http://www.dailydot.com/esports/reginald-marc-merrill-riot-games/
What does GAF think about this? The fact teams make more money on titles like CS:GO and Smite, both of which are orders of magnitude smaller than LoL, seems weird.
Comments made by Riot Games co-founder and president Marc Merrill show that the company behind League of Legends is apparently out of touch with its own esports scene.
Merrill posted a comment on Reddit that chastised Team SoloMid owner Andy Reginald Dinh for laying blame on Riot for the volatility of the esports scene the company has developed. Like much of Merrills meddling on social media (see: SpectateFaker) the message came off as tone deaf, petty, and out of touch, and showed that the way Riot is approaching its esports development may be based on flawed premises.
Merrill also implies that Team SoloMid makes its money from League of Legends and instead of investing it back into the game, uses it to fund teams in other esports at a losing proposition. But according to Dinh, the situation is the opposite: While he invested more in League, other orgs invested in Counter-Strike which makes more money for players through stickers in a single year than Riot Games paid in stipends and icon sales since the inception of the LCS. One of the founders of former LCS team Enemy eSports, Robert Chachi Stemmler, said that his team makes more money from skins sales in Smite every month than they did the entirety of the LCS split for icon sales, which amounted to a one-time $3,125 payment.
The crux of the issue is this: For League of Legends to further develop as an esport, it needs to generate revenue from its massive popularity. The promise of revenue growth attracts investment. It encourages teams to invest in infrastructure. It encourages teams to invest in talent. Yet Riot is directly impeding the growth of that revenue.
Merrill seems to think that teams are the ones who are driving revenue growth and that they must re-invest that money into the scene for it to continue growing. But the team owners have a different perspective: Not only do they make more money from investments in other esports, Riot Games is directly impeding growth of revenue in League of Legends.
Right now, investors are excited about the opportunity League of Legends represents. But unless Riot helps develop more ways for teams to generate revenue, they wont be for long. The increased investment this year is a testament to the size of League esports, but its predicated on the potential for future returns, and those returns will only happen if Riot helps realize them. Those investors wont stay in a highly competitive League market when there are now other alternatives in esports, like Counter-Strike or potentially Overwatch.
The best return on investment for an established brand like Team SoloMid right now is buying into other esports like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and attracting an even bigger and more diverse fanbase. That's especially true when companies like Valve provide tools to monetize team success through the sale of in-game items. Riot is hindering them from further capitalizing on the massive fanbase they have in League, and until that changes, were only going to see more antagonism between parties like Dinh and Riot Games.
What does GAF think about this? The fact teams make more money on titles like CS:GO and Smite, both of which are orders of magnitude smaller than LoL, seems weird.