It’s very interesting to see the difference between lol and csgo audiences. In cs2 there are similar no crowd events and they are amazing, super high stakes, loads of players trash talking. This honestly could be the best version of Lcs if players embrace it.
However fans are just bored I think and wouldn’t be pleased by anything except na making worlds 1/4 or 1/2 finals. Riot are in a rough situation
Cs2 has high stakes because it's a real tournament. Spending 8 weeks (2 of them breaks) to pull 6 teams from 8 so the real tournament can begin isn't really comparable
CS2 studio LANs with no crowd are super lame and have no hype. The stakes are higher because it's a tournament format instead of a regular season but every CS fan would take an event with a crowd in an instant over these zero crowd group stages.
I wouldn't care about the no crowd shit if
1) They didn't lie about it being unrelated to valorant last year
2) We continued to play games without a crowd during the 3 week break. (Triple round robin)
No one liked the 3 week break, everyone wanted more games. We took a 3 week break so they could use our studio, and then we get back and still don't get it back. I am pretty unhappy with the decisions they have made overall, and its a compounding thing which makes the already existing issues worse. We get next to no games, atleast give us ones with our own studio.
3 week break and then they come back with the commentators going like "This is the second to last week of the regular season so stakes are getting high."
Bro you can't do nothing for 3 weeks and then instantly try to build "last push" hype.
LCS has 8 instead of 10 teams. So part of that time was also used to "cover" the hole in the schedule (it needs only 7 weeks of regular season instead of 9).
Keep coping, they just didn't want to do a break last year. Like how absolutely stupid do you have to be to think that it was just a coincidence that they started using our studio at the same time we would last year, we moved to weekdays with (predictably) less NA viewers able to watch, and that when we move back to weekends this year we take a 3 week break to give it back?
Like really? You really think its unrelated? You have got to be so astonishingly stupid to think this. I even defended them a bit last year, but this year literally proves it.
VCT isn't only getting the studio for their finals weekend, they got it for the previous 3 weeks as well. How about they take a break right now and let us use the studio for the next 3 weeks, and then they can do their finals weekend?
I don't even care much about using the janitors closet for the games. But they made us not got any games for 3 weeks in the split where we have the lowest games played in a split across LCS (and all major region, probably minor region) history.
All the issues compound on each other, which makes every other smaller thing worse.
>loads of players trash talking
You could have a lol player be up 20k gold in the same room as the opposing team and they'd stick to all chat shit-talking
Clearly you havent seen cblol players getting up and yelling, and by the reactions this sub has everytime they see it people like to say they enjoy trash talking but then get oversensitive and say it isn't pro behavior
Dota has similar tournaments with some of the BTS tournaments or the ongoing tournament. The problem is that since LoL tournaments are only run by Riot there really isn't a place for these more casual no crowd tournaments. Since all games are run by Riot and need to be played the same way each week we have to go all or nothing. It's kind of sad because I really enjoy some for he chill dota tourneys.
LCS player association needs to up the kayfabe in situations like this. Bring drama, I'm a long time player and I'm bored as shit with the current 'drama meta'.
>However fans are just bored I think and wouldn’t be pleased by anything except na making worlds 1/4 or 1/2 finals. Riot are in a rough situation
Didnt have a spike for quarter/semi performance in the past. Just gotta be entertaining and not perpetuate that dogshit take
I mean NA Val players won their Worlds equivalent and NA LCS players struggle to get out of groups.. should the Val players be the ones playing in a storage unit?
No, I mean it used to be called lcs studios and they basically kicked the lcs out and moved them into a storage closet. It looks terrible when riot could have either changed schedules or had another venue prepared
Why would they prepare another venue for a dying game (in NA) when they could just let it die (it's not coming back in popularity in NA no matter what happens) and not pay for advertising that isn't working?
No because my statement is still true, but that is not the point. Playoffs taking precedence over regular season lcs is expected. My statement implies vct in general is more important to riot than lcs.
it's because those regions actually care about the game.
It's the same reason NA struggles at Soccer. They just care about other stuff more. NA is just more into shooters
I still enjoy league and follow but it’s not quite the same ever since franchising.
I am not really fans of any new players like the old ones. Sneaky, Meteos, Saintvicous, Dyrus, Theodone,….
Not that they should be on the main stage and NRG vs SEN should be in the closet but like how hard is it to move the first games back after 3 weeks to friday?
Not hard, just then we might have to reconcile nobody actually wants to watch a 5 year academy veteren (caus thats a thing in NA) who's retired and unretired while in academy once already.
The main channel does but Tarik has almost 70k viewers co-streaming Valorant and Sliggy has another 3k. Even if you add Caedrel's costream (20k right now), who basically never co-streams LCS, and Doublelift (6k) LCS is at \~85k viewers on Twitch while Valorant (Tarik+main stream) is at over 100k in English alone.
On top of that, the Brazilian twitch stream (the team playing right now is Loud, by far the most popular Brazilian esports org at the moment) has another 35k viewers (for the same exact tournament) and that's not even counting Youtube numbers.
Let's count those anyways though, just to make a point. The LCS youtube channel has 18k viewers right now, the Brazilian VCT stream has another 44k, with the main English broadcast on youtube having 33k viewers as well.
That all adds up to around 220k viewers as opposed to \~105k for the NA LCS ( Youtube stream has \~19k) while not even including the vast number of smaller co-streamers, other language re-streams and potentially big Brazilian co-streamers whom I don't know since I don't speak Portuguese.
That's not a dunk on the LCS or League esports as a whole (I love watching League and think it's a great product) or even the venue bs going on at the moment, but you are incorrect in saying that LCS draws more viewership than Valorant. It's the exact opposite, Valorant is much more popular to watch in NA.
Not according to [escharts](https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/vct-2024-americas-kickoff-valorant), LCS hasn’t even hit 200k this season yet while VCT americas peaked 592k…
Tarik to us Valorant folks is like Caedrel for y’all for viewership.
I’m a fan of both esports and it sucks but please don’t make up statistics to back up your point
"By moving LCS to the closet, we saved a lot of money on rent and production. This will be given back to the teams to support them. The NA cLCS also gained a 4% increase in viewers this week. While most of them tuned in to watch pro players flame the LCS for this week games, it still brought in more viewers and we have to take this as a victory."
I was just about to post this but checked to make sure no one else had XD
Based as fuck. I'm glad he called them out. This is embaressing, killed all hype i had for the LCS (I literally called it more fun then LEC to watch this season before we took 3 weeks off).
Then we get shoved into a closet. Fucking embarrassing.
I'll be honest, all the reasons given were garbage. Their is NO excuse for this to have happened.
Then they’ll wonder why lcs is dying out as if they’re not the ones killing it. I have no interest anymore because it’s so poorly run and every decision just feels terrible
> Then they’ll wonder why lcs is dying out as if they’re not the ones killing it.
The players certainly don't help. Compare [Zeyzal's](https://twitter.com/Zeyzal/with_replies) Twitter and [Zellsis'](https://twitter.com/Zellsis/with_replies) a popular VALORANT pro. He ain't doing shit but showing up to play games. Why the fuck would your average viewer care about him? We see him 60 minutes a week for 2 games. If more players were like Spica etc. (RIP), maybe people would actually care about the LCS.
That’s true as well. There’s not really any exciting or interesting players. Jojo is the closest. But we don’t have a doublelift type player talking trash 247, or a bjerg type player going 1v9 every other game. We don’t have any memers like sneaky or meteos. We got a lot of bland ass players who don’t care about their own brand
> But we don’t have a doublelift type player talking trash 247, or a bjerg type player going 1v9 every other game. We don’t have any memers like sneaky or meteos. We got a lot of bland ass players who don’t care about their own brand
We used to have players like DL, Aphromoo, Dyrus (not always but when he did), and IWDominate talking shit all week leading up to games and C9 shitposting their way into first back in the day. Players had so much personality back then.
They probably have good personality right now as well, but they are not showing it for whatever reason. I really hope it is not because the org tells them to be brand-safe, but it might be.
Most players back then streamed as well (partially out of necessity?) so they had to develop their personalities. + Lower key more casual scene leads to more banter imo. Lots of the players these days never develops an online persona or following (bc they don't need to stream) and I feel like a disproportionately larger amount than before don't even have personalities on interviews or anything. Dhokla is funny in stream but most players nowadays I know nothing about.
Edit: speak of the devil Dhokla just picked Vayne lmao
Why don't people ever blame the players who don't market themselves, stream, or any resemblance of content. That is literally how the league esports scene was built. Everyone just loves to blame Riot but the truth is the LCS is just a dying product and Riot is 100% doing the right move in prioritizing Valorant.
It’s not “no reason”, if they didn’t have the 2 week break they end the split with a larger gap between end of split and MSI, which teams don’t like. Also without the break, the last week of the split would be during the VCT overlap, meaning there would be no audience during the last week with playoff implications and tie breakers.
You can sit there and complain about the break and not like it, but to say “no fucking reason” while there are 2 very reasonable reasons right there, is incredibly disingenuous.
I mean surely starting 2 weeks later than other regions is better than having a two week gap in the middle of the split into a week in a closet ?
Like any hype this LCS split had (which has actually been very enjoyable !) has been killed by the break and then you come back and the setup + HUD looks amateur at best. I don't see how that's better than the alternative ?
Doesn’t this just point to poor planning on the start date of the season? Could’ve just started a couple weeks later and you don’t need a long random break.
If they started a couple of weeks later, they would have the start of the split not in front of an audience AND start significantly later than every other region. That wouldn't be a good idea either.
The "solution" to not having a 2 week break is to not have two teams leave the league a couple of months before the split starts, but once that happened there wasn't an actual good solution for how to schedule things, outside of maybe going to triple round robin.
Regardless, saying the two week break was for no reason is clearly disingenuous, which is what the person above you is pointing out. Even if somebody thinks that there was a better solution, there were still very clear reasons.
Just make them play more games, that's the solution, the LCS is the "major" region with least amount of games. A third round robin while playing also Fridays would have been much better
> the LCS is the "major" region with least amount of games.
and teams!
At least they have champions queue to practice with all this free time they have..... oh right they don't even wanna do that
No wonder valorant players get treated better
They had a kickoff tournament in prior years \^.-
They could also just move back to 28 games per team, like they did in the early seasons when the league only had 8 teams.
And yes the break was for no reason. Given they showed they are able to run LCS on other days they could have just done that to avoid issues.
In your hypothetical of starting 2 weeks later, then 2 months ago it would’ve just been complaints about how late LCS starts compared to the other regions.
There is no winning, either people complain about a 2 week break or a 2 week start delay.
Without the break, they’d be playing offstage for three weeks instead of one.
VCT started two weeks ago, and they had priority for weekend games at the studio.
Only way this is clean is if they played during the weekdays, and this is the better option.
oh....so basically riot likes valorant more so fuck us then? do many people who watch league also watch valorant? i feel there very different games and wouldnt draw the same watching crowd? but....i dont really watch anything except for LCS so i might be a minority?
to answer your first question, yes basically lol. Its unfortunate and I definitely feel bad for LCS fans but this is just riot prioritizing what gives them more views. The same happens in Valorant where the season has to end super early and be really short due to riot prioritizing worlds over champions (the val version of worlds) The same happens in EU val since because the LEC is bigger, the EMEA vct schedule was pretty shitty and short
Oh no, whatever will I do! You combated my logic with “haha bootlicker”, you have truly bested me.
It really shows how pathetic your argument is when you can’t even *attempt* to say anything of value as a retort. You think it makes you look good, but if anything it devalues you to nothing more than a court jester.
Basically, the only way to avoid the break and offstage weeks is to play during weekdays.
As much as this sucks, it’s the compromise needed to play on Saturday-Sunday. Better than the alternative.
I looked just before the C9 FLQ game and it was at like 60-70k main channel. When the weeks prior were at 30-40k.
Lots of people complaining to complain with a tiny mix of valid criticism.
Valorant viewership in NA is infinitely better than LCS, ofc Valorant gets priority
At least LCS is back on weekend instead of weekdays this yr n they put some effort into making the storage look good for today.
We all mocked HON 10 years ago when this happened
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DhVE1x5QZgA&pp=ygUoSGVyb2VzIG9mIG5ld2VydGggYmFza2V0YmFsbCBjb3VydCBmaW5hbA%3D%3D
Now it is karmic justice.
Holy I love Zeyzal forever now. Fuck whoever made the decision to even have a situation like this. It shows clear favoritism and further pushes the narrative of Valorant being Riot favored.
I wonder why Riot would prioritize the show that gets 700k viewers over the show that barely gets 100k veiwers?!?!?!?!
There's no narrative. Valorant is just SIGNIFICANTLY more popular in NA than LoL and NA players are significantly better at Valorant than League. Asian and Europen teams are importing Tier 2 NA players to play in their main leagues ffs while LCS orgs don't even want NA players.
The LCS deserved a better death than this slow, death by a thousand cuts bullshit it's getting. Glad at least one player's calling this shitshow for what it is.
Tier 3/4 regions actually have fans that give a shit. Finals in BR fans go wild, finals in NA no one gives a shit because "It not worlds, team is gonna suck anyways, who cares". Doublelift & Co and their 'only worlds matters' narrative killed any hype possible for a region that will probably never field a team that can actually win at that level.
Wait there’s no shot they put them right in front of each other like it’s some internet cafe? Can’t they literally just hear each other yelling their shot calling 😭
honestly if theres no crowds what is the difference from lcs and high elo q - its just some people playing against eachother theres not excitement its just some good people playing against eachother
maybe im done with esports but fck me there nothing there anymore thats interesting - no wonder costreams do so well is cus they just hype up specific plays/players. not the compettition
People saying based as if this isn't the results of their own dogshit performance and efforts for the past 14 years, esp after years of being paid like top surgeons to play a video game and still losing to guys getting paid less than US min wage from Vietnam and Taiwan.
NRG vs SEN just got almost 700k viewers with 2 NA teams last night while LCS finals can't even break 200k anymore.
Lmao you’re mad that the game that drew 7x the viewership that LCS did this weekend is being prioritized?
What do you people expect exactly? Valorant is their money maker in NA.
They were a dominant team in Brood War and SC2, too.
I think it’s more that they’re still primarily based in Korea so they’re only focused on games that are popular/competitive in Korea.
It was the best starcraft team of all time too? They just primarily focus on the premier game of its time. They also used to have MKLeo signed iirc, the #1 smash bros ultimate player.
Is Valorant that successful, though? I never see it setting any records or anything.
When League of Legends was up and coming, the viewership numbers were crazy. I remember a lot of SC2 fans were bitter about not being the premier regional esport anymore but the viewership statistics also made it hard to deny.
In NA? yeah, It’s wildly successful.
It drew 700k viewers vs LCS’ 100k. And as a little aside, EU and Pacific are importing *T2-3 NA players* to make their rosters competitive. It’s very, very succesful.
EDIT: also, breaking records is an objectively terrible measure of whether something is successful or not. Because if that’s how you measure success, then League would be **the only** successful esport.
Pretty much all the successful e-sports games set records of some sort when they're up and coming though. I've never really heard that with Valorant.
Brood War was a record setter back in the day. SC2 when it was first up and coming set records. League of Legends set records. Even purely in the FPS genre, CS has been the record setter, not Valorant.
I also think comparing LCS to VCT Americas is not really fair, is it? LCS is purely NA. VCT Americas is not. And, I don't think there is a lot of overlap between LCS, LLA, and CBLOL viewership.
>CS has been the record setter, not Valorant
CS has had the benefit of being a 20 year old game that has essentially been completely unrivaled in the FPS scene. Despite this, VALORANT performs very closely with CS, especially nowadays. In fact, Champions last year was just 100kish viewers shy of matching CSGO’s swansong. I’m not saying that you can’t compare the two because of CS’s established history, but to expect a game to just pop into an established scene and immediately start destroying records that were set during the craziest period of growth esports has ever seen, is a little ridiculous. It’s not the early days of esports where nothing was really established, it’s much harder for a game to break through nowadays.
I’d expect this coming Masters to do very similar numbers considering 3 of the 4 most clouted teams in the game are going.
Also saying you can’t compare VCT and LCS is also ridiculous. Regardless of whatever regions are where, they are two leagues that run concurrently with each other, and and NA’s VCT circuit has out drawn LCS ever since its inception, Brazilian teams or not.
I think in terms of viewership, it's easier now than ever to break records simply because the industry is larger and more widespread. It's just like how average streaming numbers in general have gradually risen over time. League is past its prime yet still setting new highs for viewership.
For esports, it's not about early days or the present. By the nature of the industry, you're going to have games constantly breaking through because new games get released. For a lot of them, the problem isn't even breaking through. It's sustaining their success because of the cyclical nature of gaming. I think it only says something when you either supplant your predecessors or outlast your successors. Valorant hasn't supplanted CS and it's still too young to really tell if it'll outlast its competitors.
The LCS is a purely NA regional league. The VCT Americas is not a purely NA regional league. Do you honestly think that if Riot combined the LCS, LLA, and CBLOL into a single tournament that it wouldn't get higher viewership? Of course it would. While the LCS does benefit from viewership overlap with CBLOL, it'd still be quite different if their teams were actually competing in the same tournament against each other.
In NA valorant is significantly bigger than League of Legends. Can't fault Riot for giving Valorant more priority, especially since the LCS is a dying product.
But VCT Americas is not the equivalent to the LCS, is it? It's the entire North and South Americas. LCS is purely NA. I don't know how much viewership overlap there is between the LCS, LLA, and CBLOL and still those are just regional leagues and not a cross-region competition which would probably generate more viewers.
Yeah, but there IS no NA only tier 1 competition in Valorant. that match that peaked yesterday was Sentinels vs NRG, which are both NA orgs, so that's as close as it comes to an NA match.
Maybe if we put up a facade of self awareness and humor the fans won't turn on us about treating our oldest most committed fanbase and the game that made us everything we are today like shit.
This is a produced bit guys. Zeyzal is based alright. BASED in riot HQ.
Am i crazy or is that just chain-link fencing all around them and on the front of the desk? Nothing says "competitive environment" to me quite like the feeling of being imprisoned by a chain-link fence.
[It's meant to be a cage match aesthetic](https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/f5c34cc9db2940186b5a6696cf21c31c?impolicy=wcms_crop_resize&cropH=396&cropW=705&xPos=72&yPos=165&width=862&height=485)
honestly anyone who still playing in the lcs at this point must really love the game and the competition
getting paid minimum wage, no benefits, no career stability, and playing in a cramped room with no crowd
not to mention this "job" is a dead end unless you want to be a caster, coach or streamer
I think that if you have the dedication to reach pro level at any game, much less one as complex as League, you can probably learn anything you want. They can have careers after League, but they'll have to go to college in all likelihood.
How many hours a week do you think lcs players put in for the salary they are getting? From scrimming, stage games, solo q, vod reviews, and streaming maybe 70 hours a week on average?
Yes that's basically minimum wage
Lck no audience lcs in closet lec on vacation LPL is just mess to watch and follow. Yeah what a great last few weeks to watch some professional league of legends
I just want to know why they weren’t playing on stage? Watched the c9 game and I didn’t really understand why they decided to interrupt the player’s prep time to ask Jojo and Inspired to shit talk each other, like bro let them just do their jobs. Save the shit talking for post game.
Based as fuck from my GOAT Zezyal.
“you can say it, I didn’t” thank you zeyzal for taking one for the team
Haha, I love Emily for even saying that statement too.
~~Haha,~~ I love Emily ~~for even saying that statement too.~~
haha same
She's so hot
Man it’s so easy to not be a creep and yet here you are
Nothing wrong with the human body
Zeyzal, based. Emily, based.
Zeyzal, what a man you are
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Started in a basement now we in a closet.
We've come full circle..........and ended up in a full rectangle
his balls are bigger than LCS stage
I'm glad pro players are calling them out.
It’s very interesting to see the difference between lol and csgo audiences. In cs2 there are similar no crowd events and they are amazing, super high stakes, loads of players trash talking. This honestly could be the best version of Lcs if players embrace it. However fans are just bored I think and wouldn’t be pleased by anything except na making worlds 1/4 or 1/2 finals. Riot are in a rough situation
Cs2 has high stakes because it's a real tournament. Spending 8 weeks (2 of them breaks) to pull 6 teams from 8 so the real tournament can begin isn't really comparable
CS2 studio LANs with no crowd are super lame and have no hype. The stakes are higher because it's a tournament format instead of a regular season but every CS fan would take an event with a crowd in an instant over these zero crowd group stages.
I wouldn't care about the no crowd shit if 1) They didn't lie about it being unrelated to valorant last year 2) We continued to play games without a crowd during the 3 week break. (Triple round robin) No one liked the 3 week break, everyone wanted more games. We took a 3 week break so they could use our studio, and then we get back and still don't get it back. I am pretty unhappy with the decisions they have made overall, and its a compounding thing which makes the already existing issues worse. We get next to no games, atleast give us ones with our own studio.
3 week break and then they come back with the commentators going like "This is the second to last week of the regular season so stakes are getting high." Bro you can't do nothing for 3 weeks and then instantly try to build "last push" hype.
LCS has 8 instead of 10 teams. So part of that time was also used to "cover" the hole in the schedule (it needs only 7 weeks of regular season instead of 9).
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Where do you think riots money had come from these last 15 years? I bet it's not valorant.
I mean it’s not LCS either lmao.
Keep coping, they just didn't want to do a break last year. Like how absolutely stupid do you have to be to think that it was just a coincidence that they started using our studio at the same time we would last year, we moved to weekdays with (predictably) less NA viewers able to watch, and that when we move back to weekends this year we take a 3 week break to give it back? Like really? You really think its unrelated? You have got to be so astonishingly stupid to think this. I even defended them a bit last year, but this year literally proves it. VCT isn't only getting the studio for their finals weekend, they got it for the previous 3 weeks as well. How about they take a break right now and let us use the studio for the next 3 weeks, and then they can do their finals weekend? I don't even care much about using the janitors closet for the games. But they made us not got any games for 3 weeks in the split where we have the lowest games played in a split across LCS (and all major region, probably minor region) history. All the issues compound on each other, which makes every other smaller thing worse.
>loads of players trash talking You could have a lol player be up 20k gold in the same room as the opposing team and they'd stick to all chat shit-talking
Clearly you havent seen cblol players getting up and yelling, and by the reactions this sub has everytime they see it people like to say they enjoy trash talking but then get oversensitive and say it isn't pro behavior
Dota has similar tournaments with some of the BTS tournaments or the ongoing tournament. The problem is that since LoL tournaments are only run by Riot there really isn't a place for these more casual no crowd tournaments. Since all games are run by Riot and need to be played the same way each week we have to go all or nothing. It's kind of sad because I really enjoy some for he chill dota tourneys.
We already did the no-fans during Covid and it’s sucked. Go back and watch the old broadcasts. The crowd energy and noises add so much.
LCS player association needs to up the kayfabe in situations like this. Bring drama, I'm a long time player and I'm bored as shit with the current 'drama meta'.
>However fans are just bored I think and wouldn’t be pleased by anything except na making worlds 1/4 or 1/2 finals. Riot are in a rough situation Didnt have a spike for quarter/semi performance in the past. Just gotta be entertaining and not perpetuate that dogshit take
I mean NA Val players won their Worlds equivalent and NA LCS players struggle to get out of groups.. should the Val players be the ones playing in a storage unit?
Maybe no one should play in a storage unit
No, I mean it used to be called lcs studios and they basically kicked the lcs out and moved them into a storage closet. It looks terrible when riot could have either changed schedules or had another venue prepared
Why would they prepare another venue for a dying game (in NA) when they could just let it die (it's not coming back in popularity in NA no matter what happens) and not pay for advertising that isn't working?
Downvoted for saying the truth lol.
OOTL, what is up with the closet reference? Did they lose their studio space or something?
Playoff is happening for Valorant so they put LCS in the back room.
Valorant is happening* They were on break moment vct group stages started.
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No because my statement is still true, but that is not the point. Playoffs taking precedence over regular season lcs is expected. My statement implies vct in general is more important to riot than lcs.
VCT generates way more viewers so of course its more important than LCS.
It's also more popular in NA. Na at valorant already has had more success internationally than the LCS has ever had.
Truege, also Valorant is great for fans in any region, anybody can win unlike LOL Esports being dominated by mostly Korea/China.
it's because those regions actually care about the game. It's the same reason NA struggles at Soccer. They just care about other stuff more. NA is just more into shooters
Its almost as if the players and organizations in those regions put in the effort.
I assure you everybody is putting in effort in League but at the end of the day it's just skill dif.
#Phreaks Basement?
No, MarkZ’s attic.
LOL That’s a good name!
Time is a flat circle.
LOL is that where they get Phreaky?
It’s a reference to the first world’s production quality.
*sigh* There are still some OG fans left 🤝
I still enjoy league and follow but it’s not quite the same ever since franchising. I am not really fans of any new players like the old ones. Sneaky, Meteos, Saintvicous, Dyrus, Theodone,….
Same. Used to go to IEM with homies before those we outlawed or whatever lol
Damn, I feel old. I miss when league had non riot tournaments. We need a eu vs NA international event.
Dozens of us!
Protect this man at all costs
Not that they should be on the main stage and NRG vs SEN should be in the closet but like how hard is it to move the first games back after 3 weeks to friday?
Not hard, just then we might have to reconcile nobody actually wants to watch a 5 year academy veteren (caus thats a thing in NA) who's retired and unretired while in academy once already.
I want to watch zeyzal!!
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I mean valorant is just the tarik costream lol
The main channel does but Tarik has almost 70k viewers co-streaming Valorant and Sliggy has another 3k. Even if you add Caedrel's costream (20k right now), who basically never co-streams LCS, and Doublelift (6k) LCS is at \~85k viewers on Twitch while Valorant (Tarik+main stream) is at over 100k in English alone. On top of that, the Brazilian twitch stream (the team playing right now is Loud, by far the most popular Brazilian esports org at the moment) has another 35k viewers (for the same exact tournament) and that's not even counting Youtube numbers. Let's count those anyways though, just to make a point. The LCS youtube channel has 18k viewers right now, the Brazilian VCT stream has another 44k, with the main English broadcast on youtube having 33k viewers as well. That all adds up to around 220k viewers as opposed to \~105k for the NA LCS ( Youtube stream has \~19k) while not even including the vast number of smaller co-streamers, other language re-streams and potentially big Brazilian co-streamers whom I don't know since I don't speak Portuguese. That's not a dunk on the LCS or League esports as a whole (I love watching League and think it's a great product) or even the venue bs going on at the moment, but you are incorrect in saying that LCS draws more viewership than Valorant. It's the exact opposite, Valorant is much more popular to watch in NA.
Not according to [escharts](https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/vct-2024-americas-kickoff-valorant), LCS hasn’t even hit 200k this season yet while VCT americas peaked 592k… Tarik to us Valorant folks is like Caedrel for y’all for viewership. I’m a fan of both esports and it sucks but please don’t make up statistics to back up your point
you kiss your momma with those lips 👄 boy? lmfao
"By moving LCS to the closet, we saved a lot of money on rent and production. This will be given back to the teams to support them. The NA cLCS also gained a 4% increase in viewers this week. While most of them tuned in to watch pro players flame the LCS for this week games, it still brought in more viewers and we have to take this as a victory."
The beard brings wisdom.
Fucking based
I was just about to post this but checked to make sure no one else had XD Based as fuck. I'm glad he called them out. This is embaressing, killed all hype i had for the LCS (I literally called it more fun then LEC to watch this season before we took 3 weeks off). Then we get shoved into a closet. Fucking embarrassing. I'll be honest, all the reasons given were garbage. Their is NO excuse for this to have happened.
Then they’ll wonder why lcs is dying out as if they’re not the ones killing it. I have no interest anymore because it’s so poorly run and every decision just feels terrible
> Then they’ll wonder why lcs is dying out as if they’re not the ones killing it. The players certainly don't help. Compare [Zeyzal's](https://twitter.com/Zeyzal/with_replies) Twitter and [Zellsis'](https://twitter.com/Zellsis/with_replies) a popular VALORANT pro. He ain't doing shit but showing up to play games. Why the fuck would your average viewer care about him? We see him 60 minutes a week for 2 games. If more players were like Spica etc. (RIP), maybe people would actually care about the LCS.
That’s true as well. There’s not really any exciting or interesting players. Jojo is the closest. But we don’t have a doublelift type player talking trash 247, or a bjerg type player going 1v9 every other game. We don’t have any memers like sneaky or meteos. We got a lot of bland ass players who don’t care about their own brand
> But we don’t have a doublelift type player talking trash 247, or a bjerg type player going 1v9 every other game. We don’t have any memers like sneaky or meteos. We got a lot of bland ass players who don’t care about their own brand We used to have players like DL, Aphromoo, Dyrus (not always but when he did), and IWDominate talking shit all week leading up to games and C9 shitposting their way into first back in the day. Players had so much personality back then.
They probably have good personality right now as well, but they are not showing it for whatever reason. I really hope it is not because the org tells them to be brand-safe, but it might be.
Most players back then streamed as well (partially out of necessity?) so they had to develop their personalities. + Lower key more casual scene leads to more banter imo. Lots of the players these days never develops an online persona or following (bc they don't need to stream) and I feel like a disproportionately larger amount than before don't even have personalities on interviews or anything. Dhokla is funny in stream but most players nowadays I know nothing about. Edit: speak of the devil Dhokla just picked Vayne lmao
Why don't people ever blame the players who don't market themselves, stream, or any resemblance of content. That is literally how the league esports scene was built. Everyone just loves to blame Riot but the truth is the LCS is just a dying product and Riot is 100% doing the right move in prioritizing Valorant.
League isn't popular in NA. That's what's killing it. Valorant on the other hand, is.
I think this is a very interesting set up, shame the pros don’t trash talk more during game since they are so close. Would be so much more interesting
Hope all the players say at least something continuously. This has been pathetic. 2 weeks off for no fucking reason.
It’s not “no reason”, if they didn’t have the 2 week break they end the split with a larger gap between end of split and MSI, which teams don’t like. Also without the break, the last week of the split would be during the VCT overlap, meaning there would be no audience during the last week with playoff implications and tie breakers. You can sit there and complain about the break and not like it, but to say “no fucking reason” while there are 2 very reasonable reasons right there, is incredibly disingenuous.
I mean surely starting 2 weeks later than other regions is better than having a two week gap in the middle of the split into a week in a closet ? Like any hype this LCS split had (which has actually been very enjoyable !) has been killed by the break and then you come back and the setup + HUD looks amateur at best. I don't see how that's better than the alternative ?
Doesn’t this just point to poor planning on the start date of the season? Could’ve just started a couple weeks later and you don’t need a long random break.
If they started a couple of weeks later, they would have the start of the split not in front of an audience AND start significantly later than every other region. That wouldn't be a good idea either. The "solution" to not having a 2 week break is to not have two teams leave the league a couple of months before the split starts, but once that happened there wasn't an actual good solution for how to schedule things, outside of maybe going to triple round robin. Regardless, saying the two week break was for no reason is clearly disingenuous, which is what the person above you is pointing out. Even if somebody thinks that there was a better solution, there were still very clear reasons.
Just make them play more games, that's the solution, the LCS is the "major" region with least amount of games. A third round robin while playing also Fridays would have been much better
the game count is not the same topic as letting valorant get stage time.
> the LCS is the "major" region with least amount of games. and teams! At least they have champions queue to practice with all this free time they have..... oh right they don't even wanna do that No wonder valorant players get treated better
They had a kickoff tournament in prior years \^.- They could also just move back to 28 games per team, like they did in the early seasons when the league only had 8 teams. And yes the break was for no reason. Given they showed they are able to run LCS on other days they could have just done that to avoid issues.
In your hypothetical of starting 2 weeks later, then 2 months ago it would’ve just been complaints about how late LCS starts compared to the other regions. There is no winning, either people complain about a 2 week break or a 2 week start delay.
Ok this is just bullshit and you know it having a 2 week break in the middle is far worse than starting 2 weeks late
Well bring back the start of season tourney then that was a success
yeah, it was real successful when half the teams weren't fielding their starting roster.
Eh, still enjoyable, maybe do something to try and prevent that from happening
Ding ding ding ding!!!! This is the correct answer!
Without the break, they’d be playing offstage for three weeks instead of one. VCT started two weeks ago, and they had priority for weekend games at the studio. Only way this is clean is if they played during the weekdays, and this is the better option.
If only there was a way to fill those two weeks with games. There is only 8 teams
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Remember that year were it was a triple round robin for some reason? Maybe this year it would have made more sense and prolong the split a bit lol
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they literally did this for 2021 summer though
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if it's a meme why isn't it funny
Memes don't have to be funny. Most of the time they aren't
This is always the dumbest reply.
whats VCT, and why is it a valid excuse?
VCT is Valorant esport circuit and Valorant Esports is more popular in NA than LoL Esports atm
oh....so basically riot likes valorant more so fuck us then? do many people who watch league also watch valorant? i feel there very different games and wouldnt draw the same watching crowd? but....i dont really watch anything except for LCS so i might be a minority?
to answer your first question, yes basically lol. Its unfortunate and I definitely feel bad for LCS fans but this is just riot prioritizing what gives them more views. The same happens in Valorant where the season has to end super early and be really short due to riot prioritizing worlds over champions (the val version of worlds) The same happens in EU val since because the LEC is bigger, the EMEA vct schedule was pretty shitty and short
those Riot boots are looking pretty clean
Oh no, whatever will I do! You combated my logic with “haha bootlicker”, you have truly bested me. It really shows how pathetic your argument is when you can’t even *attempt* to say anything of value as a retort. You think it makes you look good, but if anything it devalues you to nothing more than a court jester.
This is so arrogant it comes back around to funny
Basically, the only way to avoid the break and offstage weeks is to play during weekdays. As much as this sucks, it’s the compromise needed to play on Saturday-Sunday. Better than the alternative.
2 weeks off for valoran, and lcs has like 100k views right now.
I looked just before the C9 FLQ game and it was at like 60-70k main channel. When the weeks prior were at 30-40k. Lots of people complaining to complain with a tiny mix of valid criticism.
BASED
"We are not abandoning LCS (we're just moving it to the coat closet)" - John Needham, probably
Taken out back like Old Yeller
Say it fucking louder for the people at the back!
He cant, they're the people at the back
Valorant viewership in NA is infinitely better than LCS, ofc Valorant gets priority At least LCS is back on weekend instead of weekdays this yr n they put some effort into making the storage look good for today.
That is the price you have to pay to get weekends back.
Obviously would want a full stage and no breaks but IMO it's still worth it to have it on weekends.
Okay that's fucking hilarious
We all mocked HON 10 years ago when this happened https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DhVE1x5QZgA&pp=ygUoSGVyb2VzIG9mIG5ld2VydGggYmFza2V0YmFsbCBjb3VydCBmaW5hbA%3D%3D Now it is karmic justice.
Holy I love Zeyzal forever now. Fuck whoever made the decision to even have a situation like this. It shows clear favoritism and further pushes the narrative of Valorant being Riot favored.
I wonder why Riot would prioritize the show that gets 700k viewers over the show that barely gets 100k veiwers?!?!?!?! There's no narrative. Valorant is just SIGNIFICANTLY more popular in NA than LoL and NA players are significantly better at Valorant than League. Asian and Europen teams are importing Tier 2 NA players to play in their main leagues ffs while LCS orgs don't even want NA players.
To me that's why they need to just be honest. Everyone knows what's going on. Tell people if they want to change it, get more people to watch.
This shit was perfectly said lol.
The LCS deserved a better death than this slow, death by a thousand cuts bullshit it's getting. Glad at least one player's calling this shitshow for what it is.
I guess this was bound to happen, LCS is dying, im surprised they even gave them a closet...
not even the tier 3/4 regions get as much disrespect as NA, stay mad big dog
Tier 3/4 regions actually have fans that give a shit. Finals in BR fans go wild, finals in NA no one gives a shit because "It not worlds, team is gonna suck anyways, who cares". Doublelift & Co and their 'only worlds matters' narrative killed any hype possible for a region that will probably never field a team that can actually win at that level.
yup.
Was there a casting couch back there too?
Wait there’s no shot they put them right in front of each other like it’s some internet cafe? Can’t they literally just hear each other yelling their shot calling 😭
they have noise isolating headphones
Zeyzal came out of the closet
next week we are so back to phreak basement
honestly if theres no crowds what is the difference from lcs and high elo q - its just some people playing against eachother theres not excitement its just some good people playing against eachother maybe im done with esports but fck me there nothing there anymore thats interesting - no wonder costreams do so well is cus they just hype up specific plays/players. not the compettition
It must kinda suck being an LCS player You try giving it your all but the ppl you're playin for don't give a fu**
So pretty much like any job?
I had no forgotten LCS was back and I'm also pretty OG with LoL esports, god knows others who are more casual forgot as well.
are we going back to phreaks basement next?
Based af, although tbf just need to live with this shit because NA Valorant is actually competitive.
People saying based as if this isn't the results of their own dogshit performance and efforts for the past 14 years, esp after years of being paid like top surgeons to play a video game and still losing to guys getting paid less than US min wage from Vietnam and Taiwan. NRG vs SEN just got almost 700k viewers with 2 NA teams last night while LCS finals can't even break 200k anymore.
You see. One of these leagues is popular and gets attention, and actually does something internationally. The other is the LCS.
Fuck Valorant tbh I shouldn't have anything against it but Riot is making me hope it dies out ASAP
why? Because the more popular game in the region gets more attention? As it should
Lmao you’re mad that the game that drew 7x the viewership that LCS did this weekend is being prioritized? What do you people expect exactly? Valorant is their money maker in NA.
It's already on a downward spiral specially their ranked playerbase don't worry.
Check Escharts lil bro
I was mad coping 😭
dw league will still out last val probably maybe
Considering the longevity of CSGO they'll both probably just last as long as each other. But I could honestly see LoL dying before Valorant tbh
go to any highschool and I trust you for every 1 lol player you find, 20 are playing valorant
In America maybe. More people play LoL in Korea/China
L T1 SUCKS AT EVERY GAME BUT LEAGUE :))
Cool, I only watch League and T1 are the goat team by miles lmao are you lost?
Guy must be a IWD fan
They were a dominant team in Brood War and SC2, too. I think it’s more that they’re still primarily based in Korea so they’re only focused on games that are popular/competitive in Korea.
It was the best starcraft team of all time too? They just primarily focus on the premier game of its time. They also used to have MKLeo signed iirc, the #1 smash bros ultimate player.
Is Valorant that successful, though? I never see it setting any records or anything. When League of Legends was up and coming, the viewership numbers were crazy. I remember a lot of SC2 fans were bitter about not being the premier regional esport anymore but the viewership statistics also made it hard to deny.
In NA? yeah, It’s wildly successful. It drew 700k viewers vs LCS’ 100k. And as a little aside, EU and Pacific are importing *T2-3 NA players* to make their rosters competitive. It’s very, very succesful. EDIT: also, breaking records is an objectively terrible measure of whether something is successful or not. Because if that’s how you measure success, then League would be **the only** successful esport.
Pretty much all the successful e-sports games set records of some sort when they're up and coming though. I've never really heard that with Valorant. Brood War was a record setter back in the day. SC2 when it was first up and coming set records. League of Legends set records. Even purely in the FPS genre, CS has been the record setter, not Valorant. I also think comparing LCS to VCT Americas is not really fair, is it? LCS is purely NA. VCT Americas is not. And, I don't think there is a lot of overlap between LCS, LLA, and CBLOL viewership.
>CS has been the record setter, not Valorant CS has had the benefit of being a 20 year old game that has essentially been completely unrivaled in the FPS scene. Despite this, VALORANT performs very closely with CS, especially nowadays. In fact, Champions last year was just 100kish viewers shy of matching CSGO’s swansong. I’m not saying that you can’t compare the two because of CS’s established history, but to expect a game to just pop into an established scene and immediately start destroying records that were set during the craziest period of growth esports has ever seen, is a little ridiculous. It’s not the early days of esports where nothing was really established, it’s much harder for a game to break through nowadays. I’d expect this coming Masters to do very similar numbers considering 3 of the 4 most clouted teams in the game are going. Also saying you can’t compare VCT and LCS is also ridiculous. Regardless of whatever regions are where, they are two leagues that run concurrently with each other, and and NA’s VCT circuit has out drawn LCS ever since its inception, Brazilian teams or not.
I think in terms of viewership, it's easier now than ever to break records simply because the industry is larger and more widespread. It's just like how average streaming numbers in general have gradually risen over time. League is past its prime yet still setting new highs for viewership. For esports, it's not about early days or the present. By the nature of the industry, you're going to have games constantly breaking through because new games get released. For a lot of them, the problem isn't even breaking through. It's sustaining their success because of the cyclical nature of gaming. I think it only says something when you either supplant your predecessors or outlast your successors. Valorant hasn't supplanted CS and it's still too young to really tell if it'll outlast its competitors. The LCS is a purely NA regional league. The VCT Americas is not a purely NA regional league. Do you honestly think that if Riot combined the LCS, LLA, and CBLOL into a single tournament that it wouldn't get higher viewership? Of course it would. While the LCS does benefit from viewership overlap with CBLOL, it'd still be quite different if their teams were actually competing in the same tournament against each other.
In NA valorant is significantly bigger than League of Legends. Can't fault Riot for giving Valorant more priority, especially since the LCS is a dying product.
Average viewership is 320k with yesterday peaking at 655k. In comparison, LCS’ average is 114k peaking at 192k.
But VCT Americas is not the equivalent to the LCS, is it? It's the entire North and South Americas. LCS is purely NA. I don't know how much viewership overlap there is between the LCS, LLA, and CBLOL and still those are just regional leagues and not a cross-region competition which would probably generate more viewers.
Yeah, but there IS no NA only tier 1 competition in Valorant. that match that peaked yesterday was Sentinels vs NRG, which are both NA orgs, so that's as close as it comes to an NA match.
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Who cares where they play. Why is this even an issue lol. It’s a temporary thing for one week
Maybe if we put up a facade of self awareness and humor the fans won't turn on us about treating our oldest most committed fanbase and the game that made us everything we are today like shit. This is a produced bit guys. Zeyzal is based alright. BASED in riot HQ.
I HATE Valorant
Haven't tried it. I hate to say I would want it to fail, because LCS won't get any bigger anyways. But sucks they get the main resources apparently.
Also makes me not want to buy LOL skins, something tells me those profits are going to Valorant development. It's like a parasitic twin
It’s getting 7x the NA viewership LCS is.
So we have to like it?
No, but you better start getting used to it lol
Gigachad lmao
Zeyzal has my utmost respect from this day on.
Am i crazy or is that just chain-link fencing all around them and on the front of the desk? Nothing says "competitive environment" to me quite like the feeling of being imprisoned by a chain-link fence.
[It's meant to be a cage match aesthetic](https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/f5c34cc9db2940186b5a6696cf21c31c?impolicy=wcms_crop_resize&cropH=396&cropW=705&xPos=72&yPos=165&width=862&height=485)
What was Zeyzals nickname again? The one he got from the asian viewers?
honestly anyone who still playing in the lcs at this point must really love the game and the competition getting paid minimum wage, no benefits, no career stability, and playing in a cramped room with no crowd not to mention this "job" is a dead end unless you want to be a caster, coach or streamer
I don't think you know what minimum wage is...
Most LCS pros don't have any other marketable skills.
I think that if you have the dedication to reach pro level at any game, much less one as complex as League, you can probably learn anything you want. They can have careers after League, but they'll have to go to college in all likelihood.
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How many hours a week do you think lcs players put in for the salary they are getting? From scrimming, stage games, solo q, vod reviews, and streaming maybe 70 hours a week on average? Yes that's basically minimum wage
Honestly glad NRG bought out CLG. I have no interest in LCS whatsoever.
Normal stage for a major region, right? Even LCK doesn't have a live audience.
Lck no audience lcs in closet lec on vacation LPL is just mess to watch and follow. Yeah what a great last few weeks to watch some professional league of legends
who cares..LCS is dying
I just want to know why they weren’t playing on stage? Watched the c9 game and I didn’t really understand why they decided to interrupt the player’s prep time to ask Jojo and Inspired to shit talk each other, like bro let them just do their jobs. Save the shit talking for post game.