League of Legends: Clanhopping is devaluating the League: a solution

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By Eefje 'sjokz' Depoortere

May 22, 2012 17:37

Article index:

Players as flavour of the week
Contracts: possible solution
"Transfer window" - Riot Ex Machina - Conclusion

Contracts: a possible solution

We do find examples of limiting transfers in the gaming scene in several tournament rules, like in this ESL SC2 tournament: but it is still very limited:

"Clans may only acquire players from other SCCL clans in the week before the playdays 1, 5 and 9. Players acquired outside of one of the transfer periods may only play after the next transfer period has passed. Players acquired during a transfer period may play right away with the exception of not being allowed to play vs clans they already played vs with their old clan in the same competition stage."

For League of Legends, we can find a similar example in the circuit points used by the Season Championships. If for instance five players play under the SK tag, and four players leave, SK would lose all their circuit points for that season (example: Epik Gamer could have lost all their circuit points if Westrice didn't stay on the team as a sub).

The SC2 ruling proves that the problem is not restricted to League of Legends, but it seems that the lack of rules does affect the League scene the most. In comparison no such "global rule" exists in the Starcraft 2 scene either. As in League, Some clans tend to work with contracts, some don't.

In teams that work with contracts players are bound to a certain team for a period of time because they made a mutual agreement like two professionals. Players can still leave if their conracts expire, or can be benched for the rest of the season when they are bought up by another team. Players can also leave if their contracts get bought out (example: IwillDominate went to Dignitas because they bought out his contract with Complexity)

Alexander Mueller insists on the importance of such contracts, not in the least for the pro players themselves:

"Based on what I said before, they are absolutely necessary. Even with the different environment LoL might be in due to all the streaming. Once this market starts fading and decreasing players will understand exactly what I am saying here."

Forcing every League clan to work with contracts might be, in my opinion, very hard to implement, because the competition consists of professional and amauteur organisations taking their first steps in the scene with varying structures and budgets. And as for professional organisations versus "amateur" ones: not even all professional organisations prefer to work with binding contracts.

So I propose a second option: using "transfer periods" to limit the constant line-up changes.

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