Posted in: eSports, Games, Video Games | Tagged: League of Legends, Oceania, Regicide, Riot Games, Tainted Minds

Oceania 'League of Legends' Players Need To Find New Teams After Shady Practices

Players involved with two eSports teams from the Oceania division for League Of Legends are stuck dealing with horrid situations. And if we were any of those players, we'd be looking for a new division an entirely new team at this point.

The first involving Tainted Minds revolves around their current housing situation. In February, the team moved into their home to discover it had inadequate terminals for play, bad internet, and a mold problem. The team moved out and refused to reside in the building until the issues were resolved. You'd think Riot Games would be on board to make sure competitors were treated fairly, right? You could not be more wrong! According to LOL eSports, the team are being fined $7k for contract breach of not living in a mold-infested home, and are one six-months probation from competitive play. Riot could not have missed the target more than if they were firing blind. Team members have complained on Twitter that Riot owes them money and that the situation is intolerable.

Since nothing I have said was challenged by anyone, by Riot standards, treating your players this way and breaking OPL rules cost you less money than sharing an account with someone else as a pro player. Riot is fine having an organisation treat players this badly, since they consider the organisation capable of running a profesionnal League of Legends team. My manager is still owed multiple thousands of dollars, but Riot doesn't seem to care. Never was it mentionned that we asked for our buyout multiple times and never got it, but Riot doesn't seem to care. Tainted Minds signed an agreement with Ryan and Nick, which they broke within 24 hours. Riot doesn't seem to care. Tainted Minds lied publicly in their statement about almost everything they covered (they said everyone got paid on time, which has been denied by Riot). Tainted Minds releases me by saying I broke my contract, Riot doesn't seem to care. Riot OCE stopped me from looking for a team for 7 weeks, but Riot doesn't seem to care.

In a very different but much worse situation, it came to light last week than another Oceania team called Regicide is being accused of having boosters help out their team to qualify for tournaments. The practice of hiring some kid to boost your character overnight for some money on PayPal has been known to creep its way into eSports tournaments before, specifically with LoL accounts who need to be highly ranked to eve participate. But LoL people who are caught doing it are promptly banned by Riot and thrown out of the league. At 46:45, Jackson "Pabu" Pavone, a player in the Oceania league accuses the team of this offense, and adds that because Riot needs time to track this kind of stuff down, they were able to shift players around enough to not get caught.

To those who keep saying that there doesn't need to be an independent governing body that both the players and the ownership respond to in terms of external issues and cheating, I offer the two examples above from Oceania and ask that you rethink that policy.

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