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

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41–50 of 64 posts

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

#42

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.

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?

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

#43

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.

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.

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

#44
post #32

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…

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.

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.

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

#45
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

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?

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

#46
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A term only "wins" when you let it. I don't like the breadth of the term "MOBA;" I think ASSFAGGOTS better describes the specific subgenre that includes LoL, Dota, HoN, and Smite. To me, the separation is similar to using the term "backstroke" over the term "swimming."

See, I use "LoL-style".

DotA-like was fairly common in LoL's early days, and still seems fairly appropriate. There are not, to my knowledge, any games that compete with DotA for creating the genre.

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

#47
post #40

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…

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 th…

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

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

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I use "LoL-style".

DotA-like was fairly common in LoL's early days, and still seems fairly appropriate. There are not, to my knowledge, any games that compete with DotA for creating the genre.

Defense of the Ancients, like Tides of Blood, Eve of the Apocalypse, and Advent of the Zenith, was an AoS-style map. If you say AoS, though, few people will know what you mean.

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

#50

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.

I actually narrow the definition to include a broad set of these games. Here are the qualities I use to define it: 2 Teams of a set number of players on each side (5 on 5, 3v3, 10v10) A commitment by the players to play a full round of the game, start to finish. A full match, if you will. Players choose from a variety of playable character or customizations, which rely on player skill. Extreme emphasis on team work.…

Well, that is a useful definition, and perhaps we should pick an acronym that encodes it. The current acronym encodes "Multiplayer online battle arena."
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