New LCS Contract Forbids Streaming Dota 2, Blizzard Games

[Compatriot Block]

If those players had any functional brain cells left they would refuse to sign that contract.

A professional LoL player in the LCS can easily earn 500k-1M bucks a year with only streaming/play LoL(+tournaments).

If you're in the LCS you're employed by Riot, so you've to play by their rules. Seems fair to me. Sure, it's a harsh restriction but it's definitly not worth that amount of fuss.

Are you sure about those figures? Because either those are a bit high or I'm going into the wrong line of work.

 

[antipunt]

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

LOL, this. First thing I thought of.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

So, I don't mean to be rude, but... all this is saying, from what I gleaned, is that they aren't allowed to STREAM these games. They're perfectly capable of still playing the games, but they can't stream anything, basically, but LoL.

While, I guess, if they wanted streaming freedoms, that's greatly curtailed now, but overall it's not as bad as people seem to say. They're still being paid generously, and the only condition is that they simply stream the games they want and they turn off the stream if they want to play World of Tanks or something. Nothing says that the gamer can't organize small get-togethers on their FB, Twitter, or personal webpage or something like that.

 

[AlwaysPractical]

Hm, it's certainly their right to prevent their championship players from promoting other games, but naming specifically the competition makes this seem like a pretty anti-competitive move. I'll definitely wait with my judgement till I hear more about it.

 

[scotth266]

Snip

You might want to take the following into account:

https://twitter.com/CrsStvicious/status/408346165785001984 (SaintVicious is one of the pro players)

Currently a lot of people are saying things every which way: the writers of the article have doubled down saying that they have confirmation that players are banned from playing the other games on stream, while other people have claimed otherwise, saying that the contract only bans you from playing other games when you're supposed to be streaming LoL content: http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1s3dgp/a_proper_reading_of_the_lol_contract_says_that/

In conclusion, nobody knows whether the contract is real or whether it says what the article-writers have claimed until we get an official comment.

 

[TilMorrow]

So from reading the article I gather that players who are involved in the LoL Championship series won't be allowed to play or display certain games whilst playing in the championship games or LoL games related to the championship. So aside from being bored as they wait between championship games whilst streaming them, how is this bad?

 

[Drejer43]

someone wanna explain why fatprincess is on that list, course I have no idea.

 

[Do4600]

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?

Not video gaming, but every single sports league I can think of has similar rules for it's players, it's a contract, like any other in any other entertainment industry, you're signed, and that includes a clause that you won't play in two different leagues, two different record labels or two different networks without negotiating with both parties present.

 

[Lunar Templar]

Going through the list, I half expected to see Super Smash Bros on it, still, just a lot on the excessive side I think, cause while I'm not up on how many of those are MOBAs, pretty sure Fat Princess and World of (thing here) are totally different animals to LoL.

 

[Reaper195]

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

This. How are so many people not thinking like you, kind sir?

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I thought twitch was the only service worth its salt and would this contract affect it? It's the corporate nonsense that's found its way into online gaming.

 

[Lex Darko]

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

This. How are so many people not thinking like you, kind sir?

Oh people do understand it but the problem comes from actually having retention when one is streaming that is the problem.

I mean when I played LOL and I got up to the point where my elo was the same as the pros I was literally waiting 20 minutes to an hour WAITING for the system to find enough people at my level. Now imagine if you are streaming, do you really want either nothing but the LOL client to look at for about half an hour or just the person's face on a webcam? Hell no, and neither does the streamer in question want to do NOTHING because that isn't what the viewer comes to the stream for.

Also, this only builds bad rapport among consumers and the players because while Riot would be more than happy to be the only game in town the fact of the matter is you need competition and the act of simply playing the game isn't promotion as much as Riot would like one to believe. I mean hell video games are meant to be our hobby and being able to enjoy multiple video games and new video games comes with the territory to building a bigger audience. Certainly offering consistent content is the best but you still need to shake things up once in a while especially when we are talking about the time said people are streaming which when they aren't actually doing scrims but playing to entertain or for leisure.

Certainly it is important to when on the clock or participating in an event to be professional. That is what we all expect regardless of the job. But the moment you get to come home, what you do in your private life is your own damn business and not of any company. It is creating needless problems for both Riot Games and the pro players(and from accounts to be confirmed streamers like Guardsman Bob who aren't even connected or paid by Riot as an employee is also under the same contract and was for a moment pulled from being a featured streamer). Hell the only occupation that actually requires someone to be on duty 24/7 is a police officer and even then they still get to enjoy their private lives and only have to hop into action when they are called into action or if the situation demands police intervention.

http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1s38ea/lcs_2014_contract_stipulates_players_cannot/cdtgg9d

EDIT: At the end of the day this will only become legal if the teams do NOTHING and honestly that will only hurt the future of both Esports and streaming because it creates a needless divide and intrudes into the personal and private life of players both present and future.

Personally I hope teams fight this and use that bully pulpit to get consumers of LOL to help fight this contract.

My only other complaint is that once again Riot's solution to a problem is focused on the negative and comes with another severe punishment. I mean for having a dedicated psychologist it is pretty sad that you never see any sort of mercy or focus on the positive.

Sorry but the simple act of playing a game is promotion when the game is in beta and inaccessible to the thousands of people watching you play it.

I didn't even know Heartstone existed until I started seeing on LoL streams. Is it really surprising that Riot doesn't want other companies to piggyback their popularity to advertise the games of their competition?

 

[Rblade]

you can't survive on streaming one game only, it will get boring. So basically they are saying: "You'd better find a way to live of what we are paying you, because you aren't getting your money anywhere else."

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

A professional LoL player in the LCS can easily earn 500k-1M bucks a year with only streaming/play LoL(+tournaments).

If you're in the LCS you're employed by Riot, so you've to play by their rules. Seems fair to me. Sure, it's a harsh restriction but it's definitly not worth that amount of fuss.

Are you sure about those figures? Because either those are a bit high or I'm going into the wrong line of work.

Uhm, i could only give you a link in german, but the player Ocelot once did an Interview for ABC where he stated that he earns roughly 700k per year.
Most of it trhough sponsoring + merchandise though.

 

[PcaKes]

I for one, love it. Riot took the time to compile a really neat list of games that I should check out. Thank you Riot for telling me about all of the games that are probably better than LoL. I'm going to go check out infinite crisis I think.

 

[shrekfan246]

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

Yes because a trading card game, and online multiplayer games about tanks and airplanes are TOTALLY a competition for a Dota game. Yes, definitely.

Well... yeah.

It's not even a matter of genre. Any moderately to highly successful online multiplayer game poses valid competition to League of Legends, even those that are not MOBAs. All that matters is that, despite being more or less free to play, people are willing to spend money on these games. For the most part, they spend money on them because they are actually good. World of Tanks is a huge one in that regard.

Look at some of the games on the list.

One of them no longer exists, one of them is Fat Princess, and the likes of Team Fortress 2, Lord of the Rings Online, Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2, etc. are nowhere to be seen.

OT: Hilarious stuff. I'm glad I have little interest in competitive gaming in the first place, though I wonder what the fallout will be over this, if anything actually happens.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

How is the competition commission (or whatever its US equivalent is) not all over this yet? What Riot is doing there is kind of against the law.

EDIT: I just realised that wherever Riot is based, this will have impact on competition within the EU as well (some of the studios affected must be european and I'm way too lazy to do my research) therefore EU competition law will apply. So where IS the bloody CCEU?

 

[Kevin Lyons]

I don't know if anybody's said this yet, but I'd like to bring everybody's attention to the contract itself. The contract only forbids streaming non-League of Legends material "during or adjacent to League of Legends content..." (Line 1)
This means that they can't stream, for example, a DotA game while also streaming a League of Legends game.