Fans slam League of Legends for ‘insane’ change

League of Legends fans are unhappy about a recent change to the North American esports league that will make it harder for them to watch

Riot Games, the developer behind massive esports games like League of Legends and Valorant, has made a huge change to the timing of its North American esports league, and fans aren’t happy.

Moving forward, starting with its 2023 season of the League Championship Series, its weekly North American esports games will now be shown in the middle of the day in the US, compared to evening showings in previous years. Riot says that the change is to allow for European fans to more easily watch the games.

League of Legends is one of the most popular esports games in the world, and is watched and played by millions of fans and players across the world. In previous years, Riot has endeavoured to make tournament streams take place at a time most suitable for the place where they were held, but it seems like the global market is more important to the company.

Riot often uses big tournament events to announce new content, such as the latest Champion K’Sante. Picture: Riot Games

What’s more frustrating for fans is that the majority of games will be held on weekdays, reportedly Thursdays and Fridays, with major tournament weeks extending to Wednesday, too. This means that most will take place when fans are at work, leaving many fans not only unable to attend games, but unable to watch them live at all.

American fans have been, understandably, quite upset at the move, with thousands tweeting and messaging Riot Games asking for the company to change it back.

Former esports player and commentator Brian Kibler, who focused primarily on Blizzard’s Hearthstone card game during his time in the spotlight, was quick to share his disappointment on Twitter, calling the move “insane”.

“Well I guess I’m done ever watching LCS anymore, and I’ve been a regular watcher since literally day one,” Kibler said, “Noon on weekdays is a completely insane time to broadcast and expect anyone to watch. If your goal is to take NA league out behind the barn and shoot it, this is exactly what you do”.

Riot Games also develops first person shooter Valorant, which also has a thriving esports scene. Picture: Riot Games

Riot Games laid out the changes in a lengthy blog post. It said that the statistics it had showed that plenty of people watched the games even when they were at less-than-optimal times, but stressed that it was “less to do with where [Riot’s] been and what [it’s] done, and more to do with where [it’s] going”.

Riot Games recently announced they’d teamed up with Ubisoft for the “Zero Harm” Project. The companies will use their combined expertise and technical engineering skills to come up with solutions for combating abuse and toxicity in online gaming.

It comes as companies across the globe start to take safety and toxicity more seriously. Game streaming platform Twitch recently introduced new safety tools for streamers in the form of “Shield Mode”, which lets streamers instantly shut down their chat if needed.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.