League of Legends
League of Legends
G2 Esports takes easy win over SK Gaming, but fans should be scared
William Davis
G2 Esports picked up a victory over SK Gaming in the 2020 LEC Spring Season to keep its spot in the three-way tie for first place with Origen and Fnatic. G2 took SK apart in a 25-minute map that bordered on being unpleasant to watch. G2 opted for an experimental composition with Taliyah in the bottom lane. SK tried to adapt as best as they could and ended up with …
League of Legends
TFT: Galaxies will add Star Guardians, keep Blademasters and Sorcerers
William Davis
Riot Games has revealed new information about set 3, Teamfight Tactics: Galaxies. TFT: Galaxies is taking the game to new heights. The third set is coming out next month and Riot gave fans a sneak peak at the new traits that are coming to the game. Mecha fans and Star Guardians enthusiasts will be quite pleased with what’s to come. Longtime League of Legends fans all know and love the …
League of Legends
Riot Games removes region select, transitions to global accounts
William Davis
The League of Legends client is missing one key button lately and no, it’s not a mistake. Riot Games removed the region selection button from the client as part of the transition into Riot accounts. Riot accounts are global accounts that will be used for both League of Legends and other upcoming Riot Games titles, including the previously revealed tactical shooter and fighting game. For the past couple of months, …
League of Legends
T1 beats Griffin, takes first place in the 2020 LCK Spring Split
William Davis
T1 is dominating the 2020 LCK Spring season, with the latest example of this coming in Week 4 with a clean victory over Griffin. T1 faced serious questions about its future during the offseason, as the team lost two of its star players and its longtime coach. Making matters worse, the new version of the team underwhelmed in its debut effort at the 2019 KeSPA Cup. That had analysts pointing …
League of Legends
Dignitas throws hard, gives hope to struggling Team Liquid
William Davis
Team Liquid secured a win against Dignitas in the 2020 LCS Spring Split to further recover from its rocky start to the split. Liquid still has a long way to go before dreaming about the playoffs. The victory over Dignitas puts the team in a four-way tie for sixth place, not exactly where the defending champion wants to be. It’s been a slow start for Liquid, and from not having its …
League of Legends
Riot Turkey mutes chants to ban Zeitnot, no response to Dumbledoge
Olivia Richman
Riot Turkey is under fire after the League of Legends developer seemingly silenced their fans over the Mustafa “Dumbledoge” Kemal controversy. Last week, one of Turkey’s most famous League of Legends veterans left SuperMassive after allegedly enduring homophobic insults and verbal abuse at the hands of his teammates and other Turkish pro players. The biggest offender was his former friend and teammate Burkay “Zeitnot” Aşıkuzun. After Dumbledoge revealed screenshots and first-hand accounts of …
League of Legends
Teamfight Tactics: Galaxies units, traits, release date information
William Davis
Riot Games revealed the theme for Teamfight Tactics Set 3 and it promises to be an out of this world experience. TFT: Galaxies is the title of the highly anticipated third set. Galaxies will put TFT players into the middle of a “League universe-spanning intergalactic war.” Like its predecessor, TFT: Rise of the Elements, TFT: Galaxies will add new champions, traits, skins, and game mechanics. The first change is the …
League of Legends
G2 Esports gets back on track, runs over Excel Esports in LEC Spring
William Davis
G2 Esports started week five of the 2020 LEC Spring Split with a dominant victory over Excel Esports. G2 is back in the win column after losing two games in week four. The team showed a cleaner game against Excel, which led them to a dominant win. Excel didn’t stand a chance against a G2 that looks to be playing seriously once again. In the picks and bans, G2 went …
Dumbledoge reveals years of verbal abuse and homophobia in TCL
Olivia Richman
League of Legends
Turkish League of Legends veteran Mustafa “Dumbledoge” Kemal, also known as the “Faker Slayer,” has announced that he’s a free agent. On Twitter, Dumbledoge stated that he has left SuperMassive after becoming sick of homophobic treatment from some players on the team. He attached a TwitLonger that outlined homophobic abuse and bullying from 2017 to the present. In 2017, Dumbledoge left SuperMassive shortly after the Mid-Season Invitational. According to the Turkish …
Team Liquid was the most viewed esports organization of 2019
Olivia Richman
League of Legends
Team Liquid was the most viewed organization of 2019. Analytical service Esports Charts recently revealed statistics on esports team and organization viewership for the previous year, and Team Liquid was far in the lead of its competitors. The Los Angeles-based team had 124.4 million hours watched. This is most likely due to the successful team having teams and players in 14 different esports titles. Some of their most-viewed teams included …
TF Blade reaches Masters rank on Korean servers
Olivia Richman
League of Legends
“I WAS HERE!” That was the chant typed by fans around the world as Team Liquid streamer Ashkan “TF Blade” Homayouni reached Masters on Korea’s League of Legends servers. Once TF Blade reached this mighty accomplishment, fans begged him to “say something,” waiting impatiently for him to make a statement about reaching one of his toughest goals to date. TF Blade finally popped on to the screen and began talking, but …
LPL to return for 2020 Spring Split, will be played online
William Davis
League of Legends
The LPL is partially coming back on February 26. In January, the LPL officials decided to postpone the 2020 LPL Spring season due to the coronavirus outbreak. At the time, most players were at their respective home towns celebrating the Chinese New Year and couldn’t return to the team’s facilities. A month later, the LPL is partially returning to the action. The LPL announced that on February 26, the league …
Fans worried Riot’s new LoL anti-cheat will let company spy on them
Syed Mujtaba Naqvi
League of Legends
With Riot Games set to rapidly expand its gaming catalog, the company is creating its own anti-cheat program. The League of Legends publisher is looking to push a new kernel driver to ensure fairness across its titles, the developer announced earlier this month. The implementation of this driver to the games will drastically help in detecting cheats, but some players are worried about the level of access Riot will have …
Captain Flowers to miss LCS broadcast after suspension from Riot
Olivia Richman
League of Legends
League of Legends fans won’t see Clayton “Captain Flowers” Raines on the LCS broadcast this weekend. Riot is punishing the popular caster for over-sleeping and missing call time for this week’s episode of “This or That.” “Today I streamed til way too early in the morning and didn’t wake up for my call time for This or That. This week’s episode doesn’t include me (clearly) and I won’t be on …
Riot says smurfing in League of Legends “ruins the game,” to be fixed
Olivia Richman
League of Legends
Riot took to Twitter to address how the past two competitive seasons have seemed to be a slower climb than ever before for many players. “This is intentional. We really don’t want players creating alt accounts just to blow through the climb. We encourage players to stay on their mains. Smurfing ruins the game experience for others,” Riot tweeted. Smurfing, a practice in which a highly ranked player creates a …
Pobelter is returning to the LCS in the mid lane for CLG
Olivia Richman
League of Legends
After spending the first half of the LCS Spring Split in 10th place, Counter Logic Gaming have decided to make a big change to their roster. This weekend, get ready to see Eugene “Pobelter” Park on the LCS Arena stage as CLG’s starting mid laner. The veteran mid laner will be replacing Lee “Crown” Min-ho, who curently has the most deaths and the lowest KDA of any mid laner in the …
TFT patch 10.4 reimagines Glacial units, nerfs Crystal and Poison
William Davis
League of Legends
Teamfight Tactics patch 10.4 hits some of the traits that got too strong after patch 10.3, while also buffing a handful of champions and reworking the Glacial trait. Rather than attacking the specific units, Patch 10.4 nerfs some of Predators’ stronger traits, including Poison and Crystal, with increased mana costs and an altered damage threshhold. While that’s a hard hit, the buff given to Kog’Maw in TFT patch 10.3 is …
LoL Patch 10.4 nerfs Sona and Soraka, expands jungle champion pool
William Davis
League of Legends
It’s time for patch 10.4! As we reported before, patch 10.4 hits primarily the champions that are wreaking havoc in the top lane, Sona and Soraka. It also targets the powerful Aphelios and buffs some of the favorites in pro play. On top of that, patch 10.4 increases the jungle champion pool. Patch 10.4 is hitting the live server one day later than usual, it will be released on February …
CBLOL studio destroyed, league postponed until end of February
Syed Mujtaba Naqvi
League of Legends
2020 has already been a disastrous year for esports, with a number of tournaments and events being delayed or cancelled due to unforeseen events. While most of those issues have stemmed has stemmed from the coronavirus, it’s the weather that is hitting South American League of Legends. The 2020 CBLOL Split 1 has been postponed due to the floods and heavy rain that have hammered São Paulo, Brazil over recent …
G2 jungler Jankos admits that he’s not far from retirement
Syed Mujtaba Naqvi
League of Legends
Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski shared he might be retiring sooner than many expected. G2 Esports’ player and the best jungler in the 2020 LEC Spring Split doesn’t plan on playing competitively for much longer. In an interview with a Polish portal Esportmania, Jankos shared he’s looking to end his career relatively soon when asked about streaming. Jankos said he doesn’t get much rest as a pro player, stating there’s no time …
League of Legends
is among the most popular widely-played video games in the world. It has been a consistent trendsetter in the gaming industry, whether as a model for other free-to-play titles looking to monetize their players or as a guiding light for how professional esports can be both successful and sustainable.
It hasn’t always been so though. League of Legends was released in 2009 as an uncertain new project, a game with large aspirations but little proven. In the years since, it has developed into the dominant title that it is today, and one of the biggest games on the planet.
League of Legends drives success of MOBA genre
League of Legends stands out in part because it may arguably be the very first original game released to truly fit into what we now understand to be the increasingly
popular MOBA genre. Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas are a very particular type of game genre that carry out competition between two opposing teams of players on a map. These games test a mix of competition, tactics, and quick reactions, a potent combination that has proven equal parts popular and durable over the years.
While League of Legends was certainly among the first full releases to focus on the genre and its new ideas, it wasn’t actually the origin point for any of it. That distinction belongs to
Blizzard release WarCraft 3,
and more specifically a modified game mode titled
Defense of the Ancients.
WarCraft 3 was a real-time strategy game that featured prominent hero units who could gain in power as they accrued experience points to level up their abilities, and gold to purchase powerful items. Defense of the Ancients was a
user-made game mode
which emphasized these heroes by giving each player control over one such character and teaming them up against an opposing squad of players. It was a dynamite success, inspiring myriad clones and, eventually, an entire genre of games.
But while League of Legends wasn’t the first to bring about these concepts, it was certainly
effective in executing on them. Early developers at publisher Riot Games had a clear idea of what they wanted to accomplish with the creation of League of Legends, and it would be hard to argue against their success given the runaway popularity achieved by their iteration on the MOBA formula.
LoL incorporates esports sustainably
Just as impressive as the long-term success of League of Legends as a game is the continued success of the title’s esports scene. While esports has known multiple peaks and valleys over the years, Riot Games has consistently managed to maintain the prominence of LoL esports. This has been accomplished through an emphasis on
regular regional play
and
sustainability.
Most esports and competitive games at the time used a circuits system, scattering major tournaments for the best teams across the year. Instead, Riot divided the world into separate playing regions. Each region has its own
competitive league
in which the best professional teams play weekly. The best teams in each league are then brought together for an
annual World Championship event
at the end of the competitive year. This allowed for domestic fan followings to develop across such regions as
Korea,
China,
Europe, and
North
and
South America. Fans would closely follow the teams in their region, and from that familiarity would feel invested in cheering them on when they clashed with teams from other regions at the game’s biggest international event.
This basic blueprint has continued to prove successful for Riot Games over the years, though it has expanded and been modified with time. In response to the success of the World Championship, Riot introduced a second international tournament in 2015, the prestigious
Mid-Season Invitational. In 2025,
First Stand
was added to bring LoL esports to three international events per year. Once again the scene was enhanced and this indirectly expanded the opportunities for
League of Legends esports betting. In the meantime, the regional leagues have spread out to include
more regions and lower levels, solidifying their identity.
The basic formula remains the same, however.
Encourage fan support on a domestic level, and then carry that support and interest over to
the global stage. It’s a formula that continues to power League of Legends esports, and looks set to enable it for many years yet to come.
At Win.gg, our coverage of LoL esports spans from the broader competitive updates and their impact on the scene to in-depth high-profile match previews with team analysis, head-to-head analysis,
LoL betting odds
sense-makers and predictions. All of these based on the insights of our experienced esports journalists.
League of Legends
Team Liquid beats Team SoloMid without Doublelift in 2020 LCS Spring
By
William Davis
League of Legends
Doublelift to miss Liquid’s LCS match with Team SoloMid due to illness
By
William Davis
League of Legends
2020 LPL Spring Split to resume in March amid coronavirus fears
By
William Davis
