After yesterday’s simmering public spat between Riot Games co-founder Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill and Team SoloMid owner Andy “Reginald” Dinh over player wages and LoL patch timings, the reparations begin.
Whether or not they’re paid well, these are still some of the top LoL players in the world we’re talking about.
Further replies and replies to replies from the two figureheads in the form of TwitLongers have attempted to move past provocative comments made by Merrill earlier in the week with regards to the way team owners choose to spend wage stipends Riot provides with the intention of improving player income and sustainability.
In this latest back-and-forth, Merrill expressed a desire to work together with Dinh to improve League’s outlook on sustainability for all parts of the eSports ecosystem.
“As the ecosystem continues to mature and these things develop, they will come with a new set of challenges and questions that are difficult to answer,” Merrill says. “There is no road map for this, and we need to continue to learn together with our partners.”
Many of the upcoming opportunities he spoke of for 2017 included much-requested traditional sports staples such as “league sponsorships, franchising, media rights” as well as more revenue shares for in-game team-specific items. In response, Dinh has reportedly sent a “detailed proposal” co-signed by many other team owners and members of the North American LCS on “urgent issues that need to be addressed immediately.”
We have yet to find out what these issues specifically are, though they are definitely concerns shared by the majority of the pro scene in North America with eight of the nine other team owners in the region quickly sharing Dinh’s response with the included #LCSForever tag.
@TSMReginald We've been rivals since the beginning. Glad to join forces to make LCS the best it can be.#LCSForever
— HotshotGG (@CLG_HotshotGG) August 24, 2016
Such is the necessity of this union that bitter long-time rivals Counter-Logic Gaming and TSM are in agreement and co-operating on lobbying Riot for the discussion of their terms, forcing George “HotshotGG”Georgallidisinto an alliance with Dinh.
Whether this is the first step towards a formal team union or rather an ad-hoc informal construct for the collective bargaining in Riot’s business relationship with team owners, it’s a fairly important development in LoL eSports.