League of Legends
League of Legends
Here are the LCS Lock In groups and full schedule
William Davis
The 10 LCS teams are gearing up for the first-ever LCS Lock In tournament, a new event that kicks off the 2021 season. Here are the two groups and the format for the tournament. Not only will the 10 LCS teams get warmed up and test out their new rosters for the 2021 Spring Split start, but there’s also $150,000 on the line for the best team. Ahead of the …
League of Legends
Shezhen to host 2021 World Championship finals
William Davis
Riot Games announced Shenzhen as the destination for the 2021 World Championship final. In 2021, the World Championship is returning to China. This time, Riot is planning on executing the vision it had for 2020 that unfortunately couldn’t come to fruition due to travel restirctions around the world. Riot is planning a multi-city event that will end with the grand final in Shenzhen. Shenzhen is a modern city located in …
League of Legends
Riot Games announces esports circuits for TFT, Wild Rift, and LoR
William Davis
Riot Games announced its plan to launch a global competitive scene for League of Legends: Wild Rift, Teamfight Tactics, and Legends of Runeterra. To celebrate the official start of Season 11, Riot hosted a broadcast where members of the team shared what’s to come in 2021. On the esports side, Riot shared part of its plans to invest more in the competitive scene for its three spin-off games. Wild Rift, …
League of Legends
Riot reveals new Lunar Beast skins and plans for 2021 LoL skins
William Davis
Riot revealed three brand new Lunar Beast skins and plans for the 2021 season during its opening day live stream. The new Lunar Beast skin line will include cosmetics for Fiora, Jarvan IV, and Alistar. The skins look to be released for the upcoming 2021 Lunar Event that is expected to go live on the servers with patch 11.2 on January 21. Alongside the skin updates, Riot also announced its …
League of Legends
League of Legends generated $1.75 billion in revenue in 2020
William Davis
2020 was a difficult year for many companies, but Riot Games managed to generate $1.75 billion in revenue through League of Legends alone according to SuperData. In a recent report by SuperData, it was discovered that League of Legends alone provided Riot Games with $1.75 billion in revenue on its own. This ranks LoL as number six over revenue from free-to-play titles in 2020 right behind Pokémon GO. Not only …
League of Legends
Teemo is unstoppable in ARAM after item removal
William Davis
Just when everyone thought that Teemo wasn’t the worst champion to face in League of Legends, Riot Games has made him impossible to deal with. Teemo’s reign of terror is back in full, thanks to the removal Oracle’s Extract from ARAM in patch 10.23. Oracle’s Extract granted true sight and obscured vision of hidden enemy units for five minutes. It allowed players to detect Teemo’s mushrooms on the map and …
League of Legends
Popular soloqueue streamer Dopa postpones Korean military service
Tokoni Uti
South Korean streamer and League of Legends player Jeong “Dopa” Sang-gil has announced the postponement of his mandatory military service. In a YouTube video posted yesterday titled “I got military exemption…”, the 27-year-old explains that, while the video title is somewhat exaggerated and he is not completely exempt, he will be temporarily delaying his conscription to continue his streaming career. For Dopa and his fellow South Koreans, all males between …
League of Legends
Riot introduces LCS on-air team including Hai, Allorim, more
William Davis
The 2021 LCS season will be kicked off with a newly updated on-air team including some new and familiar faces. Riot recently introduced the complete on-air team for the LCS only a few days before the first-ever Lock In tournament kicks off. The team includes familiar faces from the 2020 season, as well as new additions such as Emily Rand, Barento “Razleplasm” Mohammed, and former professional players Hai “Hai” Lam …
The LCS reveals new rebrand ahead of 2021 season start
William Davis
League of Legends
Another big rebrand has been revealed just a few days before the 2021 competitive season officially kicks off. This time it’s from the biggest North American league, LCS. After years under the original LCS logo, the league is taking a turn in 2021 and starting off the year with a completely new look. The most notable change will be the new logo, where the LCS has moved in a completely …
The LCK is changing its playoff format for the 2021 season
William Davis
League of Legends
The LCK is ready for its newly franchised era, and the league has announced a new format with some major changes that will affect its players. The new LCK is starting officially on January 13 with an opening series between Gen.G and KT Rolster. The regular season will be played with the first half of games held from Wednesday to Sunday with two best-of-three series every day. The second half …
Riot Games reportedly drops MiT after sexual abuse allegations
Fariha Bhatti
League of Legends
Brazillian tattoo artist Daniela Tatueira has accused League of Legends caster and former coach Gabriel “MiT” Souza of sexual abuse. Riot Games has reportedly refused to work with the caster after hearing Daniela’s claims. Daniela revealed that she met MiT through Tinder six or seven years ago. The tattoo artist alleged that the former coach insisted on meeting alone. However, she turned down the idea. The pair met in a …
Griffin disbands LoL team after missing LCK franchise spot
William Davis
League of Legends
Griffin announced that it will be dissolving its League of Legends division after being kicked from the LCK and missing out on a franchise spot in 2021. As the LCK transitions to a franchise system in the 2021 season, and some well-known teams have been left out in the cold. One of them is Griffin, who climbed from the challenger scene and took LCK by storm in 2019. Sadly, it …
New Ruined and Shan Hai Scrolls LoL skin lines revealed
William Davis
League of Legends
2021 will kick off with two brand new skin lines called Ruined and Shan Hai Scrolls. This was revealed by Riot very recently in the newest update for the Public Beta Environment. The new Ruined skins include cosmetics for Draven, Karma, and Shyvana. The Shan Hai Scrolls skin line will be a bit bigger, with cosmetics for Cho’Gath, Jhin, Nautilus, and Neeko. This PBE Preview is to die for…????Ruined Karma????Ruined …
Riot is looking to buff Varus and nerf Ivern on patch 11.1
William Davis
League of Legends
The preview for the first patch of Season 11, patch 11.1, has been out for some weeks now, but Riot recently added a few changes to the list. Riot will be starting out the new season with quite a big patch that includes both changes to champions and items. One of the most significant changes is the nerf to Grievous Wounds, which was already announced back in December. To add …
EDG announces new billion-dollar esports arena project
William Davis
League of Legends
LPL organization EDward Gaming has announced its plans to build an entertainment center and park in Shanghai. EDG is breaking records for the most expensive esports project with the construction of the Shanghai International NCC&Esports Center. The initial investment for the project is set at a little over 10 billion yuan, roughly $1.5 billion USD. The Shanghai International NCC&Esports Center will function as EDG’s home venue and office building. EDG …
The start date for LoL ranked Season 11 is set
William Davis
League of Legends
League of Legends Season 11 is about to start and it brings some major changes to the Summoner’s Rift. It’s a new year and a new League of Legends season. Patch 11.1, the first of the year is hitting the live server on January 6. After that, players will have a little more time to familiarize themselves with changes before the start of the ranked season. League of Legends Season …
The LCS has set a new record for number of imported players
William Davis
News
In the 2020 offseason, the LCS broke the record for the most imports added to the region in one split. While it might look like the LCS is falling back into its old patterns, these signings will almost certainly increase the level of competition in the region. After disastrous results in the 2020 World Championship, fans wanted for a change in the LCS, and a massive change was what they …
Rogue reveals new rebrand heading into the 2021 LEC season
William Davis
League of Legends
Rogue recently revealed its new rebrand before heading into the 2021 LEC season and other tournaments surrounding the organization’s esports activities. As the 2021 esports season is about to start, Rogue has decided to launch a rebrand to start the year off fresh. Rogue revealed the rebrand on Twitter with a hype video, presenting a new and modernized logo. The logo still has most of the elements from the old …
The top teams and players to watch in the new 2021 LCS season
William Davis
League of Legends
The 2021 LCS season is about to get underway with a lot of new players and a brand new format that includes the Lock In tournament to kick off the year. As it is every year, the offseason in the LCS has been crazy. Every team have been active on the market, looking for new players and staff to improve their chances of success in 2021. Some teams have been …
DAMWON dominates KeSPA Cup 2020 with new top laner Khan
William Davis
League of Legends
KeSPA Cup 2020 was won by none other than the defending world champions from DAMWON after a nearly flawless performance throughout the tournament. With great momentum and confidence stemming from the 2020 World Championship, DAMWON managed to secure another trophy before the 2021 season starts. This is the third trophy in a row for DAMWON and this time it came with new top laner Kim “Khan” Dong-ha. DAMWON took down …
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.
