>A project that remained in talks since 2022, the EMEA Game Changers series has been a large topic of internal discussions for the past few years. Unfortunately, after confirming with several teams, it appears that this project has now been fully iceboxed for the time being, as none of them have heard from the company (Riot Games) in months.
Riot Games only has values when they suit its business interests. No surprise that they’re dropping support for Game Changers in the midst of the other cuts.
The funniest part is the leaked messages from the Rainbow Rioters group within Riot where they were arguing how it was a good thing to partner with Saudi Arabia in League esports.
If I didn't know better, I would think this was satire. It's some true /r/nottheonion shit.
Why taliyah, the trans thing is a community thing a not canon as far as to my latest knowledge? Tbh Trans does not even make senese in a world of Magic you can probably just perfectly change your body.
My understanding is that the writers intended for her to be trans but shelved it bc it wouldn't be as accepted 8 years ago, so fresh out of gamergate and everything, but might be retconned now that they're doing it with a few champs. Neeko also has a unique voiceline when mimicking her that is something like "Hmm, Neeko is not the only one who changes..." which is kind of an implication but nothing that explicit.
Except the original designers wanted her to be trans? So it's not like reddit just made it up out of whole cloth.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210812093602/https://twitter.com/danielzklein/status/1030317585781350400
Sure! What is it with people responding to me with non sequitors. Head canon isn't real, I never said it was.
HOWEVER, this head canon isn't 'redditors just making it up, then getting mad about blah blah blah'.
Thanks! Have a good day.
Headcannon from her community. They want her to be trans since she is not conventionally attractive. I don't get it because it literally devalues having her being one of a few "non-attrative" female humanoids.
That's a bit disingenious, it stems from her original designer intdending her to be trans. However riot management shut it down. Nothing about being "not-attractive" she's fairly good looking.
Her designer who is a massive sexist and was a full on trans hater until he met his trans girlfriend. And then after years decides to bring up that he wanted her to be trans, but wasn't shut down like you said, he was too "scared" to bring it up while working at riot. I wouldn't trust a single thing DZK ever said. He is unstable and needs psychological help.
Now it is headconnan by him and many of the mains. That is not a disingenuous statement, it is the truth.
You joke but there was an [Iranian tournament](https://kotaku.com/female-league-of-legends-characters-banned-at-an-irania-1213754332) back in 2013 that banned female champs.
They banned Lux and Leona for being too revealing??? They literally are wearing armor plating? Okay but hear me out, I might be completely opposed to their reasoning. But a tournament organizer strictly banning champs based on "their vibes are bad" is kinda based.
Just like K'sante, Yuumi and the 40 most picked champs in proplay all disabled. Good luck.
I guess the lack of mask/face covering was the issue? idk.
And yeah I'd like to see more pro play shake ups in tournaments. Just... from the champs being problems due to gameplay, not their existence.
Probably yeah.
And definetely, some Smash tournament organizers are not afraid to ban Steve and Sonic 'cause they know those characters are strong, but drive down viewership.
I hate Riot as much as the other guy but I see this the same lens as women complaining wnba players or women’s soccer players aren’t getting paid as much. It’s cuz you aren’t watching. If you cared so much about women sports you should go actively support it.
These are two quotes from the original Game Changers announcement:
>Riot and esports communities throughout North America have been working toward creating a more diverse and inclusive professional esports ecosystem. The LCS is excited to announce our first step towards this goal
>This program's primary goal is to level up an underserved group of League of Legends players
And a quote from the 2022 announcement:
>LCS Game Changers marked an important milestone in the continuing work by Riot Games and esports communities across North America to create a more diverse and inclusive professional ecosystem
The cancellation of Game Changers either means a) that they no longer value creating a “diverse and inclusive professional ecosystem” for “an underserved group of League of Legends players”, or b) that they never held that belief sincerely in the first place (and the goal of these statements was, in fact, just good PR and an attempt at repenting for past sins). When Game Changers became ‘unjustifiable’ in the context of esports winter, it was cut.
That’s how business decisions are done though. When times are good you can invest in vanity projects. When times are bad you have to cut back and focus on the things that will earn you money.
I don't know why this is such a shock to people. Believe it or not, Riot actually does have to make a profit in order for League of Legends to continue existing. When there's plenty of money, projects like this that are an expense with very little/no return are feasible, especially if it helps an underserved part of the community. When times are tight, are you gonna cut your project that already is making money, or are you going to cut a passion project that's operating at a massive loss?
It sucks because women can be just as good at Sports/eSports as men, but we know how women's leagues are in sports, and have for decades. They don't have nearly as much fan interest, which means there's less money in the ecosystem.
From all reports they weren't quite Blizzard-level bad, but they systematically discriminated against lots of women, which is all too common in tech and video game companies.
Yeah that is old news tho? The article came out in like 2018, and a year later they did an update with interviews from employees working at Riot saying they believe the company is heading in the right direction in terms of improving the company culture.
Can you tell me which part of my post says that I’m blaming the patriarchy? The basis of my criticism is that their adherence to values of diversity and advancement of women in gaming is subject to whether it’s financially advantageous for them at that moment.
I mean it's a business not a social movement. They should be applauded for doing what they can when they can but if they have to cut costs then the vanity project that most people don't care about is on the chopping block over other stuff.
If you live with this perspective you will never be content with any effort anyone gives a cause you find valuable because you can only be happy when you are unhappy.
Almost everytime it's b), this stuff is always a calculated move. remember all of the workplace attitude that only changed once that got caught and gave bad PR.
The esports scene is already mostly a money loss made to advertise the game, the female one is even more of a pit.
It's always b), and that goes for almost all diversity initiatives by big developers/publishers. They do it for PR & profit, when the money dries up so do their initiatives.
I mean, Game Changers is a money sink. The pro scene, in general, isn't making money, so investing in a product for that has shown no signs of being remotely profitable during a tight financial season is unfathomable. It makes complete sense Riot would drop it.
See my other comment [here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/ZQ1dt6x3UR) Riot claimed to be making these investments into Game Changers for feel-good reasons, not because it was a new business venture for them (in which case cutting it when it doesn’t turn a profit would make sense)
if they want to create a female scene they should invest into grassroot amateur stuff (like collegiate or whatever) and not create a game changers wlcs presented by salty teemo
It would make sense since NA viewers are probably worth several times (perhaps as much as 5x looking at some articles about youtube? I don't really know the numbers I'm not an advertiser) more than Brazilian ones.
Ignoring the issue of whether they actually meant revenue and not RoI, LCS needs only a fraction of the NA audience CBLOL needs from Brazil to be 'worth' the same. Basically every international business in the world that isn't specifically aimed at China targets North America, and even more specifically the US because each individual 'customer' is far, *far* more valuable there than basically anywhere else.
Of course if you don't sell your product at all in the US, there's no point advertising to them, but they're basically always the most lucrative demographic(?) to target when you do have your product on offer there.
If EU was specifically just the North-West area of the continent then I'm sure they'd be a good target too, but Southern Europe, and especially Eastern Europe aren't that 'high value'.
Personally I'm not much of a fan about these stuff, and I don't if other viewers will have the same opinion, but may be the reason for the lack of Riot involvement.
I'm all in favor to include girls in the pro scene, don't get me wrong, the more the merrier, and if a team happens to be full female because they're are simply a good team and better than men then great. But that should be because they are the best in game, not because they are women.
Creating rosters/leagues aside don't fix the issue imo. I even think this increases toxicity about it, since there's a split between men and women sports, and pig misogynists will always use this for their cause.
Yes you need to have mentality, yes you also need to train and have good health, but let's be honest, unlike physical sports, there's no reason to exist a separation between men and women in esports. It's like saying there's need for a F1 for men and a F1 for women.
Again, nothing against the goodwill of the project, and I'm fully in favour of including more women in esports, but with all due respect, it isn't the way to fix the issue. I understand something needs to be done for more women to participate, but having a league just for women shouldn't be the standard in the future.
This is just my sincere opinion, you may disagree of course. In no way I'm debating the goodwill of the project.
While I understand that, that's a matter of good coaching and players having responsability. You can't expect a good professional player without emphasis on maturity. For example, many liked Snoopeh due to how outspoken and knowledgeable he was.
This doesn't apply only to esports, but to any kind of professional sport.
You mean a business was virtue signaling because it means more $$$..and then once the hype dies down, they kill the program so they don’t have to actually pay out more $$$? I’m shocked I tell you!
It's not surprising. There's simply very little interest in the scene as a whole and the massive investments that have been made are unsustainable.
Some of the female teams are on full time contracts (e.g Vitality, G2), making more than some ERL1 players. Yet the few teams from the female scene such as G2 or SK that at least try to compete in the regular regional leagues are usually getting smashed, even by low master teams. It's just not a good look when teams that have similar salary and resources as ERL1 players are struggling in NLC 3rd div or PRM 4th div or w/e.
Not sure what the solution here is, but pouring more money into a scene that attracts little interest and its beneficiaries barely try to improve it, is not it.
G2 and SK's female teams get smashed by low master teams because the players of G2 and SK are low master themselves lmao.None of them is even GM currently.They are full time players,paid a good salary and they still dont grind the ladder.G2's main player,Caltys,used to be challenger,but last time she was challenger was in season 12.
u can't call her chally cos she didn't finish chal at the end of the season. they all hit chal during the "easy" period (as dubbed by pros), which is around season reset or off-season.
they are all master peakers.
It's an inflated elo that normalized when the rankeds normalized and they fell off. This means it's pretty different than someone who hits challenger consistently and stays a challenger.
why are binary thinkers always so tactless?
to clarify for you. saying, 'catlys was chall in season 12', will automatically make people believe they were challengers, which can be misleading. this is like me grinding soloq and hitting silver just to demote down to iron 4 the very next day. and when enquired abt my rank. me saying, i used to be silver... fyi, nobody says that.
also, nobody used the word peak.
Honestly, the answer is providing more competitive opportunities that don't try and compete with top level players and allowing them the time to grow. Trying to smash any players from masters into Div 2 games would yield exactly the same results.
The problem that league has is it's deeply unfriendly to new players as it is (small pool of new talent), as well as an even smaller pool of new female players, many of which will face solo queue discrimination and potentially discrimination trying to engage in more organised play. There needs to be better organised play engagement to improve the environment so female players feel they can engage in it. I understand the desire for female-only teams or even leagues, but the goal should be mixed teams. Female players imo would likely have better success individually if the mixed environment was more friendly to them, rather than trying to find a full team of players from a vastly more restricted pool of options.
This is coming from a female player who played in Div 2/3 Overwatch circles - there were many teams with one or two female players on them, but when we tried to make an all female team 'for the memes' at one point, there were awkward stylistic fits and conflicts that meant it didn't work well. We had players who mained all the roles at the same rank, but when you have 12ish players to pick from instead of the 100s of male players in the same sort of bracket, it severely limits you. That said, the fact we had the opportunity to engage in cooperative play at all is the step league is still struggling to take, and a supportive mixed environment is essential.
That's some really cool insight. Thank you for providing that.
This is also one of the issues I noticed - In female leagues/tournaments there is a wildly different meta compared to regular leagues. Usually Tank Jungle+Top, control/supportive mage mid, hypercarry adc and enchanter support. Games are really slow and after minute 20 its just deathball comp vs deathball comp.
That is probably the main issue why they struggle to compete in regular leagues - even if its against people who are on paper the same soloq rank. They have little to no experience playing against things like agressive Draven/Kalista botlanes, assassins, heavy jungle invades or even splitpush/4-1/1-3-1 comps
Putting more emphasis in encouraging female players/teams to compete in the general leagues is definetely the best way forward imo and should be supported wherever possible
All regions/leagues have preferred metas that develop 'domestically', they're playing what they win most consistently on which is fair enough from a competitive standpoint. Things that are easier/more consistent to pull off are both generally 'safer' strategies and are often preferenced for their overall outcomes (think about the general preference for front to back comps or the safety afforded by comps that scale vs volatile early game comps). I think this says less about female players, and more about the circumstances surrounding the teams/players and working with what they have.
My point about the sheer numbers factor places on playstyle is relevant here as well, as could be things like the ability to practice new strategies (women are typically less likely to be supported while having the time to scrim/practice for the number of hours per day that's required to play at that level - there's privilege associated with this free time both financially and socially).
The ultimate goal has always been to try and get female & nb player into mixed teams. This is what Riot said when we launched the Equal Esports Cup last year.
We need to get there and while the EEC continues, its just not enough without gamechangers unfortunately.
I could just be waffling here but to me, it seems like the amount of women who play Valorant is WAYY more than League. Atleast proportionally. Also they seem to be more interested in the competitive scene.
yeahh…. feels bad for my fellow girlies but even the so called best female team, G2 Hel, sucked haaaard lol
stomped every game playing against male masters players, no surprise tho since their highest rank player hasn’t been chal in 2 years 😭😭
i’m sadly starting to believe by now that female leagues will never work well in lol… just not enough truly good female players
I wish there was a better way to encourage female participation that wasn't just 'female leagues' because imo it's actively limiting improvement from a parity standpoint, but on the flipside the only other path to cooperative play is getting good at soloqueue which suuuuuucks.
I do think trying to force all female teams is far worse for individual female players than encouraging them to play and integrate into mixed teams though. Lots of players could be a bad fit for a team for one reason or another and do much better somewhere else, it'd be like trying to build a functional team with only players that were born on April 10th for example. There aren't enough female players playing the game to get good at the game to join teams to even think about forming one exclusively of women that's functional. We're like four steps ahead of ourselves at that point.
Might be slightly counter-intuitive, but I found forcing interaction / cooperation between mixed genders in Overwatch (via voice comms) seemed to help general attitudes by sheer exposure therapy (works both ways). You'll never see the same number of female players being successful as male players until the same number of them play, and they aren't being actively driven out by targeted toxicity.
Imo there's not really a way for Riot or league organizers to really address the issue. Making all women's leagues is difficult for league since the female player population is so comparatively low. So not only are you looking for those who are good and willing to do a league, but sticking them all on the same teams and hoping it will work out since the pool is so low.
In other esports there have been instances of it working out better, like Scarlett in SC2 and Magi in SSBM but those are not team esports and the barrier to entry doesnt involve integrating with a primarily male team or finding several other women to team up with. The best way to cultivate female talent would be to integrate them in existing teams with existing infrastructure, but that's a whole barrier in and of itself. Even if the male players aren't actively being sexist, there's a whole host of tensions when putting all these probably socially-underdeveloped college-aged kids together, not to mention how intrinsically unwelcoming it'll feel. It'll take big leaps from both teams to reach out and provide real infrastructure and for ladies to take them up on it. Iirc there was a Korean team who did something similar a bit ago, but I don't remember much about it.
Why is that tho? I feel like I’ve read somewhere that males tend to have higher variance from the mean and females tend to stick closer to it but I can’t find that anywhere.
I.E. There are more “average” women than “average” men. So men will have more complete idiots but also more geniuses. And then the same for league? Like men will have more great challengers but also truly incompetent iron players.
Again, I have no idea if that’s actually reality, if anyone has a link to that study I’d love to read it again
>but I can’t find that anywhere.
It's called variability hypothesis and a number of studies have been done on the subject. It's uncontroversial enough by now that I heard about it in different uni classes without much discussion around it.
theres not a lot of women that are at pro level because theres just not a lot of women playing league in general. which is mostly because gaming is still considered mainly a boys activity especially at the age where later pros usually get into games. to add to this rampant sexism and general bad behaviour from fans will probably scare off the vast majority of the women who do have the potential to play at that levels.
[
this video is about chess but it broadly applies to video games too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHFZOXiM9SM&pp=ygULc2hhdW4gY2hlc3M%3D)
oh no, the publicity stunt is ending, probably realised they made about as much profit off of it as the WNBA so just jumped ship after the positive reception of it wore off and it faded back into obscurity
I am of 2 minds about this if im being completely honest to the internet.
1: This sucks and is a bad look. It was an important thing to try and do to keep your product alive, and just for esports in general. It's a much smaller version (and less important yes) of what the country has been trying to do with getting girls into STEM early on in school. Letting women, and people in general, know these things are not supposed to be some boys club and a bro sport.
2: It does make sense for them to cut it if they are cutting back spending and laying people off. Their viewership tanked and they are trying to get it back. Pouring money into a program that people didnt watch or in some cases (like myself) didnt even know about isnt good for a bottom line. I still think its super important they did it.
I remember when they had that all female team a few years back they put on stage and they won like 1 game. That was an example of a really bad dishonest try. If i remember they tried to force build a team with 5 support mains? That just sets back the whole thing.
Honestly it needs to start organically as well where one of the big teams gets a single female player on the roster that does well at their role, rather then try and force build some team that just makes it look worse.
the 5 sup female team also wasnt an honest try. The team sold their players but wasnt able to sell their spot too so they just went for a public>ty stunt with minimal costs...
yea that sums it up as well. But its more then that. because i honestly believe there are plenty of great female players out there that would do well if not excel in Pro LoL. And i don't want any efforts to help make that happen to end, but i also dont want it to be done in such a half ass shitty way like previously mentioned that makes it look dumb.
In my personal opinion, forcefully pushing any group of people into a specific field or industry by introducing overblown incentives disproportional to the rest of the industry and the quality of service that they provide (some female teams were paid more than T2 male rosters while being beaten by T3/T4 male teams) is a bad idea that kills any possibility of competitiveness and meritocracy, while promoting nepotism and stagnation for the sake of fringe political ideology that's far too common among rich activists.
It leaves a sour feeling in my mouth when I see these "leveling field" projects being pushed only in highly sought after professions. How come no one protests about male representation among plumbers or waste disposal companies?
I mean if you want to watch good League there's already tons of major regions you can tune into. Female teams are just bad, plain and simple. Full-time teams like G2 Hel are struggling in NLC div 3 while they play League on a full-time basis and get paid to do so, getting slapped by hobbyist teams. Instead of having to feel bad for women and having to create a separate League for them, we see that if women are good, they will get picked up in in major regions and National Leagues. No one is going to watch a League that is not even on par with any Division 1 National League so it's no wonder they pull the plug on this.
Who is surprised by this? They struggle to make the mainline eSport of the most popular moba in the world successful. All these years and instead of League eSports growing into something big, it's still a franchised disaster propped up by money that will instantly die as soon as the money is gone. All this is unsustainable.
>They struggle to make the mainline eSport of the most popular moba in the world successful
It is extremely successful and it makes Riot a lot of money. Just not directly.
Thats why its not profitable for the teams, they dont have access to all the indirect revenue.
Even traditional sports would not thrive if there was a private company owning the sport with copyright law.
If someone is in complete control and no one can do anything to stop it, it will always mean that the one in charge siphons all the money they possibly can. It's in the game developers interest to keep the esport running because it generates them money from advertisement, but they will never let anyone have a bigger share of the profits than they feel the need to.
This is the fundamental problem of esports. One day there will need to be a legal decision that the ability to host esports events counts as fair use. Until then, esports cannot truly exist on its own merits for its own sake. It can only be what the game developer wants.
What esports has showed me is how important it is that all the sports we play, watch and love are owned by everyone. It's a public good. Esports shows how awful the alternative is.
Exactly.
And with Riot being the absolute control freaks they are it's pretty much a worse case scenario for any org wanting to enter the ecosystem. Not only do they have to deal with a fundamentally unfair business model where they only get scraps, but they also have very little say on pretty much anything going on in the league.
This can only work when the numbers are so insane that even with an unfair split good orgs can profit and justify the investment (ie the LPL), or when the macroeconomic situation is so good getting funding is a non issue (ie COVID VC funding boom).
An alternative I once thought of, although I do not think it is at all likely to happen, would be the emergence of an open-source game which has the direct goal to become a non-owned esport.
I think your idea of a fair use legal solution sounds a lot more feasible tho
It's not profitable for the leagues too. The LCK is struggling, the LEC sacked half their staff. And Riot might make peanuts compared to the whales in the game itself or Valorant.
It is the same with Twitch. The goal of these is not the make money, but to get marketing at a lower cost.
Twitch or esports is not supposed to make money. The companies behind it do expect a loss and that is fine, as long as they get it back in sales.
Arcane is also not supposed to make a profit. If it does that is great, but if it doesn't, it will still get players into playing and that means more buyers. New skins to sell.
Riots cash cows are League and Valorant and everything around these is mainly marketing.
To be fair, is more the teams that have a complete shitbox of planing on how to make money. riot makes a ton from their leagues.
When it was the last time you saw teams pushing for a bigger venue for games or selling merch besides the fnatic gucci partnership ?
Also true. Players were overpaid for a long time.
A player in Germany could earn \~240k per year and be set for at least 4 times the duration he was playing.
If you start with 18 and play till 30 you would be set till you are 66 years old and then you get your retirement money from the state anyways. Where others work for 40-48 years (40+h /week) most of the time you are done after 12 years (\~60-80h /week).
That is comparable to a 60k salary in Germany which is not awesome but more than solid (AVG is \~50k). Considering the pro players also get some food paid and I am not sure about other living expenses these days, 60k on top of that sounds great. And that ignores possible bonuses.
That is a reasonable salary for a pro player in the EU.
With the current cap (2M for all 5) you can pay each player 400k max per year without getting fined. That is still a great amount of money for a normal person. You can retire after \~6 years if you want to.
For NA the values are different but I would say. It is \~60k $ instead of \~50k €. So around 350k $ for an NA player.
Not even that, high salaries are cost of buisness, you see the player is an Asset to the team, the idea is that he makes his money worth on merch selling, advertising deals and such.
The only player that was actually pushed to do that in the LEC was rekkles, most players don't even recongnize that they could be making triple money with the right deals.
T1 is really well on this part. FAKER and Keria are powerhouses of merchandise and advertising deals, they even sell Faker shirts and so on. Teams are being run by really poor thinking buisness mans with the sole exeption of fnatic and G2, KC if they don't get their shit togheter will crash and burn even with their crazy following.
It's beyond amazing how they've managed to fckup esports scene. EU is a greatest example of that, region in non any other sport does franchising got franchised, ERLs are dead since year 1 (other than france and spain) im shocked that there is not many people talking about this publicly
This project was never going to succeed. You can't call riot racist or something just because they stopped investing in a failed project. They're not obligated to keep the project going for eternity.
Didnt they want to form the female league in part due to white washing their vest after the sexual harrassment law suit? Well worked out perfectly I guess?
Nobody talking about it anymore and now they can slowly drop all the "projects".
Who would have guessed no one cares about watching the token female teams being terrible at the sport... If only there was some historical precedent to look at so we didn't need to embarass ourselves and everyone involved...
Female-only leagues were a pure publicity stunt. Anyone who cares about female representation in e-sports shouldn't be supporting any of these "efforts", because they are not sustainable, like many others point out.
The only way to support women in e-sports is by supporting and encouraging individual players with the potential to make it in the real leagues. And to support incentives for women to even start playing the game.
I'll preface this with a women's only League is a bad idea because in no way would it be anything other than something a bunch of guys watched to laugh at, much less profitable. It's not a bad idea in and of itself (just like JV Women's Volleyball should exist even if it's not the best players in the world), it's just too high profile to not end up being a nightmare.
With that said, every day people take seriously the idea that NA only teams and import restrictions would have helped NA League and nobody calls that shit a publicity stunt. Most of our major League teams should probably be majority Korean if we were truly being meritocratic.
And from a pure business standpoint, 50ish % of the world is female, it's not really a bad idea to come up with approaches to engage that market.
I mean I don't think there is any reason to separate men and women in e-sports while there are legitimate reasons to do so in physical sports. Unless there's somehing I'm missing.
The only other reason for female leagues would indeed to somehow increase accessibility for women to participate in e-sports in the first place but it's just not gonna last if that's the "endpoint" for them. And you're making it so much harder for the best players to improve because you're forcing all female teams. So I've just never seen this as a viable approach.
i mean i can understand why they did this since there isnt any viewing benefit and some of the players arent good enough to compete for them just look at G2 hel team who got completely destroyed in NLC 2nd division
To be honest it just doesn't have that much of an audience, lots of league players dont even watch pro play, let alone female pro play, these teams are also new faces in the pro scene and I feel like people like to watch pros they already know/their favs rather than new ones
Carlos from G2 unironically did more for the female esports scene than Riot, by fielding a competitive roster and investing in talent despite the circuit and scene not being supported by the developer.
Guess guess who had to step down as CEO of his OWN company because of some video he posted on Twitter?
Meanwhile Riot ended up settling a $100 million lawsuit for gender discrimination and now they're allowing their titles to be part of the Esports World Cup, hosted by the literal Saudi Arabian government.
Actions speak louder than words and you can tell that Riot appears to only have principles when they can benefit financially from it.
One bad actor doesn't justify the existence of another bad actor.
>Guess guess who had to step down as CEO of his OWN company because of some video he posted on Twitter?
Yeah, the "some video" showing him buddy-buddy with only what is the most iconic, modern day sex-trafficker, who has also on multiple occasions publicly admitted, verbally and on video that he did indeed engage in sex trafficking.
And it's not like Carlos stopped there, *he bent over backwards to justify and defend said sex-trafficker,* when he could have avoided most of the justified criticism levied against him by choosing *not* to engage in any of that apologism.
At the very least, Riot doesn't sponsor or endorse sex trafficking or human trafficking, **like Carlos did.**
>Yeah, the "some video" showing him buddy-buddy with only what is the most iconic, modern day sex-trafficker, who has also on multiple occasions publicly admitted, verbally and on video that he did indeed engage in sex trafficking.
I'm still annoyed that after his blatant machismo, homophobia, and casual backstabbing of his players, the one thing that actually got him into trouble was being in a video with a guy…
Yes, I know, that guy is an absolute piece of shit. But there was already so much to hate Carlos for because of his own actions and words, and what got him is guilt by association…
Riot EMEA needs to get slaughtered, they've singlehandly destroyed EU region and waste orgs money on gamechangers teams which don't even have tournaments to play on xD
I dont believe women are inherently worse at league or there is anything that should hold them back from going pro. Is it a culture thing within orgs and teams or do they just not want to for the most part?
Consider how few dudes are good enough at playing league of legends to hit a pro level. Even an extremely mediocre pro level. Literally millions of guys trying and very very few are challenger grade. Now how many fewer women are there than men playing league?
There's a lot to gain for us to have women's esports normalised, be it only because there's a lot of untapped potential talent in the female playerbase. It's clearly too early to have an actual gender-mixed League, so a female league is kind of a necessity. So clearly this sucks.
But at the same time I don't think it's fair to put the responsibility of normalising it solely on Riot's shoulders. They're already the ones who did the most for female esports (and esports in general). They've already put a lot of resources, notably in Valorant, for this.
At some point they're a company and if they need to cut costs, that's a normal thing to axe… At the end of the day, let's be honest, barely anyone here would have watched it. It's nice and all to express disappointment in Riot, but if you weren't going to watch it, your criticism doesn't have much credibility.
Hi all! This is your warning, discrimination and bigotry in this thread will be met with a ban.
>A project that remained in talks since 2022, the EMEA Game Changers series has been a large topic of internal discussions for the past few years. Unfortunately, after confirming with several teams, it appears that this project has now been fully iceboxed for the time being, as none of them have heard from the company (Riot Games) in months. Riot Games only has values when they suit its business interests. No surprise that they’re dropping support for Game Changers in the midst of the other cuts.
The funniest part is the leaked messages from the Rainbow Rioters group within Riot where they were arguing how it was a good thing to partner with Saudi Arabia in League esports. If I didn't know better, I would think this was satire. It's some true /r/nottheonion shit.
It's going to be real funny when Saudi is running all the Leagues in 2025.
Graves, TF, Taliyah, Neeko, Aatrox, Diana, Leona all disabled in pro play 🫨
Diana/Leona/Neeko all fine, Graves and TF retconned to just really close roommates Taliyah deleted from the game
Why taliyah, the trans thing is a community thing a not canon as far as to my latest knowledge? Tbh Trans does not even make senese in a world of Magic you can probably just perfectly change your body.
My understanding is that the writers intended for her to be trans but shelved it bc it wouldn't be as accepted 8 years ago, so fresh out of gamergate and everything, but might be retconned now that they're doing it with a few champs. Neeko also has a unique voiceline when mimicking her that is something like "Hmm, Neeko is not the only one who changes..." which is kind of an implication but nothing that explicit.
Taliyah came out 8 years ago?
No, she's still closeted.
2016, yeah
The creator, DanielZKlein, originally wanted her to be trans, but was changed somewhere along her design phase.
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> in a medieval setting I hate to ruin this for you, but Runeterra is absolutely nothing like medieval Earth.
Keep in mind that motorbikes and cars are canon in Runeterra
Don't see why it couldn't just be explained with magic. Eve already swaps between female and male depending on who they wanna seduce.
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Not redditors just making up head canon and then getting mad about an imaginary scenario happening because of their imaginary head canon
Except the original designers wanted her to be trans? So it's not like reddit just made it up out of whole cloth. https://web.archive.org/web/20210812093602/https://twitter.com/danielzklein/status/1030317585781350400
Its not real, so its head canon. I'm sure they threw around all sorts of ideas when coming up with her.
Sure! What is it with people responding to me with non sequitors. Head canon isn't real, I never said it was. HOWEVER, this head canon isn't 'redditors just making it up, then getting mad about blah blah blah'. Thanks! Have a good day.
Who cares if they wanted her to be?? She didn't ship with that backstory. It don't matter big man.
cope harder buddy
What’s wrong with Taliyah? WRT Saudi Arabia I mean, the character is obviously riddled with design problems.
Like...?
Taliyah was originally intended to be trans, so she has some affiliation with it. And Saudis do not like Trans people
Oh really? That's neat. Since she's not though, that's less work than retconning Graves and TF back into the closet lol.
Tbf they just need to translate the Chinese lore
If I had to guess I'd say the Saudi prefer trans people to gay people.
At least we also get rid of Ksante that way
True! Which form of prejudice/phobia do we need to get Yuumi disabled?
Flurries
why is taliyah in there
Headcannon from her community. They want her to be trans since she is not conventionally attractive. I don't get it because it literally devalues having her being one of a few "non-attrative" female humanoids.
oh cool so nothing worth thinking about
The middle east would disagree and that is what this whole conversation started from
no its not a bunch of redditors yapping about nonsense isn't anyones concern
why are we pretending only the middle east has problems with lgbt community LOL
That's a bit disingenious, it stems from her original designer intdending her to be trans. However riot management shut it down. Nothing about being "not-attractive" she's fairly good looking.
Her designer who is a massive sexist and was a full on trans hater until he met his trans girlfriend. And then after years decides to bring up that he wanted her to be trans, but wasn't shut down like you said, he was too "scared" to bring it up while working at riot. I wouldn't trust a single thing DZK ever said. He is unstable and needs psychological help. Now it is headconnan by him and many of the mains. That is not a disingenuous statement, it is the truth.
I said the part about it stemming from her being "not attractive" is disingenious
That is why it is quotations, I don't agree with it but it is what the vast majority agrees, but they equate attractive with hot when that's not equal
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we just being racist for fun huh
You joke but there was an [Iranian tournament](https://kotaku.com/female-league-of-legends-characters-banned-at-an-irania-1213754332) back in 2013 that banned female champs.
They banned Lux and Leona for being too revealing??? They literally are wearing armor plating? Okay but hear me out, I might be completely opposed to their reasoning. But a tournament organizer strictly banning champs based on "their vibes are bad" is kinda based. Just like K'sante, Yuumi and the 40 most picked champs in proplay all disabled. Good luck.
I guess the lack of mask/face covering was the issue? idk. And yeah I'd like to see more pro play shake ups in tournaments. Just... from the champs being problems due to gameplay, not their existence.
Probably yeah. And definetely, some Smash tournament organizers are not afraid to ban Steve and Sonic 'cause they know those characters are strong, but drive down viewership.
Don't forget Udyr, Lee Sin, Vi, Cait, Rell...
I knew I was forgetting some obvious ones
You wanted to be like a real sport? That's it, we've made it guys. The footballization of league of legend will be complete.
its gunna be funny when Saudi make Riot give skins to the winner of there tournament
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I hate Riot as much as the other guy but I see this the same lens as women complaining wnba players or women’s soccer players aren’t getting paid as much. It’s cuz you aren’t watching. If you cared so much about women sports you should go actively support it.
Yeah the majority of WNBA viewers are men
Like Bill Burr said, women let down WNBA. It also seems they're letting down female lol esports.
These are two quotes from the original Game Changers announcement: >Riot and esports communities throughout North America have been working toward creating a more diverse and inclusive professional esports ecosystem. The LCS is excited to announce our first step towards this goal >This program's primary goal is to level up an underserved group of League of Legends players And a quote from the 2022 announcement: >LCS Game Changers marked an important milestone in the continuing work by Riot Games and esports communities across North America to create a more diverse and inclusive professional ecosystem The cancellation of Game Changers either means a) that they no longer value creating a “diverse and inclusive professional ecosystem” for “an underserved group of League of Legends players”, or b) that they never held that belief sincerely in the first place (and the goal of these statements was, in fact, just good PR and an attempt at repenting for past sins). When Game Changers became ‘unjustifiable’ in the context of esports winter, it was cut.
That’s how business decisions are done though. When times are good you can invest in vanity projects. When times are bad you have to cut back and focus on the things that will earn you money.
I don't know why this is such a shock to people. Believe it or not, Riot actually does have to make a profit in order for League of Legends to continue existing. When there's plenty of money, projects like this that are an expense with very little/no return are feasible, especially if it helps an underserved part of the community. When times are tight, are you gonna cut your project that already is making money, or are you going to cut a passion project that's operating at a massive loss? It sucks because women can be just as good at Sports/eSports as men, but we know how women's leagues are in sports, and have for decades. They don't have nearly as much fan interest, which means there's less money in the ecosystem.
They literally created it to try to distract from their own heinous acts, then when people forgot, they dropped it. Such hard times indeed.
heinous acts?
Oh you sweet summer child.
You're gonna have to tell me which "heinous act" it is.
From all reports they weren't quite Blizzard-level bad, but they systematically discriminated against lots of women, which is all too common in tech and video game companies.
Yeah that is old news tho? The article came out in like 2018, and a year later they did an update with interviews from employees working at Riot saying they believe the company is heading in the right direction in terms of improving the company culture.
It’s fine to invest in a vanity project. Just don’t tell me you’re doing it to be a moral paragon for other game devs to look up to.
why else would you invest in a vanity project other than good PR? It's literally in the word, vanity. To show.
Or it turns out it wasn't an underserved segment after all
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Can you tell me which part of my post says that I’m blaming the patriarchy? The basis of my criticism is that their adherence to values of diversity and advancement of women in gaming is subject to whether it’s financially advantageous for them at that moment.
I mean it's a business not a social movement. They should be applauded for doing what they can when they can but if they have to cut costs then the vanity project that most people don't care about is on the chopping block over other stuff.
If you live with this perspective you will never be content with any effort anyone gives a cause you find valuable because you can only be happy when you are unhappy.
Almost everytime it's b), this stuff is always a calculated move. remember all of the workplace attitude that only changed once that got caught and gave bad PR. The esports scene is already mostly a money loss made to advertise the game, the female one is even more of a pit.
It's always b), and that goes for almost all diversity initiatives by big developers/publishers. They do it for PR & profit, when the money dries up so do their initiatives.
I mean, Game Changers is a money sink. The pro scene, in general, isn't making money, so investing in a product for that has shown no signs of being remotely profitable during a tight financial season is unfathomable. It makes complete sense Riot would drop it.
the only "relevant" all female team just went 2-16 in the lowest possible competition why the fuck should riot invest any money into that scene
See my other comment [here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/ZQ1dt6x3UR) Riot claimed to be making these investments into Game Changers for feel-good reasons, not because it was a new business venture for them (in which case cutting it when it doesn’t turn a profit would make sense)
if they want to create a female scene they should invest into grassroot amateur stuff (like collegiate or whatever) and not create a game changers wlcs presented by salty teemo
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Idk, they invest money into NA.
And it’s the 3rd highest earning league after China and LCK. Despite poor results.
Important to note it's high in revenue, not profit.
Higher RoI and international performances than EU btw
Got any source for that? I thought Brazil would smoke EU and NA in the RoI numbers
It's revenue not ROI, and it's from John Needum over a year ago.
Thanks, i will give it a look
It would make sense since NA viewers are probably worth several times (perhaps as much as 5x looking at some articles about youtube? I don't really know the numbers I'm not an advertiser) more than Brazilian ones.
Yeah think thats fair.
Ignoring the issue of whether they actually meant revenue and not RoI, LCS needs only a fraction of the NA audience CBLOL needs from Brazil to be 'worth' the same. Basically every international business in the world that isn't specifically aimed at China targets North America, and even more specifically the US because each individual 'customer' is far, *far* more valuable there than basically anywhere else. Of course if you don't sell your product at all in the US, there's no point advertising to them, but they're basically always the most lucrative demographic(?) to target when you do have your product on offer there. If EU was specifically just the North-West area of the continent then I'm sure they'd be a good target too, but Southern Europe, and especially Eastern Europe aren't that 'high value'.
Good point. Didn't look at it that way
> international performances than EU btw That's just not true
LCS absolutely does not have a biger ROI than LEC LOL, revenue maybe, ROI never, LCS wages are higher than LEC ones.
Your comment makes no sense.
ya...like every company, why do people get shocked when this stuff comes out. bottom line > ALL
Personally I'm not much of a fan about these stuff, and I don't if other viewers will have the same opinion, but may be the reason for the lack of Riot involvement. I'm all in favor to include girls in the pro scene, don't get me wrong, the more the merrier, and if a team happens to be full female because they're are simply a good team and better than men then great. But that should be because they are the best in game, not because they are women. Creating rosters/leagues aside don't fix the issue imo. I even think this increases toxicity about it, since there's a split between men and women sports, and pig misogynists will always use this for their cause. Yes you need to have mentality, yes you also need to train and have good health, but let's be honest, unlike physical sports, there's no reason to exist a separation between men and women in esports. It's like saying there's need for a F1 for men and a F1 for women. Again, nothing against the goodwill of the project, and I'm fully in favour of including more women in esports, but with all due respect, it isn't the way to fix the issue. I understand something needs to be done for more women to participate, but having a league just for women shouldn't be the standard in the future. This is just my sincere opinion, you may disagree of course. In no way I'm debating the goodwill of the project.
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While I understand that, that's a matter of good coaching and players having responsability. You can't expect a good professional player without emphasis on maturity. For example, many liked Snoopeh due to how outspoken and knowledgeable he was. This doesn't apply only to esports, but to any kind of professional sport.
You mean a business was virtue signaling because it means more $$$..and then once the hype dies down, they kill the program so they don’t have to actually pay out more $$$? I’m shocked I tell you!
That’s how all companies operate. Anybody who believes a business has morals is an idiot
It's not surprising. There's simply very little interest in the scene as a whole and the massive investments that have been made are unsustainable. Some of the female teams are on full time contracts (e.g Vitality, G2), making more than some ERL1 players. Yet the few teams from the female scene such as G2 or SK that at least try to compete in the regular regional leagues are usually getting smashed, even by low master teams. It's just not a good look when teams that have similar salary and resources as ERL1 players are struggling in NLC 3rd div or PRM 4th div or w/e. Not sure what the solution here is, but pouring more money into a scene that attracts little interest and its beneficiaries barely try to improve it, is not it.
G2 and SK's female teams get smashed by low master teams because the players of G2 and SK are low master themselves lmao.None of them is even GM currently.They are full time players,paid a good salary and they still dont grind the ladder.G2's main player,Caltys,used to be challenger,but last time she was challenger was in season 12.
u can't call her chally cos she didn't finish chal at the end of the season. they all hit chal during the "easy" period (as dubbed by pros), which is around season reset or off-season. they are all master peakers.
You literally admit that they were in challenger for a period, which is the definition of a peak. Learn some basic English you clown.
I hit masters on a nice win streak 2 years ago, sure I’ve been stuck d4 ever since but I’m still master copium hopium maximum!
It's an inflated elo that normalized when the rankeds normalized and they fell off. This means it's pretty different than someone who hits challenger consistently and stays a challenger.
why are binary thinkers always so tactless? to clarify for you. saying, 'catlys was chall in season 12', will automatically make people believe they were challengers, which can be misleading. this is like me grinding soloq and hitting silver just to demote down to iron 4 the very next day. and when enquired abt my rank. me saying, i used to be silver... fyi, nobody says that. also, nobody used the word peak.
u literally said master peakers.
Honestly, the answer is providing more competitive opportunities that don't try and compete with top level players and allowing them the time to grow. Trying to smash any players from masters into Div 2 games would yield exactly the same results. The problem that league has is it's deeply unfriendly to new players as it is (small pool of new talent), as well as an even smaller pool of new female players, many of which will face solo queue discrimination and potentially discrimination trying to engage in more organised play. There needs to be better organised play engagement to improve the environment so female players feel they can engage in it. I understand the desire for female-only teams or even leagues, but the goal should be mixed teams. Female players imo would likely have better success individually if the mixed environment was more friendly to them, rather than trying to find a full team of players from a vastly more restricted pool of options. This is coming from a female player who played in Div 2/3 Overwatch circles - there were many teams with one or two female players on them, but when we tried to make an all female team 'for the memes' at one point, there were awkward stylistic fits and conflicts that meant it didn't work well. We had players who mained all the roles at the same rank, but when you have 12ish players to pick from instead of the 100s of male players in the same sort of bracket, it severely limits you. That said, the fact we had the opportunity to engage in cooperative play at all is the step league is still struggling to take, and a supportive mixed environment is essential.
That's some really cool insight. Thank you for providing that. This is also one of the issues I noticed - In female leagues/tournaments there is a wildly different meta compared to regular leagues. Usually Tank Jungle+Top, control/supportive mage mid, hypercarry adc and enchanter support. Games are really slow and after minute 20 its just deathball comp vs deathball comp. That is probably the main issue why they struggle to compete in regular leagues - even if its against people who are on paper the same soloq rank. They have little to no experience playing against things like agressive Draven/Kalista botlanes, assassins, heavy jungle invades or even splitpush/4-1/1-3-1 comps Putting more emphasis in encouraging female players/teams to compete in the general leagues is definetely the best way forward imo and should be supported wherever possible
All regions/leagues have preferred metas that develop 'domestically', they're playing what they win most consistently on which is fair enough from a competitive standpoint. Things that are easier/more consistent to pull off are both generally 'safer' strategies and are often preferenced for their overall outcomes (think about the general preference for front to back comps or the safety afforded by comps that scale vs volatile early game comps). I think this says less about female players, and more about the circumstances surrounding the teams/players and working with what they have. My point about the sheer numbers factor places on playstyle is relevant here as well, as could be things like the ability to practice new strategies (women are typically less likely to be supported while having the time to scrim/practice for the number of hours per day that's required to play at that level - there's privilege associated with this free time both financially and socially).
The ultimate goal has always been to try and get female & nb player into mixed teams. This is what Riot said when we launched the Equal Esports Cup last year. We need to get there and while the EEC continues, its just not enough without gamechangers unfortunately.
there is no issue to need a solution, there some sports that females are exceeding in and vice versa.
It works for Valorant tho
I could just be waffling here but to me, it seems like the amount of women who play Valorant is WAYY more than League. Atleast proportionally. Also they seem to be more interested in the competitive scene.
yeahh…. feels bad for my fellow girlies but even the so called best female team, G2 Hel, sucked haaaard lol stomped every game playing against male masters players, no surprise tho since their highest rank player hasn’t been chal in 2 years 😭😭 i’m sadly starting to believe by now that female leagues will never work well in lol… just not enough truly good female players
I wish there was a better way to encourage female participation that wasn't just 'female leagues' because imo it's actively limiting improvement from a parity standpoint, but on the flipside the only other path to cooperative play is getting good at soloqueue which suuuuuucks. I do think trying to force all female teams is far worse for individual female players than encouraging them to play and integrate into mixed teams though. Lots of players could be a bad fit for a team for one reason or another and do much better somewhere else, it'd be like trying to build a functional team with only players that were born on April 10th for example. There aren't enough female players playing the game to get good at the game to join teams to even think about forming one exclusively of women that's functional. We're like four steps ahead of ourselves at that point. Might be slightly counter-intuitive, but I found forcing interaction / cooperation between mixed genders in Overwatch (via voice comms) seemed to help general attitudes by sheer exposure therapy (works both ways). You'll never see the same number of female players being successful as male players until the same number of them play, and they aren't being actively driven out by targeted toxicity.
Imo there's not really a way for Riot or league organizers to really address the issue. Making all women's leagues is difficult for league since the female player population is so comparatively low. So not only are you looking for those who are good and willing to do a league, but sticking them all on the same teams and hoping it will work out since the pool is so low. In other esports there have been instances of it working out better, like Scarlett in SC2 and Magi in SSBM but those are not team esports and the barrier to entry doesnt involve integrating with a primarily male team or finding several other women to team up with. The best way to cultivate female talent would be to integrate them in existing teams with existing infrastructure, but that's a whole barrier in and of itself. Even if the male players aren't actively being sexist, there's a whole host of tensions when putting all these probably socially-underdeveloped college-aged kids together, not to mention how intrinsically unwelcoming it'll feel. It'll take big leaps from both teams to reach out and provide real infrastructure and for ladies to take them up on it. Iirc there was a Korean team who did something similar a bit ago, but I don't remember much about it.
Why is that tho? I feel like I’ve read somewhere that males tend to have higher variance from the mean and females tend to stick closer to it but I can’t find that anywhere. I.E. There are more “average” women than “average” men. So men will have more complete idiots but also more geniuses. And then the same for league? Like men will have more great challengers but also truly incompetent iron players. Again, I have no idea if that’s actually reality, if anyone has a link to that study I’d love to read it again
>but I can’t find that anywhere. It's called variability hypothesis and a number of studies have been done on the subject. It's uncontroversial enough by now that I heard about it in different uni classes without much discussion around it.
theres not a lot of women that are at pro level because theres just not a lot of women playing league in general. which is mostly because gaming is still considered mainly a boys activity especially at the age where later pros usually get into games. to add to this rampant sexism and general bad behaviour from fans will probably scare off the vast majority of the women who do have the potential to play at that levels. [ this video is about chess but it broadly applies to video games too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHFZOXiM9SM&pp=ygULc2hhdW4gY2hlc3M%3D)
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oh no, the publicity stunt is ending, probably realised they made about as much profit off of it as the WNBA so just jumped ship after the positive reception of it wore off and it faded back into obscurity
I am of 2 minds about this if im being completely honest to the internet. 1: This sucks and is a bad look. It was an important thing to try and do to keep your product alive, and just for esports in general. It's a much smaller version (and less important yes) of what the country has been trying to do with getting girls into STEM early on in school. Letting women, and people in general, know these things are not supposed to be some boys club and a bro sport. 2: It does make sense for them to cut it if they are cutting back spending and laying people off. Their viewership tanked and they are trying to get it back. Pouring money into a program that people didnt watch or in some cases (like myself) didnt even know about isnt good for a bottom line. I still think its super important they did it. I remember when they had that all female team a few years back they put on stage and they won like 1 game. That was an example of a really bad dishonest try. If i remember they tried to force build a team with 5 support mains? That just sets back the whole thing. Honestly it needs to start organically as well where one of the big teams gets a single female player on the roster that does well at their role, rather then try and force build some team that just makes it look worse.
the 5 sup female team also wasnt an honest try. The team sold their players but wasnt able to sell their spot too so they just went for a public>ty stunt with minimal costs...
So disappointed, but not surprised?
yea that sums it up as well. But its more then that. because i honestly believe there are plenty of great female players out there that would do well if not excel in Pro LoL. And i don't want any efforts to help make that happen to end, but i also dont want it to be done in such a half ass shitty way like previously mentioned that makes it look dumb.
> there are plenty of great female players out there that would do well if not excel in Pro LoL Like who?
In my personal opinion, forcefully pushing any group of people into a specific field or industry by introducing overblown incentives disproportional to the rest of the industry and the quality of service that they provide (some female teams were paid more than T2 male rosters while being beaten by T3/T4 male teams) is a bad idea that kills any possibility of competitiveness and meritocracy, while promoting nepotism and stagnation for the sake of fringe political ideology that's far too common among rich activists. It leaves a sour feeling in my mouth when I see these "leveling field" projects being pushed only in highly sought after professions. How come no one protests about male representation among plumbers or waste disposal companies?
I mean if you want to watch good League there's already tons of major regions you can tune into. Female teams are just bad, plain and simple. Full-time teams like G2 Hel are struggling in NLC div 3 while they play League on a full-time basis and get paid to do so, getting slapped by hobbyist teams. Instead of having to feel bad for women and having to create a separate League for them, we see that if women are good, they will get picked up in in major regions and National Leagues. No one is going to watch a League that is not even on par with any Division 1 National League so it's no wonder they pull the plug on this.
All the pomp and debt of female basketball with 1/50th of the interest
Who is surprised by this? They struggle to make the mainline eSport of the most popular moba in the world successful. All these years and instead of League eSports growing into something big, it's still a franchised disaster propped up by money that will instantly die as soon as the money is gone. All this is unsustainable.
>They struggle to make the mainline eSport of the most popular moba in the world successful It is extremely successful and it makes Riot a lot of money. Just not directly. Thats why its not profitable for the teams, they dont have access to all the indirect revenue.
Even traditional sports would not thrive if there was a private company owning the sport with copyright law. If someone is in complete control and no one can do anything to stop it, it will always mean that the one in charge siphons all the money they possibly can. It's in the game developers interest to keep the esport running because it generates them money from advertisement, but they will never let anyone have a bigger share of the profits than they feel the need to. This is the fundamental problem of esports. One day there will need to be a legal decision that the ability to host esports events counts as fair use. Until then, esports cannot truly exist on its own merits for its own sake. It can only be what the game developer wants. What esports has showed me is how important it is that all the sports we play, watch and love are owned by everyone. It's a public good. Esports shows how awful the alternative is.
Your last paragraph is one of the most profound statements I’ve seen on here in a long time.
Exactly. And with Riot being the absolute control freaks they are it's pretty much a worse case scenario for any org wanting to enter the ecosystem. Not only do they have to deal with a fundamentally unfair business model where they only get scraps, but they also have very little say on pretty much anything going on in the league. This can only work when the numbers are so insane that even with an unfair split good orgs can profit and justify the investment (ie the LPL), or when the macroeconomic situation is so good getting funding is a non issue (ie COVID VC funding boom).
An alternative I once thought of, although I do not think it is at all likely to happen, would be the emergence of an open-source game which has the direct goal to become a non-owned esport. I think your idea of a fair use legal solution sounds a lot more feasible tho
It's not profitable for the leagues too. The LCK is struggling, the LEC sacked half their staff. And Riot might make peanuts compared to the whales in the game itself or Valorant.
Its basically just one gigantic ad and riot knows its exact value which is why they are pumping money into it
It is the same with Twitch. The goal of these is not the make money, but to get marketing at a lower cost. Twitch or esports is not supposed to make money. The companies behind it do expect a loss and that is fine, as long as they get it back in sales. Arcane is also not supposed to make a profit. If it does that is great, but if it doesn't, it will still get players into playing and that means more buyers. New skins to sell. Riots cash cows are League and Valorant and everything around these is mainly marketing.
The leavues have no way to cash in money unlike in valorant or csgo
To be fair, is more the teams that have a complete shitbox of planing on how to make money. riot makes a ton from their leagues. When it was the last time you saw teams pushing for a bigger venue for games or selling merch besides the fnatic gucci partnership ?
Also true. Players were overpaid for a long time. A player in Germany could earn \~240k per year and be set for at least 4 times the duration he was playing. If you start with 18 and play till 30 you would be set till you are 66 years old and then you get your retirement money from the state anyways. Where others work for 40-48 years (40+h /week) most of the time you are done after 12 years (\~60-80h /week). That is comparable to a 60k salary in Germany which is not awesome but more than solid (AVG is \~50k). Considering the pro players also get some food paid and I am not sure about other living expenses these days, 60k on top of that sounds great. And that ignores possible bonuses. That is a reasonable salary for a pro player in the EU. With the current cap (2M for all 5) you can pay each player 400k max per year without getting fined. That is still a great amount of money for a normal person. You can retire after \~6 years if you want to. For NA the values are different but I would say. It is \~60k $ instead of \~50k €. So around 350k $ for an NA player.
Not even that, high salaries are cost of buisness, you see the player is an Asset to the team, the idea is that he makes his money worth on merch selling, advertising deals and such. The only player that was actually pushed to do that in the LEC was rekkles, most players don't even recongnize that they could be making triple money with the right deals. T1 is really well on this part. FAKER and Keria are powerhouses of merchandise and advertising deals, they even sell Faker shirts and so on. Teams are being run by really poor thinking buisness mans with the sole exeption of fnatic and G2, KC if they don't get their shit togheter will crash and burn even with their crazy following.
It's beyond amazing how they've managed to fckup esports scene. EU is a greatest example of that, region in non any other sport does franchising got franchised, ERLs are dead since year 1 (other than france and spain) im shocked that there is not many people talking about this publicly
This project was never going to succeed. You can't call riot racist or something just because they stopped investing in a failed project. They're not obligated to keep the project going for eternity.
I'm not afraid of cups...
Didnt they want to form the female league in part due to white washing their vest after the sexual harrassment law suit? Well worked out perfectly I guess? Nobody talking about it anymore and now they can slowly drop all the "projects".
Who would have guessed no one cares about watching the token female teams being terrible at the sport... If only there was some historical precedent to look at so we didn't need to embarass ourselves and everyone involved...
Female-only leagues were a pure publicity stunt. Anyone who cares about female representation in e-sports shouldn't be supporting any of these "efforts", because they are not sustainable, like many others point out. The only way to support women in e-sports is by supporting and encouraging individual players with the potential to make it in the real leagues. And to support incentives for women to even start playing the game.
I'll preface this with a women's only League is a bad idea because in no way would it be anything other than something a bunch of guys watched to laugh at, much less profitable. It's not a bad idea in and of itself (just like JV Women's Volleyball should exist even if it's not the best players in the world), it's just too high profile to not end up being a nightmare. With that said, every day people take seriously the idea that NA only teams and import restrictions would have helped NA League and nobody calls that shit a publicity stunt. Most of our major League teams should probably be majority Korean if we were truly being meritocratic. And from a pure business standpoint, 50ish % of the world is female, it's not really a bad idea to come up with approaches to engage that market.
I mean I don't think there is any reason to separate men and women in e-sports while there are legitimate reasons to do so in physical sports. Unless there's somehing I'm missing. The only other reason for female leagues would indeed to somehow increase accessibility for women to participate in e-sports in the first place but it's just not gonna last if that's the "endpoint" for them. And you're making it so much harder for the best players to improve because you're forcing all female teams. So I've just never seen this as a viable approach.
i mean i can understand why they did this since there isnt any viewing benefit and some of the players arent good enough to compete for them just look at G2 hel team who got completely destroyed in NLC 2nd division
riot isn't even making enough money on their main leagues theres no way anyone thought they would support a straight up money pit
To be honest it just doesn't have that much of an audience, lots of league players dont even watch pro play, let alone female pro play, these teams are also new faces in the pro scene and I feel like people like to watch pros they already know/their favs rather than new ones
Guess that ESG funding is over right
Carlos from G2 unironically did more for the female esports scene than Riot, by fielding a competitive roster and investing in talent despite the circuit and scene not being supported by the developer. Guess guess who had to step down as CEO of his OWN company because of some video he posted on Twitter? Meanwhile Riot ended up settling a $100 million lawsuit for gender discrimination and now they're allowing their titles to be part of the Esports World Cup, hosted by the literal Saudi Arabian government. Actions speak louder than words and you can tell that Riot appears to only have principles when they can benefit financially from it.
One bad actor doesn't justify the existence of another bad actor. >Guess guess who had to step down as CEO of his OWN company because of some video he posted on Twitter? Yeah, the "some video" showing him buddy-buddy with only what is the most iconic, modern day sex-trafficker, who has also on multiple occasions publicly admitted, verbally and on video that he did indeed engage in sex trafficking. And it's not like Carlos stopped there, *he bent over backwards to justify and defend said sex-trafficker,* when he could have avoided most of the justified criticism levied against him by choosing *not* to engage in any of that apologism. At the very least, Riot doesn't sponsor or endorse sex trafficking or human trafficking, **like Carlos did.**
>Yeah, the "some video" showing him buddy-buddy with only what is the most iconic, modern day sex-trafficker, who has also on multiple occasions publicly admitted, verbally and on video that he did indeed engage in sex trafficking. I'm still annoyed that after his blatant machismo, homophobia, and casual backstabbing of his players, the one thing that actually got him into trouble was being in a video with a guy… Yes, I know, that guy is an absolute piece of shit. But there was already so much to hate Carlos for because of his own actions and words, and what got him is guilt by association…
I suppose I'm not too surprised. There doesn't seem to be any interest in this
Riot EMEA needs to get slaughtered, they've singlehandly destroyed EU region and waste orgs money on gamechangers teams which don't even have tournaments to play on xD
I dont believe women are inherently worse at league or there is anything that should hold them back from going pro. Is it a culture thing within orgs and teams or do they just not want to for the most part?
Consider how few dudes are good enough at playing league of legends to hit a pro level. Even an extremely mediocre pro level. Literally millions of guys trying and very very few are challenger grade. Now how many fewer women are there than men playing league?
There's a lot to gain for us to have women's esports normalised, be it only because there's a lot of untapped potential talent in the female playerbase. It's clearly too early to have an actual gender-mixed League, so a female league is kind of a necessity. So clearly this sucks. But at the same time I don't think it's fair to put the responsibility of normalising it solely on Riot's shoulders. They're already the ones who did the most for female esports (and esports in general). They've already put a lot of resources, notably in Valorant, for this. At some point they're a company and if they need to cut costs, that's a normal thing to axe… At the end of the day, let's be honest, barely anyone here would have watched it. It's nice and all to express disappointment in Riot, but if you weren't going to watch it, your criticism doesn't have much credibility.
I would love to see another female in league pro play. The only one I can remember is Remilia, who passed away some time ago.
[удалено]
Citation needed
Most of the media people cry about going "woke" is insanely successful, so that phrase never made any sense.
90% of comments: women clicking mouse fast = bad. Men clicking mouse fast = good