League of Legends
League of Legends
This League of Legends pro player is being sued
Nicholas James
A League of Legends pro player is being sued by an agency for breach of contract, here’s what you need to know. Steven “Hans Sama” Liv, LEC Veteran and recent LCS import, is being sued by a previous agency, ARC, for hiring another agency to negotiate deals at the end of the 2021 season despite having an exclusive contract, according to sources who spoke to Jacob Wolf of the Jacob …
League of Legends
League of Legends Season 13 ranked changes explained
Nicholas James
Big changes are coming to League of Legends in Season 13 ranked; here’s everything you need to know. Fans are used to League of Legends having one single ranked split, with recent seasons introducing the idea of ranked splits. Now there will be two ranked resets in Season 2023, with Split 1 beginning as usual in January. Split 2, along with the second rank reset, is happening some time in …
League of Legends
Everything we learned from new Project L gameplay
Nicholas James
Project L is the highly anticipated fighting game from Riot Games set in Runeterra. Here’s everything we learned from the latest Project L gameplay video. Riot Games is set on trying to dominate the biggest gaming spaces after dwarfing the MOBA space with League of Legends, making a huge bang with the entrance of Valorant for tac-shooters, TFT for auto battlers, and now Project L for fighting games. After a …
League of Legends
League of Legends Amazon Prime Gaming rewards for December 2022
Nicholas James
The League of Legends Amazon Prime Gaming Awards for December are here, here’s how you can receive the rewards as well as what to expect. Amazon Prime and Riot Games have several ongoing collaborations in which subscribing to Amazon’s premium subscription service gives the player several free rewards in the game every month. These range from paid items like skins and other cosmetics to more cheaply-accessible characters and even free …
League of Legends
Cloud9 CEO reveals why Jensen isn’t on C9 LCS
Nicholas James
The Cloud9 CEO, Jack Etienne, has revealed why Jensen isn’t on C9’s LCS team this year in a video with Ibrahim “Fudge” Allami. Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen, the previous mid laner for Cloud9, is a veteran of the LCS and one of the greatest mid laners to compete in the league over the course of its history. However, it’s been announced that he won’t be returning to Cloud9 for the 2023 …
League of Legends
Everything you need to know about EU Rising Stars 2022
Nicholas James
Rising Stars was the first official League of Legends tournament open only to teams composed exclusively of women, here’s what you need to know. Riot Games has been making an active effort to balance out the discrepancy in pro players’ genders in their premier games. Valorant has received Game Changers, and League of Legends is slowly receiving similar support with tournaments like this one. Rising Stars 2022 took place from …
League of Legends
How to link your Garena account to a Riot Games account
Nicholas James
If you play League of Legends or Teamfight Tactics in Southeast Asia, you’re likely happy to be swapping to the official Riot Games client, here’s how to link your Garena account to Riot Games. Garena has been plaguing the Southeast Asian League of Legends community for years, engaging in manipulative price gouging and generally misbehaving, according to the community. This was likely because Riot Games had little ability to stop …
League of Legends
Deft calls out Doinb, then deletes post and apologizes
Nicholas James
Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu called out Kim “Doinb” Tae-Sang for leaking rumors that weren’t true in an online post, before eventually deleting the post and apologizing. Doinb is well known for having his finger on the pulse of roster moves in the LPL and LCK during off-seasons, as well as casually leaking these rumors on his live stream. Recently, Doinb made comment on the future of the Worlds 2022 champions, DragonX, …
League of Legends world champion sentenced to prison
Nicholas James
League of Legends
A League of Legends world champion has been sentenced to prison for drug trafficking, after being arrested in 2021. Kurtis Lau “Toyz” Wai-kin was a member of the Season 2 League of Legends world champion team, Taipei Assassins. The player had coached Fnatic and spent a long time with Hong Kong esports after exiting the scene as a player. But that’s not what is most recently known for. In 2021, …
Doinb promises 10-hour dance stream if Faker leaves T1
Nicholas James
League of Legends
World champion Kim “Doinb” Tae-sang has promised he will dance for ten hours on stream if Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok decides to leave T1 and go elsewhere in 2023. Rumors have been circulating suggesting Faker is considering offers from other regions and teams than his long-term home at T1 in the LCK. Fellow world champion Doinb has said he highly doubts that Faker will ever go anywhere other than T1, saying …
Will Faker be leaving T1 in 2023?
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Lee “Faker” Sang-Hyeok is the greatest League of Legends player of all time in most fans’ estimation, but is Faker leaving T1? Faker has spent the entirety of his professional career signed to the same League of Legends team, SKT T1. Now, rumors are circulating that he could be looking elsewhere. Where could Faker be headed in the new year and what would that mean for him and the larger …
These two Lord of the Rings actors play League of Legends
Nicholas James
League of Legends
An overlap between the Lord of the Rings movies and League of Legends is more likely than you might think, as two Lord of the Rings actors recently revealed they play League of Legends. As much as one might expect it to be Orlando Bloom channeling his inner Legolas by playing Ashe, the Lord of the Rings actors that enjoy League of Legends are ones that played some of the …
Badministrator returns with Lily Pichu collaboration rap battle
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Community-beloved League of Legends musical artist Badministrator has returned with Lily Pichu, for a This Is War musical installment. Badministrator was a well-regarded and popular musical parody artist in the early days of League of Legends, publishing rap songs about various champions inside of League of Legends. Badministrator was well-regarded for the quality of his lyrics and smooth rhyme schemes but disappeared for several years as he stepped away from …
Behind the scenes of the League of Legends x Lil Nas collab
Nicholas James
League of Legends
League of Legends and Lil Nas X collaborated for Worlds 2022, and now Riot Games has released the behind-the-scenes look at the process. Riot Games teamed up with the massive pop music star, filming a series of promotional campaigns that depicted fictional events in which Lil Nas X becomes the President of League of Legends and enacts sweeping, and comedic, changes. The behind-the-scenes video published by Riot Games shows the …
DWG Kia completes 2023 roster with Deft and Canna
William Davis
League of Legends
Less than a month after getting crowned as World Champion, bot laner Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu has transferred to DWG Kia. The excitement of the victory in San Francisco against T1 was short-lived for the DRX players. On November 21, the team announced the departure of its entire roster. Hours later, DWG Kia announced Deft as its new starting bot lane. According to some reports, DRX made an effort to keep …
A preseason 2023 new jungler guide
Nicholas James
League of Legends
The jungle in League of Legends has had a serious rework heading into preseason 2023. If you’re thinking about picking up the role, here’s a Preseason 2023 new jungler guide. The jungle is a difficult role to adapt to, being fundamentally different from other roles involving playing inside of a lane. Here’s a basic guide for getting you familiar with your job as a jungler and how to stalk the …
New Eternals are now live for League of Legends
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Some brand new Eternals for League of Legends are being released, here’s what you need to know and what you can expect. Eternals are champion-specific stat trackers that record the number of times a player has accomplished a certain feat on a specific champion. From killing enemies with a certain ability to accomplishing a particular multi-kill, the accomplishments recorded vary from champion to champion. Riot Games has announced the next …
League of Legends players now penalized for swearing in chat
Olivia Richman
League of Legends
Riot Games is implementing a new system that targets toxicity in chat. Shortly after Blizzard announced the Defense Matrix program to combat toxic players in Overwatch 2 by creating transcriptions of chat interactions, Riot Games has come out with a program that punishes “vulgarity and profanity” in League of Legends. The long and short of it is that players can no longer swear, no matter the context. All swearing will …
Three TFT: Monsters Attack PBE teams to try out
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Teamfight Tactics: Monsters Attack is on PBE before it hits live servere. Here are some powerful compositions to try out for yourself. Teamfight Tactics: Monsters Attack’s PBE stay has already shown some serious differences between it and previous TFT sets. If you want to try some wacky new compositions, here are three great compositions to try. Jax is an amazingly powerful 3-cost Mecha: PRIME Bruiser who can destroy entire teams …
Fanmade Winter Summoner’s Rift skin brings fan-favorite back
Nicholas James
League of Legends
One dedicated fan has brought back the much-beloved Winter Summoner’s Rift skin back just in time for the holidays. In years past, League of Legends fans could look forwards to seeing Summoner’s Rift blanketed in snow, with winter and holiday-themed easter eggs throughout the map. Even Baron Nashor got into the spirit with a Santa hat, but that hasn’t happened in years and fans miss the fanfare of the special …
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.
