After much internal debate, Riot admits that the original policy “was clearly an overreach.”
It was only earlier this week that Riot Games enacted a new policy which forbade professional League of Legends players from streaming competitors games, such as Dota 2, Starcraft II and Hearthstone. The studio came under heavy criticism from fellow developers as well as the community, and it appears the feedback has gotten through. Earlier tonight, Riot’s director of eSports, Whalen Rozelle, posted on Reddit that they have changed the requirements of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) contract so that competitors can once again stream content from other games. The only catch is that these players cannot accept sponsorships from other companies to promote their titles.
Rozelle went into a little background on Reddit as to why Riot initially chose their policy. “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,” he wrote. “The way we chose to deal with this was clearly an overreach. It hit our goal of preventing companies from advertising through LCS players, but it also encroached on pros’ ability to have fun and entertain viewers during long Challenger queues – and we realize that’s not cool.” The change came after much internal debate at Riot over the last 24 hours, he wrote.
