League of Legends developers Riot Games maintain a database of players signed to pro teams, and in their ruling on a recent case of player poaching, effectively established the precedent that if a player is not in the database, it’s OK to try and poach them for your team. Problem is, Riot are not very good at maintaining the database.
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Riot recently ruled to absolve pro League team Echo Fox of wrongdoing when they allegedly tried to poach Adrian from rivals Phoenix1. According to Riot, “poaching can only occur when a team member has a contract listed on theGlobal Contract Database, and another team/owner/player apporaches that team member.”
When he was approached by Echo Fox, Adrian was not listed on the database, therefore it can’t be considered poaching. “Until documentation was submitted by P1 (which has since been sent in), the League considered Adrian to be a free agent.”
The problem is that the database is not diligently updated. As PvPLive report, most of the League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) are not inThe EU’s contract database last saw an update over a month ago (on November 15). The North American database is much more current, having been updated on Friday, but despite these updates, the databases are still missing key players. Many are also listed with incorrect teams.
I’m sure you’ve already deduced the upshot of this, and so has former League coach and analyst Renato ‘Shakarez’ Perdigão:
Hey guys almost nobody in Korea is in the League of Legends Contract Database
Time to poach some Koreans HEHEhttps://t.co/GNNB0QSR27
— Shakarez (@Shakarez) 16 December 2016
Without a current database, even well-meaning team managers can’t make informed or worthwhile recruitment decisions. It’s on Riot to take database updates more seriously. Hopefully Major League Baseball’s $300m investment will enable League of Legends to expand and take care of problems like this, which do rather smack of amateurism.