A team from Thailand was banned from League of Legends for allegedly not paying its players for over a year. Now, the team has issued a statement and presents the whole matter in a different light.
What team is this? It is about the Thai team MEGA Esports, which also participated in this year’s LoL Worlds. There, it was the only team able to use Pantheon in the group stage, before he was banned 100%.
MEGA Esports previously won the Spring Split of the League SEA Tour (LST) 2019 with a prize pool of $30,000.
No payment for players
What happened? Riot has now taken action against the team. CEO Arnold Tandra is banned from participating in any Riot tournament until 2022. In the official statement from Riot, it states:
Mr. Tandra will not be allowed to participate with any team in any region and in any position or role. He will be eligible to participate again after a formal review in 2022.
Why the ban? The reason for this is that, according to Riot, the payment of the team members was absent for the entire year of 2019. Mega Esports stated that it is true that the players were not paid. However, it was not for a whole year. Additionally, there are other factors to consider.
Riot probably doesn’t pay either
This is what MEGA Esports says: The team posted a statement on the matter on Facebook. It states that the payment of the players was only delayed for a few months, not for a whole year. There were also bonus payments for reaching the Worlds.
The team also points out that Riot itself has not been making payments. In the Mid-Season Invitationals (MSI), MEGA Esports finished in tenth place, earning $12,500 in prize money.
However, the team is still waiting for the money – and has been waiting twice as long as the delay in player payments.
Problems throughout the region
Is Riot pulling out of Southeast Asia? MEGA Esports also criticizes that Riot cares too little about teams and tournaments in Southeast Asia (SEA):
- Prize pools are shrinking
- Domestic League Seasons are being shortened or disappearing entirely
- Tournaments are reverting back to purely online events
All of this leads to teams in Southeast Asia being unable to finance themselves in a “traditional” way. They are reliant on content creation, sponsorship, and donations from the community to pay players.
MEGA Esports has also attempted to compensate for the decline in revenue by including streams and content creation in the contracts. Unfortunately, none of their players meet the requirements for that.
Payment not possible: With all these criteria, it is financially impossible for MEGA Esports to retain the team at all. The team’s condemnation of Riot’s behavior is sharp:
Riot’s response was not to try to work with our organization or find ways to help our players, but simply to throw us out of the league.
It is no wonder that larger teams from Southeast Asia do not have a League of Legends roster, and we find it hypocritical that this decision [the penalty] comes while our team has not even received the prize money for the MSI.
What do you think of the matter? Should Riot have acted differently?
In League of Legends, there are other penalties that seem unfortunate:
Cover image by David Lee/Riot
