New LCS Contract Forbids Streaming Dota 2, Blizzard Games

[Andy Chalk]

New LCS Contract Forbids Streaming Dota 2, Blizzard Games

The contract for the fourth season of Riot's League of Legends Championship Series says players may not stream games including Dota 2, Hearthstone, StarCraft and many others.

The final touches are being put on the new season of the League of Legends Championship Series, and that means new contracts for all and sundry. But a copy of the new contract obtained by onGamers has a number of rather heavy restrictions on what players are allowed to play for public consumption.

"The following companies and/or products are not to be advertised during or adjacent to League of Legends content during the term," the contract states, "the term" being the duration of the contract - presumably the full length of the season. Among the forbidden games are Dota 2 and virtually everything from Blizzard - the Diablo, StarCraft, Warcraft, World of Warcraft and Hearthstone franchises - plus many others including Smite, Rise of Immortals, Heroes of Newerth, World of Tanks and World of Warplanes. On the non-gaming side, gambling websites, narcotics, tobacco, guns and porn are also out.

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The body of the contract doesn't explicitly state that "streaming" is forbidden but the above comes from a section entitled "Sponsorship and Streaming Restricted List," which strongly suggests that Riot Games views streaming as a form of advertising. OnGamers says "several" team reps it contacted have confirmed that the contract is real, but neither Riot Games nor Smite developer Hi-Rez Studios would comment.

Source: onGamers [http://www.ongamers.com/articles/riot-season-4-lcs-contracts-stipulate-players-cannot-stream-dota-2-blizzard-games/1100-261/]


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[hazabaza1]

That's kind of a... giant shitbag kind of thing to do.

The drugs, porn and stuff, sure I get that. But not letting people advertise (which let's be honest, basically means "say anything good about") that giant list of games really sucks.

 

[Mahorfeus]

Not terribly surprising. You don't usually go out of your way to support advertisement for your competition.

 

[loa]

How is what their players do in their free time any of riot games business?

Yeah I'm sure they'd love to gag them up like that but shit like this won't fly in court, will it?

 

[CriticalMiss]

Do other similar gaming competitions/leagues/whatever do the same thing or is this just them trying to erase knowledge of the competition? I can understand that they would want to get the most out of their investment if they were directly sponsoring everyone taking part but isn't this just a glorified tournament?

 

[Trishbot]

Remember when Blizzard's entire EMPIRE was built on the backs of fan support, fan communities, fan passion, and fans taking their games to parties, making eSports out of them, and generally putting them on the map in the first place?

... And now that they're king of the mountain, Blizzard doesn't seem too appreciative of all the little people who made it possible. Sorry, thanks for getting us to the top, now stop trying to play and promote a game or create a community outside of our authorized permission zones. We're only the biggest dogs on the block so we obviously can't do anything about this.

I feel like playing Gotye's "What Happened to the Blizzard that I Used to Know" or something.

Captcha: That's enough. Heh, kinda how I feel about it. Let gamers share the love if they want to and promote great games and build a stronger gaming community. Gaming like this isn't an elitist's club, after all. There's no bouncers to throw you out. Or at least there shouldn't be.

 

[mechalynx]

Welp, looks like my nephew's streaming channel will contain nothing but tumbleweeds. Seems like a dick move, but perhaps they're tying to get some kind of exclusive TV deal.

 

[INVALIDUSERNAME]

Remember when Blizzard's entire EMPIRE was built on the backs of fan support, fan communities, fan passion, and fans taking their games to parties, making eSports out of them, and generally putting them on the map in the first place?

... And now that they're king of the mountain, Blizzard doesn't seem too appreciative of all the little people who made it possible. Sorry, thanks for getting us to the top, now stop trying to play and promote a game or create a community outside of our authorized permission zones. We're only the biggest dogs on the block so we obviously can't do anything about this.

I feel like playing Gotye's "What Happened to the Blizzard that I Used to Know" or something.

Captcha: That's enough. Heh, kinda how I feel about it. Let gamers share the love if they want to and promote great games and build a stronger gaming community. Gaming like this isn't an elitist's club, after all. There's no bouncers to throw you out. Or at least there shouldn't be.

That would be a great point if this entire article wasn't talking about Riot disallowing people from "advertising" Blizzard games (among others).

This isn't saying anything about Blizzard, other than Riot saying their contractually bound players can't stream their (Blizzard's) games.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Remember when Blizzard's entire EMPIRE was built on the backs of fan support, fan communities, fan passion, and fans taking their games to parties, making eSports out of them, and generally putting them on the map in the first place?

... And now that they're king of the mountain, Blizzard doesn't seem too appreciative of all the little people who made it possible. Sorry, thanks for getting us to the top, now stop trying to play and promote a game or create a community outside of our authorized permission zones. We're only the biggest dogs on the block so we obviously can't do anything about this.

I feel like playing Gotye's "What Happened to the Blizzard that I Used to Know" or something.

Err, this Riot's crappy contract, not Blizzard's.

Bit of a dick move, I wouldn't want to sign something as restrictive as this. I can agree on the drugs/gambling but not allowed to stream other games? Does this include lets-plays?

 

[Heejo]

@Trishbot - This post is about Riot Games and not Blizzard.

The LCS is a team based seasonal competition. The competitors are all paid by Riot and are essentially employees in much the same way professional athletes (NBA, NFL, etc.) are employees of their respective franchises. If you wanna play in the LCS for a salary then you gotta play ball with Riot.

 

[Trishbot]

I guess what I was saying is Blizzard is the top dog of the market in their field, and they're willing to go along with it. They're not the CAUSE, but they're clearly not interested in standing up for their gamers.

Though, well, shame on Riot games for coming up with the restrictions in the first place.

 

[Zeriah]

Wow at least 80% of those LCS players play Heartstone during their queue times. I can't see this ending well.

 

[RikuoAmero]

So, to make sure I understand this correctly, this would be equivalent to a football championship league saying that during the length of their playing season, no-one can record their own football matches and stream them live, even though this would have nothing to do with the actual championship games?

EDIT - Okay, I read the source article and this isn't stopping Joe Schmoe from streaming whatever games he wants, this is a restriction on those players within the League of Legends championship. I think someone up above mentioned that these players are essentially paid employees, but I think it's still bull. What if a player, during downtime between league games, wants to relax with a different game and stream it live with a few friends?
Since I'm not a sports fan of any kind (e or physical sports) does this happen with other sports players? Is a professional football player forbidden from playing tennis during a league?

 

[Atmos Duality]

Gotta love how all of that power has just gone to Riot's head.

Yeah, go right ahead and monopolize your players' streams to restrict the kind of exposure they can provide to the MOBA community. I mean, it's not like your company was founded by people who started by working on the game within that community...OH WAIT.

Seriously: What players do in their offtime is of no sodding concern to Riot.

Similarly, you probably wouldn?t see an NFL player promoting Arena Football or a Nike-sponsored player wearing Reebok on camera.

So why did Riot ban a bunch of games out of the MOBA genre, like -all- of Blizzard's games and Wargaming's titles?

To use their own analogy, they didn't just ban the NFL player from mentioning Arena Football, but Soccer, Swimming, Skeet Shooting and Badminton strictly out of paranoia.

 

[RaikuFA]

This might just be an attempt to get rid of the image that online players=some of the worst you'll ever see.

 

[DugMachine]

That's pretty fucked up. I can understand the reasoning behind it but at that top level of play the streamers have maybe 15-30 minute queue times between games. What else are they supposed to do?