Riot pays people in the LCS, making them somewhat "riot employees". Isn't it normal that they should promote league of legends and not dota 2 or hearthstone ? I can see why some people could think it is evil but honestly it is not.
I work in the IT field for a lot of clients and even if my job is a technical one I still have to promote my company when I can. It is also in my best interest to not promote our competitors. To me it just makes sense, if Dyrus wants to play hearthstone so badly he's free to do it off the stream, if I want to trash-talk my company I'm free to do it outside of my job in a private setting.
Streaming to 30 000 person is not a private setting.
Uhhh... not even close. First of all, NBA players are only on TV when they're playing basketball. While they're playing basketball, they can't promote other sports or activities they may be a part of (See: Gordon Hayward who was all about SC2 when the NBA was on strike, and suddenly disappeared after it came back... huh) their lives. In fact, they can't even promote products that they're not suppose to promote or they get fined out the ass for it.
There have been players who played multiple professional sports in the same years...so...no. Deion Sanders hit a home run in Major League Baseball and scored a touchdown in the NFL in the same week.
Just making sure this doesn't go unnoticed since Riot likes to compare themselves to other sports leagues.
On December 06 2013 00:32 Tula wrote: The LCS players stream as featured streamers on the twitch site. They are listed as playing LoL (most of the time). They give free publicity to games from other developers.
You won't freaking believe it, that's what twitch does.
most of those guys spends 80% of their stream playing League.
In other words, Riot's greed has virtually no limits.
it is definitely a step into a more professional direction.
When sport players behave inappropriately they don't represent the sport they are playing for, they represent themselves. Yet Riot thinks their employers aren't even allowed to smoke, because it will provide negative public image.
Heck if we are talking about what they could do, they could actually demand a cut of their streaming revenue as part of their LCS wage, legally that wouldn't be a problem.
Unfortunately, some players make more money out of streams than out of LCS. Or at least more fun. And they have dignity and personality as a human beings, yet people defending this contract speak about them as a marketing tools. We do not need this kind of professionalism in esports, right?
No they still belong to the same market segment (multiplayer oriented, online but not subscription based games).
Riot bias is strong in this one. Different genre = different target audience = different market segment, for god's sake.
Uhhh... not even close. First of all, NBA players are only on TV when they're playing basketball. While they're playing basketball, they can't promote other sports or activities they may be a part of (See: Gordon Hayward who was all about SC2 when the NBA was on strike, and suddenly disappeared after it came back... huh) their lives. In fact, they can't even promote products that they're not suppose to promote or they get fined out the ass for it.
There have been players who played multiple professional sports in the same years...so...no. Deion Sanders hit a home run in Major League Baseball and scored a touchdown in the NFL in the same week.
Just making sure this doesn't go unnoticed since Riot likes to compare themselves to other sports leagues.
it will get unnoticed.people do not follow sports that much.
I am sort of shocked of the ammount of athlethes playing in multiple sports at once that no one mentions.they have a huge wikipedia page
On December 06 2013 00:32 Tula wrote: The LCS players stream as featured streamers on the twitch site. They are listed as playing LoL (most of the time). They give free publicity to games from other developers.
You won't freaking believe it, that's what twitch does.
it is definitely a step into a more professional direction.
When sport players behave inappropriately they don't represent the sport they are playing for, they represent themselves. Yet Riot thinks their employers aren't even allowed to smoke, because it will provide negative public image.
Heck if we are talking about what they could do, they could actually demand a cut of their streaming revenue as part of their LCS wage, legally that wouldn't be a problem.
Unfortunately, some players make more money out of streams than out of LCS. Or at least more fun. And they have dignity and personality as a human beings, yet people defending this contract speak about them as a marketing tools. We do not need this kind of professionalism in esports, right?
On December 06 2013 00:32 Tula wrote: The LCS players stream as featured streamers on the twitch site. They are listed as playing LoL (most of the time). They give free publicity to games from other developers.
You won't freaking believe it, that's what twitch does.
most of those guys spends 80% of their stream playing League.
In other words, Riot's greed has virtually no limits.
it is definitely a step into a more professional direction.
When sport players behave inappropriately they don't represent the sport they are playing for, they represent themselves. Yet Riot thinks their employers aren't even allowed to smoke, because it will provide negative public image.
Heck if we are talking about what they could do, they could actually demand a cut of their streaming revenue as part of their LCS wage, legally that wouldn't be a problem.
Unfortunately, some players make more money out of streams than out of LCS. Or at least more fun. And they have dignity and personality as a human beings, yet people defending this contract speak about them as a marketing tools. We do not need this kind of professionalism in esports, right?
No they still belong to the same market segment (multiplayer oriented, online but not subscription based games).
Riot bias is strong in this one. Different genre = different target audience = different market segment, for god's sake.
you try way too hard to troll or just very bitter
How is this trolling at all? He has responded pretty intelligently to each of the points. Your bias seems pretty heavy :3
As many people have pointed out, were it not for Hearthstone being on the list of banned games, this would not have been even a tenth of the story it turned out to be. No one seems to be upset about the other games on the list except Hearthstone. I assume it was included as a blanket Blizzard ban to combat Heroes of the Storm, but who knows. I thought I heard a rumor last night that they're considering removing Hearthstone from the list to placate people, but again, that's just a rumor. If the list was just a blanket ban on MOBAs with special cases at Riot's discretion, then I don't know if it sounds so absurd anymore.
I don't really think it's extreme or something people should be against...
Riot pays the teams and players very well. In return, they ask for exclusivity (for people to not stream other games; in this case, mainly Blizzard games).
Razer pays Team Liquid through sponsorships. In return, they ask for exclusivity (that our players do not use other gaming equipment than theirs).
While I can understand that it might be boring for some people that they can't stream Hearthstone while in queue, I think it makes a lot of sense for Riot to do this. The, although extreme, alternative would be that Riot does not pay the teams or players at all, and then they could do whatever they wanted to. Then the teams would have to foot the bill on player salaries and travel themselves, just like in StarCraft and DOTA. That's not something anyone wants either.
The thing is, there's no alternative. There's no way for you to be a professional LoL player without taking Riot's money. Whereas if you don't agree to the terms of your contract you can find a different sponsor or a different employer, that option simply does not exist for a professional LoL player because the ONLY way to be a legitimate pro is to work for Riot. Any tournament player who does not take Riot's salary and who does not play in LCS is by definition an amateur because Riot has effectively killed the legitimacy of 3rd party premier events.
It's not so much the specific terms of the contract, but that there's no checks on what Riot can do with this. It's a bad precedent to set when they basically have a blank check over what can go in the contract because players have no leverage and there are no tournaments to compete with LCS for teams' participation.
On December 06 2013 03:14 Bumblebee wrote: The, although extreme, alternative would be that Riot does not pay the teams or players at all, and then they could do whatever they wanted to.
That alternative isn't even available.
There is no way to participate in LCS without taking Riot's money. And if you're not in LCS you're an amateur essentially by definition.
Obviously the option is there, but it'd be hard (and also impossible for a lot of teams). I don't think participating in LCS is much different from the people participating in the GSL or OSL for StarCraft. You'd have to live and be based out of Seoul. A lot of teams have teamhouses in that city simply because of that. However, it's not really an option go back in that direction which was my whole point from my post and that it's not outrageous for them to ask for this.
On December 06 2013 00:32 Tula wrote: The LCS players stream as featured streamers on the twitch site. They are listed as playing LoL (most of the time). They give free publicity to games from other developers.
You won't freaking believe it, that's what twitch does.
it is definitely a step into a more professional direction.
When sport players behave inappropriately they don't represent the sport they are playing for, they represent themselves. Yet Riot thinks their employers aren't even allowed to smoke, because it will provide negative public image.
Heck if we are talking about what they could do, they could actually demand a cut of their streaming revenue as part of their LCS wage, legally that wouldn't be a problem.
Unfortunately, some players make more money out of streams than out of LCS. Or at least more fun. And they have dignity and personality as a human beings, yet people defending this contract speak about them as a marketing tools. We do not need this kind of professionalism in esports, right?
No they still belong to the same market segment (multiplayer oriented, online but not subscription based games).
Riot bias is strong in this one. Different genre = different target audience = different market segment, for god's sake.
seriously? You are posting on TEAM LIQUID? A site based on Sc:BW and want to argue that this is a completely different target audience?
Are you trying to make fun of me? I literally cannot believe that you think these games and their fanbases do not overlap in major ways. Obviously there might be people who only like 1 specific genre and will never ever play anything else, but in the grand scheme of things their number is miniscule compared to people who apply far more generous standards ("Is it multiplayer focused" "Is it fps?").
This is probably the only esport where something like this would be acceptable, which is also the reason why this is the fastest growing, bigger and most popular esport at the same time.
Giving pros salaries and giving them real sport-like responsibilities to both them and the proteams is the way to make this esport even more accepted, mainstream and "serious".
Something like this wouldn't have even been thinkable on any other esport that doesn't give salaries and effectively gives all their pro players a living.
On December 06 2013 03:43 xuanzue wrote: I don't think the riot's position is that dominant to make this move, without consequences.
valve & activision-blizzard can ally themselves, and only give licenses to the tournaments that don't have LoL in their circuits.
LoL is the favorite of OGN, other is the tale in mlg-iem-dh.
MLG and DH aren't important for League at all. MLG provided a nice live event for the LCS last season, that's it. DH has only a few teams attending and nobody in the LoL scene cares. IEM is ESL. ESL is producing the LCS Europe, which is basically financing their studio in Cologne and the LoL IEMs are going well. They have a good relationship for us outsiders and won't even try to ruin it.
On December 05 2013 21:08 Miragee wrote: This is just sooo unprofessional. Which other professional sport forbids their professionals to stream other sports/activities. Non. That is like censoring private life. That's the problem of having a private monopol in something (LoL) while others will earn their money through it. You can basically do anything and if they don't agree they will lose their living.
by the way, the list of games is so random. wtf is "fat princess"?
The difference with other sports is that the only individuals who have played more than 1 professionally have played sports that don't overlap. Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders are the 2 biggest name professional American athletes who played two sports (American Football and Baseball) that do not tend to overlap. You don't see any professional football/basketball stars in the USA at least. I have no idea what their contracts say, but it's entirely possible that these contracts do have clauses in them that keep players from being seen playing their other sports. Even if not, it kind of doesn't matter. By your admission "wtf is "fat princess"?" the games that these LoL pros are playing aren't nearly as currently well established as any major professional sport, at least in the USA. Knowing that professional football players play baseball as well doesn't really give advertising or information to MLB that they didn't realistically already have through millions of sponsorship and broadcast dollars.
Just thought I'd drop by and leave Totalbiscuit's thoughts on the topic. Cheers.
Thought it was funny that he found old challenger circuit stats that aren't even relevant to what "Challenger" currently is lol. That said I generally agree with his points. When he's not just shit talking LoL his points are usually pretty well thought out.
On December 06 2013 00:32 Tula wrote: The LCS players stream as featured streamers on the twitch site. They are listed as playing LoL (most of the time). They give free publicity to games from other developers.
You won't freaking believe it, that's what twitch does.
most of those guys spends 80% of their stream playing League.
In other words, Riot's greed has virtually no limits.
it is definitely a step into a more professional direction.
When sport players behave inappropriately they don't represent the sport they are playing for, they represent themselves. Yet Riot thinks their employers aren't even allowed to smoke, because it will provide negative public image.
Heck if we are talking about what they could do, they could actually demand a cut of their streaming revenue as part of their LCS wage, legally that wouldn't be a problem.
Unfortunately, some players make more money out of streams than out of LCS. Or at least more fun. And they have dignity and personality as a human beings, yet people defending this contract speak about them as a marketing tools. We do not need this kind of professionalism in esports, right?
No they still belong to the same market segment (multiplayer oriented, online but not subscription based games).
Riot bias is strong in this one. Different genre = different target audience = different market segment, for god's sake.
seriously? You are posting on TEAM LIQUID? A site based on Sc:BW and want to argue that this is a completely different target audience?
Are you trying to make fun of me? I literally cannot believe that you think these games and their fanbases do not overlap in major ways. Obviously there might be people who only like 1 specific genre and will never ever play anything else, but in the grand scheme of things their number is miniscule compared to people who apply far more generous standards ("Is it multiplayer focused" "Is it fps?").
We are talking about LoL stream viewers, remember, not about some general audience.
The chance someone haven't heard about SC2 and got interested after his favourite streamer played it several times during a break between LoL games is literally zero.
On December 06 2013 03:20 NotYango wrote: The thing is, there's no alternative. There's no way for you to be a professional LoL player without taking Riot's money. Whereas if you don't agree to the terms of your contract you can find a different sponsor or a different employer, that option simply does not exist for a professional LoL player because the ONLY way to be a legitimate pro is to work for Riot. Any tournament player who does not take Riot's salary and who does not play in LCS is by definition an amateur because Riot has effectively killed the legitimacy of 3rd party premier events.
The same can be true of the NBA and NFL. If you don't agree to the terms of the respective leagues, you are forced to go play "professionally" elsewhere. LoL players can go to Korea/China/SEA and compete there.
On December 06 2013 03:20 NotYango wrote: The thing is, there's no alternative. There's no way for you to be a professional LoL player without taking Riot's money. Whereas if you don't agree to the terms of your contract you can find a different sponsor or a different employer, that option simply does not exist for a professional LoL player because the ONLY way to be a legitimate pro is to work for Riot. Any tournament player who does not take Riot's salary and who does not play in LCS is by definition an amateur because Riot has effectively killed the legitimacy of 3rd party premier events.
The same can be true of the NBA and NFL. If you don't agree to the terms of the respective leagues, you are forced to go play "professionally" elsewhere. LoL players can go to Korea/China/SEA and compete there.
Which is exactly why player unions exist to give players leverage in the face of such a monopoly.