complete company out there you can work for and make a living wage. Your choices in capitalism are work or starve, not really much choice there. Sideshow is literally speaking out against riots decision making here and actively calls people to not watch the event, which in turn hurts riots bottom line.

To me it looks like someone who's doing all they can within their power.

FIFA is the one holding the tournament, and I think they're one of the most corrupt sporting bodies in the whole world no doubt, full agreement, you only have to look at the horrible conditions in Qatar (curious you don't reference this since it was one of the worst human rights violations in the sports history. And don't even get me started on how disgusting the fucking Olympics is.

Just because I think the Saudi regime is disgusting and abhorrent doesn't mean I don't think that other regimes get a free pass? These things arnt mutually exclusive.

Also sideshow is a freelance caster meaning he's hired to work the days he's paid. He's not a riot employee and is free to criticize the company as well as Tencent to his hearts content.

That's like suggesting Riot hosting a tournament in Bangkok makes them a subsidiary of the Thai government?
This makes no sense whatsoever lmao.

The issue with it being funded by the Saudi government is that its active sports washing, its them using their oil money (which a lot of the people employed in this sector are on dodgy visas allowing the government to effectively hold them hostage in the country till they complete their work), to paint themselves as saints in the eyes of the world.

MBS knows that oil will eventually run out, and wants to diversify the economy, if he had ACTUALLY wanted to reform the country and build a bright new future, hell yeah, let the Saudis pump as much as they want into it, money for change is good! But thats not what happening, the Saudi regime has become more repressive, and is still executing 100s of people every year.

All this to say, the EWC formats fucking sucked last year, viewership was really low compared to other events in each game, and the overall formats were just really trashy, and incentivised teams to just sign as many mediocre rosters in as many games as possible. And oh yeah, Team Falcons, a team with previous ties to the Saudi PIF, were the overall winners.

The difference between hosting tournaments in the US and UK versus the fact that the Saudi Regime themselves are hosting the EWC is the main sticking point. Sideshow posted a video on this previously, its about an hour long which might be too much for your attention span, and referenced how if the US government themselves hosted the tournament It'd be a totally different question.
You talk about others being privileged but this a country where women aren't even allowed to leave without consent from a male figure in their lives, its backwards and medieval, and you clearly speak from a point of privilege to close your eyes to these human rights abuses.
Fuck the US, they're sponsoring genocide in Israel, their president is a sick racist fuck, I have 0 sympathy. Fuck the British empire and the US puppet state (the UK) that followed, I have no love for these nation states, but they're not the tournament organiser, Riot is, where as in the EWC, its directly run and funded by the Saudi PIF, and that's just not okay.