Riot is removing a contractual stipulation that prohibited League of Legends pro players from broadcasting many other games.
In a post on Reddit, Riot director of e-sports Whalen Rozelle explained that the studio is listening and paying attention to the discussion surrounding the contract for players in the League Championship Series. The agreement, which leaked online in a report earlier this week to e-sports news site OnGamers, included a list of games that pros couldn’t stream including Heroes of Newerth, Dota 2, and World of Warcraft. Rozelle revealed that while Riot still won’t allow players to accept sponsorships from competitors, it will no longer prevent pros from streaming other titles.
“After reading all of your comments and having a lot of internal debate over the last 24 hours, we’re going to be changing the LCS team requirement to something that more closely matches our intent,” Rozelle wrote. “The way we chose to deal with this was clearly an overreach. It hit our goal of preventing companies from advertising through LCS players, but it also encroached on pros’ ability to have fun and entertain viewers during long Challenger queues – and we realize that’s not cool.”
Many players that stream League of Legends typically play other games while they’re waiting to get into sessions of the game. Those queues are notoriously long.
Rozelle did explain Riot’s thought process when it drew up the contracts.
“There’ve been instances of other game studios trying to buy access to League fans by using — or trying to use — LCS teams/players to promote their competing games on stream,” said Rozelle.
Under the new rules, Riot can still prevent companies from doing that, but it will no longer step on its players ability to generate ad revenue from streaming other games.