RiotMagus posted:

Real talk, that TSM sponsorship wasn't an actual HTC ad. It was a promotion for a VR video game for TSM to play (the title of the YouTube clip is literally "TSM plays raw data"). Regardless of whether HTC organized this or not, it's a tactic advertisement for another game.
This is against LCS rules because LCS isn't a platform for other game companies to advertise on - yes, this means there's a category that teams don't have access to but for any sport, letting quasi competitors advertise on the league doesn't make sense.

RiotMagnus posted:

Real talk, that TSM sponsorship wasn't an actual HTC ad. It was a promotion for a VR video game for TSM to play (the title of the YouTube clip is literally "TSM plays raw data"). Regardless of whether HTC organized this or not, it's a tactic advertisement for another game.
This is against LCS rules because LCS isn't a platform for other game companies to advertise on - yes, this means there's a category that teams don't have access to but for any sport, letting quasi competitors advertise on the league doesn't make sense.

Luna Was Here posted:

Lolwut

Dragongem posted:

I can't believe young men and women would somehow think that playing a CHILDREN'S game is a worthwhile calling in life!!! They should get real jobs!!

Groovelord Neato posted:

the game is poorly designed for competitive gaming.

Sexpansion posted:

Please do yourself a favor and watch some of the wild card qualifier games, they are actually very entertaining. For instance, watch Tussle's Lee Sin dominate here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9yR_Yu19BA

RealFoxy posted:

OGN's mocking of SpotTV has been one of my favorite things about the last season. The day they couldn't use their own cameras to see the players so they had extra OGN crew in the booths wearing cut-out faces of all the players to compensate was great. Riot has been so petty, which is a sin but even worse than that is they've been arrogant. I wouldn't be surprised to see more sponsors, more regions, and even OGN to jump in against Riot on this.

Brazil had a huge controversy recently where it was found that after sister teams were dismantled, an owner had sold the team to his mother and was attempting to start the season that way. A bunch of the large teams in Brazil protested but nothing happened, so they all boycotted the upcoming season and that's literally the only reason Riot Brazil went and punished that owner for trying to be sneaky.

RealFoxy posted:

The day they couldn't use their own cameras to see the players so they had extra OGN crew in the booths wearing cut-out faces of all the players to compensate was great

Kashuno posted:

How do the orgs get hurt if they aren't making money (at the top of LCS) or losing money (at the bottom of LCS)?

Taciturn Tactician posted:

If [most people buying skins not caring about LCS] was true, why would riot continue to dump money into the competitive scene? They're not doing it because they just love watching, having that competitive scene makes them money. And why would people buy org icons? I don't think people are shelling out RP for the TSM icon because they don't care about TSM. If the organisations aren't all lying, they won't hurt themselves at all by leaving the LCS, because they either outright lose money running an LCS team or break even. Meanwhile Riot is going to lose a lot of viewers and attendees for LCS.

Also Brexit has literally nothing to do with this situation except that both involve the concept of leaving. There's not even a group decision being made, C9 could choose to stay and TSM could leave.

How Rude posted:

this is not petty internet drama when we are talking about full time players being unable to support themselves financially and five dudes sleeping in one room because the stipend riot provides covers peanuts, this is a basic human rights issue

iSurrender posted:

TSM "arent making money" off their LCS team in the same way Riot "arent making money" off of LCS, ie they would both stop (or rework their business plan) if it didnt increase their other revenue streams. Bad orgs are losing money because they came in with lovely business plans and fail like any other startup in any other business.


Riot run the LCS to make more money on skin sales. If there was no LCS Riot would be making less money on skins, but still shitloads. How is this nuance even remotely difficult to grasp.
It's exactly like Brexit in the sense that one party and their supporters think they have leverage because the other party needs them, when in reality you have very little leverage because they need you less than you need them. Yeah Riot "needs" orgs (orgs' actions can help or hurt Riot's bottom line.) just not to any extent close to what being in the LCS can do for them.


The discussion has mainly been about *orgs* losing money in part because VC is driving up player salaries.
(If you cant support yourself on 25k/yr with free housing then I just dont know what to tell them. Yeah sleeping 5 to a room is super lovely, so negotiate a better contract or go find another job or go to college. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people whod want to be in their shoes, and if the current crop of players drop out for whatever reason there will always be the next best challenger/master player to replace them.)


The first step towards being able to have a constructive discussion about any of this though is to recognize that's what's good for Riot/LCS/The LoL esports scene (which doesnt need to include the LCS in the long term)/Orgs/Players and Fans (and short vs long term for each party) cant ever all align,. But hey lets grab onto a coupld of oversimplified talkingpoints about how Riot/Orgs/X is doing something "wrong" because it doesnt align with their own interest. Throw in a couple of s for good measure.

iSurrender posted:

It's exactly like Brexit

iSurrender posted:

If you only read 4 words per post then you are completely right. That also makes your posts make more sense.

iSurrender posted:

If you cant support yourself on 25k/yr with free housing then I just dont know what to tell them

iSurrender posted:

TSM "arent making money" off their LCS team in the same way Riot "arent making money" off of LCS, ie they would both stop (or rework their business plan) if it didnt increase their other revenue streams. Bad orgs are losing money because they came in with lovely business plans and fail like any other startup in any other business.

iSurrender posted:

so negotiate a better contract

iSurrender posted:

It's exactly like Brexit in the sense that one party and their supporters think they have leverage because the other party needs them, when in reality you have very little leverage because they need you less than you need them. Yeah Riot "needs" orgs (orgs' actions can help or hurt Riot's bottom line.) just not to any extent close to what being in the LCS can do for them.

iSurrender posted:

(If you cant support yourself on 25k/yr with free housing then I just dont know what to tell them. Yeah sleeping 5 to a room is super lovely, so negotiate a better contract or go find another job or go to college. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people whod want to be in their shoes, and if the current crop of players drop out for whatever reason there will always be the next best challenger/master player to replace them.)

iSurrender posted:

Take away the cost of housing and commuting and you can sustain yourself on that literally anywhere in the entire world.

iSurrender posted:

Take away the cost of housing and commuting and you can sustain yourself on that literally anywhere in the entire world.

Shadow225 posted:

why do you think regi started all of this mess? He feels like his hands are mostly tied because Riot has very strict guidelines on sponsors, and in return Riot pitches in for player salaries. If the most successful org can't afford to pay its players more, and is kneecapped from acquiring more means of getting money, it is reasonable to petition the other party to uphold their end of the deal to a more accountable end.

also your post reads like a bootstraps post who doesn't understand the world from anyone's view but his own.

Lovechop posted:

imagine how loving exhausting it must be to think you're always the smartest person in the room and everywhere you go everyone else is bringing you down. lol

iSurrender posted:

It's more like you walk around in a world of sensible people 95% of the time, and then you forget lolgoons are literally twitch chat and mistakenly address them as if they werent. My bad.

iSurrender posted:

It's more like you walk around in a world of sensible people 95% of the time, and then you forget lolgoons are literally twitch chat and mistakenly address them as if they werent. My bad.

Maguoob posted:

The bold takes the cake for the dumbest thing said in this thread; even though you already said "It's exactly like Brexit" in the same drat post. No; the situation is not "exactly like Brexit" because Brexit wasn't about leverage. As for the bold statement; you do realize why we have labor regulations right? It is because psychopaths like you can't make someone's life a living hell and then claim that they could always go somewhere else or do something else. It doesn't matter how many applicants there are for a position; using that to justify mistreatment or lack of pay is not the reasoning of what society considers a decent person. It is the reasoning of a petty authoritarian that accomplishes nothing in life that is worth mentioning and the world is better off without.

panda clue posted:

heh, goons, amirite?

you're rocking poe's law really hard right now. keep it up, I love it.

Luna Was Here posted:

it seems more like a Pixar vs Disney situation where Pixar wanted more control over their poo poo and Disney told them "lol no" and then Pixar hosed off and did A Bug's Life and (i think) Monster's Inc and Disney was like "haha jk can you come back", except in this case instead of character control its revenue control/franchising, the difference between the two is iif all of the LCS orgs go the 'hosed off' route then there might not be a Disney/Riot/LCS to come back to if the Solomid Invitational ends up being more popular than whatever the heck shitshow Riot throws together

RealFoxy posted:

LCS teams get a 30k stipend each split, and they're required to pay for player housing, transportation to/from events, and food.

I'm going to focus on TSM right now since they're the biggest organization.

Biofrost's contract is probably clearing 30k a split, which would mean Riot's entire stipend per split is probably not even enough to cover Biofrost living there. TSM are paying star players Doublelift and Bjerg over 100k a split to play on TSM. Since TSM aren't allowed to prominently advertise their sponsors, either in studio or on their YouTube channel, exactly where do you believe they're getting the money from? It's certainly not playing League of Legends, even if they're the most popular team and they sell a lot of merchandise and icons in-game. TSM isn't having money issues by any means, they're the most successful team in the LCS and possibly the world.

Currently any team that's not backed by a VC or a large organization is losing a lot of money being in the LCS. Bottom-tier teams have issues finding sponsors at all, because if they're relegated they're basically losing all visibility; the viewership for the challenger series is incredibly small compared to the LCS. In order to pay for top-tier players, especially imports from EU or Korea, a team needs to be competitive with the top paying organizations, which sometimes means for a well-known player they're going to be shelling out 60k a split, which is DOUBLE the stipend that Riot provides. A bottom 4 LCS team paying 60k for a single player, and still struggling to remain in the LCS is going to be unappealing to sponsors and even well-known players will struggle to sell the brand and merchandise. GBM and Ohq were two popular players from Korea, Santorin was a former TSM jungler, and Kiwikid was one of the most popular support players in LCS. They all struggled and got relegated from the LCS, lost everything, and had to cut losses by releasing all their players because the cost of operating at such a massive lost in the challenger scene is too much for a smaller/newer organization.

Regi's idea of the LCS solves a lot of issues teams have been struggling with.

• "Franchising" in the way that Regi and most teams are describing makes a more stable environment for all teams in the LCS, with no fear of relegation; that's more appealing to potential sponsors because they know they'll be investing in an organization as long as it remains active, and not by chance having one bad season and getting kicking out of the league.
  
  
• The challenger series is re-structured to become a feeder league. Smaller organizations can get their start there and build a brand with the potential to make it into the LCS if the league is expanded again/an organization pulls out. More talent begins to grow and flourish because Challenger is no longer a revolving door between top challenger/bottom LCS so rookies can get much better experience.
  
  
• The current stronghold on the LCS by Riot prevents a lot of advertising potential. If Team Liquid are sponsored by Logitech and want to use their headphones, they're completely out of luck because they're forced to use big clunky soundproof headsets the LCS provides. In Korea, they had soundproof booths and teams would have sometimes 2+ headphone sponsors alone. I remember CJ Entus being sponsored by Beats by Dre and using the earbuds, then having Logitech Headsets as their microphones in game.

I give up on this post isurrender is just a total idiot and everything he's said has been brought up by Regi or HTC or Monte or NME and it's not my fault he can't read

iSurrender posted:

It would be nice if we could stop muddling two almost opposite things together. Regis salary woes are that VC has made it so other teams can now offer salaries that can compete with TSM, so Regi wants more ways to make money. New, rich investors is the only reason Regi has to pay players more, god knows his players are already making bank and dont *need* more money.

Also only a single loving thing Ive said is anything even remotely close to "bootstraps". Im a leftist even by leftist european standards. On the player side pro sports is a meritocracy though, youre never gonna get paid more than youre worth (oh wait, yay for VC bubbles, this helps players short term while harming established top orgs) and if they dont like it they can go live in the normal world of poo poo jobs and unemployment like the rest of us.

Kashuno posted:

fyi the stipend is 130k not 30k

iSurrender posted:

Not complaining about goons, keep up your sweet reading skills buddy.

iSurrender posted:

It's more like you walk around in a world of sensible people 95% of the time, and then you forget lolgoons are literally twitch chat and mistakenly address them as if they werent. My bad.

iSurrender posted:

How hard is the phrase "it's exactly like Brexit in the sense that"? Again, I guess I should just stop expecting people to read before they reply.

No player in the LCS with an org that has a team house and pays the Riot minimum has a problem with lack of pay (and pretty much all pay more, which is why, again, the orgs are having money trouble, not the players).


(Yeah there were orgs that literally didnt pay players and those should be sued to hell and back)

panda clue posted:

iSurrender posted:

Yeah, you literally cant tell 2 different words apart, good luck having a discussion.

Also, I wonder if I keep a post short enough people will realize I havent said anything in defense of Riot.

Before VC Regi paid well because he's making a ton of money, wants to be a good guy, and should ideally make sure Bjergsen makes more from being on the team than just full-time streaming. Now his position as the guy who can outbid any team in the west is threatened so he's trying to find new ways to make more money, because he's pretty drat good at running a business.

iSurrender posted:

Before VC Regi paid well because he's making a ton of money, wants to be a good guy, and should ideally make sure Bjergsen makes more from being on the team than just full-time streaming. Now his position as the guy who can outbid any team in the west is threatened so he's trying to find new ways to make more money, because he's pretty drat good at running a business.

RealFoxy posted:

I'm convinced that you've not listened to or read anything a non-rioter has said because Regi isn't even fighting this battle for TSM. Go read the CEO of NME's take on all this from a bottom-tier LCS team that didn't have a millionaire backing them.