Awesomenauts, Heroes of Newerth Studios Speak Out Against LCS

[Andy Chalk]

Awesomenauts, Heroes of Newerth Studios Speak Out Against LCS

Romino and S2 Games say Riot's refusal to allow LCS players to stream other games during the season is "unsportsmanlike" and "anti-competitive."

It was revealed earlier this week that the contract for the upcoming fourth League of Legends Championship Series forbids any streaming of other games [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/130237-New-LCS-Contract-Forbids-Streaming-Dota-2-Blizzard-Games] by LCS players during the season, including Dota 2, StarCraft, Hearthstone, Heroes of Newerth, Awesomenauts and a slew of others. While several studios whose games are affected by the restrictions have declined to comment on the matter, Awesomenauts co-creator Jasper Koning told onGamers that Romino Games is "disappointed to see Riot impose restrictions on the spare time of it's LoL Championship Series players."

"It's understandable Riot as a company wants to protect its interests, but the way they're doing it now is decidedly unsportsmanlike, anti-competitive and it sets a bad precedent," he said. "It could mean that future professional eSports athletes would have to ally themselves to a single company to be able to compete. This kind of segmentation goes against the efforts to professionalize the eSports scene as a whole. On top of that, as a developer paying gamers to publicly only play your game actually reduces the validity of their competitive efforts and turns it into a marketing tool."

Koning also expressed concern that by "stifling the gamers' ability to entertain," the LCS restrictions will inevitably shrink the eSports audience rather than grow it.

Marc DeForest of Heroes of Newerth studio S2 Games also criticized the new LCS contract. "We view eSports differently - it is a platform for competition, growth, and the collective celebration of videogaming passion," he said. "We do not view it as a leveraging tool for anti-competitive and monopolistic practices. S2 Games will continue to support the eSports idea as a whole, not just our own specific interests in it."

There was initially some question about whether the new contract actually forbids streaming of other games or just "advertising" for them, but Riot confirmed with onGamers that the restrictions are as they appear. In a post on Reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1s38ea/lcs_2014_contract_stipulates_players_cannot/cdtp3xj], Riot Games Director of eSports Whalen Rozelle said that while there may be some differences of opinion, LCS players are "professionals contracted to a professional sports league. When they're streaming to 50,000 fans, they're also representing the sport itself."

"I can't stress enough how these guys in the LCS are on the road to being real, legitimate athletes. This is new territory for a lot of teams (especially in esports), because the transition goes from being a group of talented individuals to being real icons of a sport and a league," Rozelle wrote. "Similarly, you probably wouldn't see an NFL player promoting Arena Football or a Nike-sponsored player wearing Reebok on camera. Pro players are free to play whatever games they want - we're simply asking them to keep in mind that, on-stream, they're the face of competitive League of Legends."

Source: onGamers [http://www.ongamers.com/articles/update-awesomenauts-hon-developer-comments-on-riot-stream-and-advertising-restrictions/1100-277/]



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[Drejer43]

This kind of segmentation goes against the efforts to professionalize the eSports scene as a whole.

actually this is the kind of thing that does professionalize esports, this is what normal sports does. See this why I hate it when people says they look forward to the esports growing and becoming more professional. The more professional it gets the more it loses its personality and the more BS will keep piling on the esport scene.

 

[mindfaQ]

Riot is an unsympathetic company for me personally. Disguised anti-Dota 2 marketing quite a while back. Tried to control some tournament organizations. Now this. Seems like they try to hit their competition at every chance they get. Still the best reaction to it is to not make the same mistakes, deliver a better experience and not care to much about them. In the end players have to decide which game(s) they support and love.

 

[weirdee]

I wouldn't mind as long as the players are getting large sums of money for this privilege, if they're going to extend that analogy

 

[Dr.Awkward]

Problem with Riot is that they want to bring in a traditional form of competition in a non-traditional industry... It's going to backfire. They've got to realize that while there is a room for a rivalry amongst games of the same genre, there's no room to make it one where someone can get barred from play when playing or mentioning other competitors.

 

[funksobeefy]

Yeah its weird they are not allowed to play games that are not like League at all. We know Charles Barkley plays golf (poorly) but its not like us as viewers go "Hey lets not play basket ball! Sir Charles is playing golf!"

 

[Orange12345]

So wait... during the season those in it can't stream any other games? huh... what does which games they stream have to do with LoL? My suggestion, viewers boycott the LCS as in, do not watch any streams concerning it.

Seriously, even in regular sports this sort of thing doesn't happen.

It's worse then that, at the higher levels in LOL it can take 20+ min to get into a game so up til now what most players have done during the down time is play another game which is great because it keeps people watching which means more ad revenue for the streamer. Now they can't really do anything and their viewership could take a big hit as a result. They could start playing games that aren't on the list but most of them would have to single player/noncompetitive games and that probably won't hold the audience as well

 

[Jennacide]

Of all people, I would have expected the guys behind Awesomenauts to be able to actually read/ The contract doesn't bar players from playing said games, it bans them from ADVERTISING them on the same stream they are playing LoL. Which means you can't play a round of X game while in queue for streamers, which only realistically effects Hearthstone, because that was the whole reason this happened. Blizzard pulled a kinda brilliant marketing stunt where the first salvo of Hearthstone beta keys were given only to prominent streamers to get viral attention for it.

Again, Riot has already stated on their forums this doesn't bar them from playing games, they just aren't allowed to stream them at the same time they've been playing LoL. If Dyrus wanted to play Fat Princess on stream, he can start up a stream just for that, end the stream, then wait a bit and go back to streaming LoL a bit later.

It's worse then that, at the higher levels in LOL it can take 20+ min to get into a game so up til now what most players have done during the down time is play another game which is great because it keeps people watching which means more ad revenue for the streamer. Now they can't really do anything and their viewership could take a big hit as a result. They could start playing games that aren't on the list but most of them would have to single player/noncompetitive games and that probably won't hold the audience as well

This already going on, and the games on the list are all too long to fit in between queues. Most streamers either play MMOs they can drop in and out of (Bjergsen and Dragonnest recently), or single player affairs (OddOne's Civ 5 or Dyrus's The Last Remnant).

The really disturbing part is the LCS players don't even mind, many have stated on stream already. I know TheOddOne and Bjergsen have both said on stream they don't care as it doesn't even effect them, and shouldn't effect most LCS players. As I've said, this is almost entirely Riot stepping in to stop another Hearthstone beta trick.

And yes, I'm totally a TSM fangirl, why my examples are all from them.

 

[Xeorm]

This kind of segmentation goes against the efforts to professionalize the eSports scene as a whole.

actually this is the kind of thing that does professionalize esports, this is what normal sports does. See this why I hate it when people says they look forward to the esports growing and becoming more professional. The more professional it gets the more it loses its personality and the more BS will keep piling on the esport scene.

Except, normal sports don't have the same circumstances at all. I haven't heard of professional sports players spending any of their time streaming as they practice, for example. It's something quite unique to e-sports, and this contract can hurt that quite a lot.

The issue with the contract is LoL streamers have been streaming other games inbetween searching for a game. This downtime can get quite long, so to fill time you'll find players streaming other games, ones they can play quickly and with little loss if they need to switch over immediately. Hearthstone has been a popular choice I believe. Eliminating this downtime playing does nothing for the players or streamers, and is merely a way for Riot to screw over other companies. That's not something to be celebrated I'd think.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah its weird they are not allowed to play games that are not like League at all. We know Charles Barkley plays golf (poorly) but its not like us as viewers go "Hey lets not play basket ball! Sir Charles is playing golf!"

They're allowed to play them, just not stream them.

 

[The Pink Pansy]

I'm tired of all the constant references to athletic sports in this discussion. For one thing, while pro athletes may not wear the team colours of another team, they are allowed to publicly play other sports. THAT is the appropriate analogy for this circumstance, and likening streaming Hearthstone in their down time as 'Advertising for another sports team' is ludicrous to me.

However there is a more important point. Professional athletes are on million dollar contracts; this is in part to compensate for the fact that after 20 or so years they are physically unable to play at the high standard expected of them and have to retire. While the contracts of E-sports players are not nearly as public, recently Speed Gaming Int. (one of the better Western pro-Dota 2 teams) publicly released the contracts of 2 of their players when their contracts were renewed. These contracts revealed that these players were being paid less than a full time minimum wage job (looking at their salary). Assuming that these contracts are relatively standard in the E-sports world (which admittedly I have no evidence for or against), we can clearly get the picture that pro-gamers are not paid enough to live off what they earn after they leave the pro scene, unlike pro-athletes. If pro-gamers are not getting a proper salary from the people they're playing for, they should fully have the right to make money streaming whatever they want to stream.

 

[RaikuFA]

So let me get this straight:

People complain about "e-sports" not being treated like real ESPN level sports.

Riot pulls stunt that amounts to what real ESPN level sports already do to get the respect of real sports. People complain.

Companies still won't do anything about the players making threats towards newcomers, which in turn loses them money.

And people wonder why I hate online play.

 

[Hagi]

I'm a bit confused by the posts saying this is how real sports go.

Admittedly I don't really follow sports much at all but from what I see it happens all the time that you've got clubs sponsored by brand A ( say Puma ) competing in national tournaments sponsored by brand B ( say Nike ) and later international by brand C ( say Adidas ). I mean I know that exact situation is happening with at least one of our national clubs.

Isn't that the normal mode for professional sports? You get as many sponsors as you've got room for on your shirt? And then compete in as many tournaments as big as possible, regardless of whom they're sponsored by, to get as much exposure as possible for those sponsors?

 

[DugMachine]

I'd like it if the players just refused to sign as Riot would be in some serious shit if they lost all their players buuuuut knowing the players themselves, they seem like a bunch of immature kids that couldn't be arsed to join together to make a statement. Very few of the pro players I've seen seem to actually give a shit or have any sort of real world experience, the rest are just young dudes who are good at video games and got thrown into a gaming house.