While it remains wholly unacceptable for a competitor to sponsor a pro LoL player, they are otherwise ”free to stream any games they want.” Riot thanks fans for ”helping us make a better decision on this”.
”There’s been a ton of discussion around our LCS team contracts, which stipulated active LCS players couldn’t stream a variety of other games,” began Riot’s Reddit.
The studio explains why this exists in the first place: ”…there’ve been instances of other game studios trying to buy access to League fans by using (or trying to use) LCS teams/players to promote their competing games on stream.”
”The way we chose to deal with this was clearly an overreach. It hit our goal of preventing companies from advertising through LCS players, but it also encroached on pros’ ability to have fun and entertain viewers during long Challenger queues – and we realize that’s not cool,” they continued.
”After reading all of your comments and having a LOT of internal debate over the last 24 hours, we’re going to be changing the LCS team requirement to something that more closely matches our intent. While under contract to the LCS, teams and players can’t accept sponsorship from other game companies to promote other titles.”
”Besides that, they are free to stream any games they want.”
The community furore erupted when the contracts for the fourth season of League of Legends League Championship Series included small print that banned its professional players from streaming a number of other titles, which included some that weren’t even direct competitors like Diablo III, Hearthstone and World of Tanks.
