Riot tells pro League of Legends players they can’t stream competing games

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/12/riot-tells-pro-league-of-legends-players-they-cant-stream-competing-games/

by protomyth • 13 years ago

41 34 13 years ago

saraid216• 13 years ago

I'm not familiar enough with physical sports to know: do professional sports organizations generally do this kind of restriction? Worldwide? Is there any kind of cross-sport prohibition? I could believe it, since I've never actually seen or heard of players showing off without a contract of some kind... and yet, that might simply be because I don't hear about it.

Kapura• 13 years ago

College Sports have some strange rules regarding what they can do concurrently. Of particular note is the case of Jeremy Bloom[1], who was an excellent college football player and an Olympic skier. The NCAA really seems pretty anti-students-rights anyway, though, and I can't speak to more professional sports.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/30/sports/college-football-ol...

joshdick• 13 years ago

Sports contracts generally prohibit the player from playing other sports, even recreationally, to reduce their risk of injury.

Here, for example, is the NBA's take: http://bammgt.com/?page_id=339

chc6• 13 years ago

Sports will have have restrictions on playing other sports, but the motivation is reducing the risk of injury. They'll also restrict things like motorcycling for the same reason.

jack-r-abbit• 13 years ago

Deion Sanders[1] played professional football and baseball at the same time.

Interesting little tidbit: On October 11, 1992, Sanders played in a Falcons game at Miami and then flew to Pittsburgh, hoping to play in the Braves' League Championship Series game against the Pirates that evening and become the first athlete to play in two professional leagues in the same day. Sanders ultimately did not, however, appear in the baseball game that night.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deion_Sanders

slg2• 13 years ago

The quick answer is no, there is no cross-sport prohibition in most sports leagues. The long answer is that almost anything can be negotiated and that player are usually willing to make concessions in these deals in turn for more money.

Many modern sports contracts have clauses in them that protect the employer if an athlete is injured doing an athletic activity outsider of their normal training. A good example might be a football player blowing out his knee playing pickup basketball. These clauses usually give the team the ability to withhold future salary or even go after previously paid wages. Although these clauses aren't always exercised depending on the player's relationship with the team, the severity of the injury, and the activity that caused the injury. A team doesn't want to risk alienating a player or their fans unless there is a huge gap between the financial impact of the injury and the player's future perceived value.

There are also various sponsorship agreements that players and teams have with companies that have restrictions about supporting a competitor. For example an NBA player sponsored by Nike might not be allowed to wear an Adidas shoe during a game.

Considering these precedents and that Riot appears to act as some combination of a sponsor and team/league that employees these eathletes, I think this decision is pretty reasonable.

thedufer• 13 years ago

This would be an appropriate comparison if they had restricted all competitive games (although the Hearthstone ban is fairly damning), but given that they didn't, I think it would be more enlightening to ask if pro sports leagues prevent their players from participating in other leagues for the same sport.

My knowledge of professional sports is pretty limited to the US, where there is essentially a monopoly in each sport. Does anyone know about this? I suspect soccer or cricket, both fairly international sports, might have good examples?

slg2• 13 years ago

The answer is a big "it depends." Most times it is simply not feasible for an athlete to participate in two different leagues in the same sport due to either the overlap in their seasons or the geography involved (the highest paying leagues almost all end up as monopolies in their region in that particular sport).

One notable example is female basketball players. The two most popular and highest paying leagues are in Russia and in the USA and have seasons that do not overlap. It is pretty common for good players to play in both leagues. As far as I am aware, there is no restriction on this by either league.

Another example would be in football/soccer. Player's who play in the US are often "loaned" to teams in Europe in order for them to continue playing during the duration of the off-season. This allows them to stay in shape, face better competition, and improve their game. The team that receives the player will generally pay the team that loans the player an agreed upon fee in order to compensate them for the risk of injury. If the two teams can't agree on a fee, the player will be prevented from playing for the second team.

AlisdairSH• 13 years ago

Sometimes.

As noted above, there are clauses placed in individual contracts in an attempt to limit injury.

The UCI (pro cycling sanctioning body) also prohibits the top-tier cyclists from racing in events that lack a UCI sanction.

This has been a large problem in US pro-mountain biking, as most long-distance races are not UCI sanctioned. In theory, pro racers wishing to participate in these events risk fines.

wwwwww• 13 years ago

Riot has never heard of Deion Sanders (A professional two sport athlete in the MLB & NFL)...

It's a shame to limit people's personal pursuits

chc6• 13 years ago

I remember there was a huge advertising campaign back in the '90s around the fact that Bo Jackson was an all-star player in both the NFL and MLB.

dsugarman• 13 years ago

Bo Knows

Steko2• 13 years ago

Riot's side of the argument would be something like: how do you think Nike would feel if Tiger Woods decided to switch to Titleist balls next week despite having a contract that pays him to use Nike golf balls?

chc6• 13 years ago

This seems more like Nike getting mad that Tiger took his son to a Putt Putt that didn't use Nike balls. He isn't really contradicting his endorsement by using the balls that Putt Putt gives him to play miniature golf with his son, and they aren't really contradicting their position as League of Legends pros by playing other games during their downtime.

daken• 13 years ago

Alright so this only concerns SPONSORISED STREAMS, and it's not that big of a deal (calming people down before they go crazy on articles that do not provide full details to a story)

This means they can stream other games during the LCS they just can't be paid to put company logos. It's just a commercial agreement more than anything

chc6• 13 years ago

That isn't right. These players are not allowed to stream the games at all as long as they are affiliated with Riot. From the original source:

"onGamers has confirmed with the team representatives that LCS players are disallowed from streaming the games listed below outright"

VintageCool• 13 years ago

I had the impression that LCS players were only disallowed from streaming those games if their stream advertised League of Legends content.

At the top of the Elo ladder, queue times can be up to half an hour as the matchmaking service tries to build a fair game. Many of these pro players will play another game (Super Meat Boy, LIMBO, Dust, Mark of the Ninja, Hearthstone) on stream while they're in queue. This ban seems to target other games that could be competitive e-sports, specifically the new Blizzard game Hearthstone.

crazypyro2• 13 years ago

False. The contract stipulates that during the LCS, they CANNOT stream any of these games on the same stream that they play LoL, as that could be considered adjacent to LoL.

kyrra• 13 years ago

There was a bit of discussion about this on the subreddits for LoL[1] and Dota2[2]. I don't think any esports fan or player is happy that Riot is going this direction.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1s38ea/lcs_...

[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1s38uc/dota_2_censore...

girvo2• 13 years ago

And over on /r/Starcraft. It's pretty bad, but frankly I'm not surprised. At a convention they stopped Dota2 from being played there.. I wish I had the link for that.

deltron• 13 years ago

That was just recently at PAX IIRC.

weixiyen2• 13 years ago

Currently, pro gamers have a lot of downtime between League of Legends games due to having to queue up for a game after finishing a previous one.

These queue times range anywhere from 10-25 minutes on average, during which here is literally nothing to do besides playing other games, like Hearthstone.

I don't think Riot thought this one through. Instead what they should do is figure out a way to fix the queue times at the highest level, and this would honestly not even be a problem. At this point, they just appear overly controlling.

chc6• 13 years ago

There really isn't a way to fix those queue times, though. When you have a small player pool (like you do on the far end of the skill curve), you have two choices: Accept long queue times or accept the likelihood of wildly unbalanced matches.

jsnk• 13 years ago

Gamers understand that Riot has no way to shorten the queue time dramatically, and that's ok. That's not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is Riot's attempt to prohibit players' behavior to the point where people would consider to be way too invasive and way out of the norm.

With this event going forward, I just hope that the progamers get paid more for agreeing to this clause. This is pretty ridiculous.

byerley• 13 years ago

I suspect it's the opposite. The current trend was to play another game (Hearthstone in particular) and in some cases the streamer would actually keep playing Hearthstone during champ select/the beginning of the game - a really bad message to be sending your customers (especially with free-to-play games where someone spending money with a competitor means disposable income they can't spend on you).

People who read the news stories might think it sounds controlling (but the number of people who read the story and get notably upset is very small compared to the people watching these streams).

Seems like a calculated and rational choice by Riot.

resu_nimda• 13 years ago

but the number of people who read the story and get notably upset is very small compared to the people watching these streams

I don't know about that...the player communities of "MOBA" games tend to be pretty stubborn, indignant, unruly, etc. It's definitely a weird little world of abrasive man-children (I've put many hours into DotA and HoN). I see this as exactly the kind of "oppression" that the pros (and thus their followers) would complain about and subvert until it gets reversed.

From the reddit thread:

QTpie on riot contract: "Riot can suck my dick" - QTPie stream 2013, while playing FF X

Diamondprox after reading this: Good. Time to break some rules. opens Hearthstone

sanskritabelt• 13 years ago

" during which here is literally nothing to do besides playing other games"

Read a book.

gosukiwi• 13 years ago

Didn't Saintvicious say it was an old contract? And they are now allowed to do it? Confirmed on saint's stream.

girvo2• 13 years ago

Riot are a blight on the pro gaming scene. Sigh.

jpk• 13 years ago

Not that I agree or disagree, but as a counter-point: Riot has sunk many dollars into organizing leagues for LoL teams, and has put on numerous high-profile events in attempt to push professional gaming into the mainstream.

With what do you substantiate your claim.

crazypyro2• 13 years ago

They do that because they think it makes sense financially.

They have a history of trying to corner out the market by trying to force traditionally multi-game events into only hosting LoL and not hosting competitors games. They aren't supporting professional gaming, they are supporting their marketing, under the guise of helping out e-sports. This is my opinion on the matter. Riot is also known for many shady business practices, especially with regards to competitors, and they are also owned by Tencent, arguably a company with one of the worst reputations in the world.

weixiyen2• 13 years ago

Update from Riot - http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1sa59j/upda...

Basically, they changed the terms so players can no longer accept sponsorship from other game companies to stream their games.

Riot tells pro League of Legends players they can’t stream competing games

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