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

arstechnica.com

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

#11

Post by anonymoushn »

jxf wrote: post #10
Kapura wrote: post #6

This is just a power play by Riot. League of Legends is the most popular of the games in the genre of "Aeon of Strife-Style Fortress-Assault Games Going On Two Sides," with tens of millions of players. The professional tournaments attract hundreds of millions of players. It's understandable, from Riot's perspective, the want to lock down the golden geese. The threats emerging from other ASSFAGGOTS games and the conso…

In case anyone sees the (rather derogatory) term "ASSFAGGOTS" and is wondering why it's all caps, it's ostensibly short for "(A)eon of (S)trife (S)tyled (F)ortress (A)ssault (G)ame (G)oing (O)n (T)wo (S)ides". No, I didn't make that up.

MOBA has essentially won as the acronym for this genre, despite having such a vague meaning that it also describes every MMO, every worms-style game, every online FPS, some MUDs, every online fighting game, every RTS, and probably some other stuff I haven't thought of.

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

#12

Post by pirateking »

Kapura wrote: post #6

This is just a power play by Riot. League of Legends is the most popular of the games in the genre of "Aeon of Strife-Style Fortress-Assault Games Going On Two Sides," with tens of millions of players. The professional tournaments attract hundreds of millions of players. It's understandable, from Riot's perspective, the want to lock down the golden geese. The threats emerging from other ASSFAGGOTS games and the conso…

The core mechanics and metagame (footsies) of many fighting games are similar. But the top players that actually do well in tournaments in multiple games spend significant amounts of time studying details of game-specific culture, matchups, and tricks.

Fighting games suck these days though. I hope for an open source Street Fighter III derived engine someday. Open source game engines and commercial leagues are the future.

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

#13

Post by chc »

wwwwww wrote: post #5

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

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.

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

#14

Post by chc »

daken wrote: post #8

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

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"

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

#15

Post by chc »

saraid216 wrote: post #2

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.

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.

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

#16

Post by vectorpush »

anonymoushn wrote: post #11
jxf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone sees the (rather derogatory) term "ASSFAGGOTS" and is wondering why it's all caps, it's ostensibly short for "(A)eon of (S)trife (S)tyled (F)ortress (A)ssault (G)ame (G)oing (O)n (T)wo (S)ides". No, I didn't make that up.

MOBA has essentially won as the acronym for this genre, despite having such a vague meaning that it also describes every MMO, every worms-style game, every online FPS, some MUDs, every online fighting game, every RTS, and probably some other stuff I haven't thought of.

Genres are useful for categorizing but the category titles are all pretty arbitrary.

Take RPG: a description that applies to just about every game out there.

MMO tends to refer to games with a persistent overarching game world, but I think it's fair to describe games like Call of Duty and Battlefield as "massively multiplayer online"

MUD is associated with text based games but "multi-user dungeon" aptly describes most MMOs

4x (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) describes just about every RTS game, they should really be called RT4x or something...

I could go on all day, but I think you catch the drift.

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

#17

Post by crazypyro »

daken wrote: post #8

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

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.

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

#18

Post by Kapura »

VonGuard wrote: post #7
Kapura wrote: post #6

This is just a power play by Riot. League of Legends is the most popular of the games in the genre of "Aeon of Strife-Style Fortress-Assault Games Going On Two Sides," with tens of millions of players. The professional tournaments attract hundreds of millions of players. It's understandable, from Riot's perspective, the want to lock down the golden geese. The threats emerging from other ASSFAGGOTS games and the conso…

This is really where eSports will come into its own, in these (I prefer to call them MOBAs) games. Just like in professional sports, the players here will need a union.

The players will only need unions if the companies insist on these sort of anti-competitive contracts. I don't think that a company like Valve would insist on such a clause for competitive Dota, which might make it more attractive to players with the skillsets that make them good at ASSFAGGOTS titles. I've played League, HoN, Dota, Dota 2, and Smite, and I can confirm that, while differences in styles of play exist, many of the core mechanics are similar. This is especially true at high levels, where the most important factors in a teams victory is communication and predictive thought.

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

#19

Post by chc »

vectorpush wrote: post #16
anonymoushn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MOBA has essentially won as the acronym for this genre, despite having such a vague meaning that it also describes every MMO, every worms-style game, every online FPS, some MUDs, every online fighting game, every RTS, and probably some other stuff I haven't thought of.

Genres are useful for categorizing but the category titles are all pretty arbitrary. Take RPG: a description that applies to just about every game out there. MMO tends to refer to games with a persistent overarching game world, but I think it's fair to describe games like Call of Duty and Battlefield as "massively multiplayer online" MUD is associated with text based games but "multi-user dungeon" aptly describes mos…

I don't think it is fair to call games like Call of Duty "massively multiplayer online." They are multiplayer, and they are online, but the scale isn't all that massive. Call of Duty allows, what? 20 players?

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

#20

Post by crazypyro »

jxf wrote: post #10
Kapura wrote: post #6

This is just a power play by Riot. League of Legends is the most popular of the games in the genre of "Aeon of Strife-Style Fortress-Assault Games Going On Two Sides," with tens of millions of players. The professional tournaments attract hundreds of millions of players. It's understandable, from Riot's perspective, the want to lock down the golden geese. The threats emerging from other ASSFAGGOTS games and the conso…

In case anyone sees the (rather derogatory) term "ASSFAGGOTS" and is wondering why it's all caps, it's ostensibly short for "(A)eon of (S)trife (S)tyled (F)ortress (A)ssault (G)ame (G)oing (O)n (T)wo (S)ides". No, I didn't make that up.

Might be good to note that this was made up as a joke back when people were arguing about what to call these style of games and just kind of stuck around.
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