League of Legends’ female characters wear revealing outfits — too revealing for Iranian hardliners. And thus too revealing for an Iranian eSports tournament.
According to Iran’s World Cyber Games Facebook page (via LoL Forums), the tournament has banned female League of Legends characters. They were banned to comply with Iranian customs.
The following League of Legends characters (or “champions” in LoL lingo) have apparently been banned: Ahri, Akali, Ashe, Caitlyn, Cassiopia, Diana, Elise, Evelyn, Fiora, Irelia, Janna, Karma, Katarina, Kayle, Leblanc, Leona, Lissandra, Lulu, Lux, Miss Fortune, Morgana, Nami, Nidalee, Oriana, Quinn, Riven, Sejuani, Shyvana, Sivir, Sona, Soraka, Syndra, Tristana, Vayne, Vi and Zyra.
So… that’s pretty much all of the game’s female characters, no? This is essentially like removing half the pieces from chess. These characters are essential to gameplay and strategy. Banning them completely changes the game.
These characters, however, are currently under consideration for tournament play in Iran: Diana, Fiora, Karma (only traditional skin), Kayle, Leona, Lissandra, Lulu, Lux, Nami, Quinn, Sejuani, Tristana and Vayne.
The Facebook post listing the specific banned female characters has since become unavailable. The League of Legends forums still have a translation of the Facebook post.
In the comments of this now deleted post, WGC Iran wrote that if they don’t comply, limitations would be put on the event, and organisers could even be forced to can the event.
However, there is still a WGC Iran Facebook post mentioning how the tournament organisers must follow the rules of Iran regarding League of Legends and that they are working with the government to find a solution.
Reza Babaei, the WCG Iran event coordinator, told Kotaku that the event organisers have been talking with the Iranian government for the past two months. The government agreed to permit tournament play of LoL, a game that, according to Babei, is “banned” in Iran, but only under certain conditions.
The tournament is scheduled to take place between September 12 and September 16. However, Babaei said organisers are still in talks with the government, so that’s only if everything works out.
WCG Iran told Kotaku it was an official World Cyber Games tournament, while the LoL Forums are calling it “unofficial.” Kotaku is following up with WCG.com.
Unofficial LoL Tournament In Iran Doesn’t Allow Players To Pick Most Female Champions [League of Legends — Thanks Sang!]
Comments
22 responses to “Female League Of Legends Characters Banned At Iranian Tournament”
Let’s see, by my count that leaves: Anivia(A bird), Annie(A little girl), Ezreal(An anime character) and Poppy(a Tanky Yordle thing). That’s uhhh. Yeah.
Er that blonde chick (Ezreal) is a dude
Lol I’m sure he knows its a dude.
That’s……. the joke 😛
Why would you even go to such a place for a tournament?
because it’s still a religious based government (with the worst religion possible) fucking islamic rules. people who have been jailed for being gay, looking like a slut or even going on youtube is considered illegal. peaceful religion my ass
Would be good to point out that the majority of Muslims do not fall under this category. How would you like it if we lump all Christians under the Westboro antics?
That’s just false equivalence. Yes, there are yahoos in every religion and denomination but the ones in that particular camp are more vocal, ignorant and violent than most. WBC is just a troupe of trolls and provocateurs who aren’t even taken seriously by the religious right, Pat Robertson is just a racist kook rendered irrelevant, and Tim McVeigh remains widely demonised by Christians.
Now, ask most practising Muslims what the appropriate punishment for apostasy or insulting the prophet is (it’s death). If I insulted the pope, no Catholic is going to murder me. If I produced The Book of Mormon musical, no Mormon is going to burn my effigy. If my sister refused a suitor’s advances, no Buddhist is going to throw acid in her face. However, if I wrote The Satanic Verses, imams will be tripping over themselves to declare a fatwa. While there are dozens of (industrialised) countries officially or not, practising Sharia Law, name one that’s ruled by biblical literalism.
I’m as much of a humanist and leftie as any, but this canard that “they’re all as bad as each other!” is patently false in 2013. Yes, religious nuts are pretty awful but those ones are worse and it’s neither racist nor unfair to say so.
Every religion deserves to be respected. Some are just more lax than others. MODERATE practising Muslims in general don’t tend to vilify other religion. It’s the zealots you have to be worried about. It’s what the media makes of the incident that you have to worry about. Unfortunately for Islamic demographic, a lot of current Muslims are form the low socio-economic bunch and they will blindly follow the imams in whatever they say. If you are talking about call for death for that Dutch cartoonist, that’s just the extremists talking.
Also if you do live in a place where the government is theist, fuckin’ follow their law. You ARE the foreigner, if the law doesn’t suit you, LEAVE. The Arab spring is taking care of themselves, they don’t need westerners to come in and tell them their law is archaic. In fact they probably know it as their leaders frequently hang out with western prime ministers.
Source: I lived in Indonesia amongst 200 million other Muslims.
Most practising Muslims don’t automatically support killing people any more than the kinds of westboro interpretations of the bible represent mainstream Christian beliefs. The Qur’an is not a manual for understanding how all modern Muslims think any more than the bible is for modern Christians. And it hasn’t exactly been all that long since Christians were killing each other over various differences of opinion about what an old book says anyway.
Most modern Christians, Muslims are actually just normal people with families and jobs and bills to pay. They aren’t mindless drones whose minds are defined by some religious law. It is a lot more complicated than that, unless you have an axe to grind.
Sadly, the Iranian people suffer under a theocratic regime which rose to power thanks to incompetent western meddling to control the oil. One day they will hopefully be free. Making this into some good guy/bad guy tribal division is simpleminded thinking. The problem is the theocracy. Give certain Christian groups such power and they would be punishing gays and ‘sluts’ too.
Oh, it’s fair to say that not ALL Muslims are like this.
Just the ones that run an entire fucking country.
Indeed, but again most people who go under them don’t care – they do also ridicule their government in those places you know. How did you think the Egyptian riot happened?
The citizens are realising that this is the case, and they are asking for change. Let the change takes its course. Again I don’t see why banning female characters who do wear somewhat exposing outfits in a video game suddenly means that the government is backwards and evil? They just have a different sense of modesty than us.
To be fair, the Iranian government is kinda backwards and evil. This is why the Iranians have to live their true lives behind closed doors. A law that says you have to cover your head (Iran) is just as wrong as one that says you cannot, as has been proposed in France. The majority of Iranians want freedom. Some would choose to continue their traditions of modesty, but this should always be a personal choice.
So you’re all about freedom are you Paddy? Freedom to do what ever you want, like molest children?
Disgusting. I suggest you take your child-molester defending antics elsewhere.
What a stupid comment. There’s plenty of space between a religious police state and libertarian pipedream for a healthy middle ground.
Im from iran and totally agree with you.we didnt choose or agree this..its been chosed by god knows who.we dont have any tournament right now and this shitty place dosnt have any individual server.so we should join EUW or EUN.
but luckily we can play LOL without any IP-Changer or VPN,((cause games like APEX need those witch reduces the game speed )).this issue isnt just for PC games but also android and ios games(not to mention social networks like facebook and twiter).well thats how it is.
Why should Iranians be allowed to have a tournament it’s just outrageous.
But seriously, if it’s the only game in town you either go or you don’t play.
just having a guess that there won’t even be women allowed to go to the tournament to watch it so .. why?
inb4 riot releases a special “Politically correct” line of skins where all the female characters are wearing baggy onesies
Lets all put aside the fact that Religion plays a big part of Iranian politics and way of life. Let’s be happy that such a tournament, official or not is being held in Iran, giving Iranian Gamers a chance to be part of the global LoL experience.
This is interesting. I wonder if they will release a set of conservative skins that will allow nations with these types of laws to play the full set of characters. Similarly there would be other games and other nations with different set of requirements. With the ability of games like this to have multiple skins it stops outright bans of this nature in conservative nations.
I request a skin of Katharina wearing a bur-qua, so its just a big black blob floating around the battlefield.
Seriously though, this is the government saying “WHAT CAN WE DO TO MAKE OURSELVES FEEL IMPORTANT.
There “bible” thing says, a woman must not show her jewels, which alot of people translate to as hair, some of them translate to as there full body.
I know they do have censorship on there internet, but there would still be much worse then some over exaggerated T&A.
TLDR; Stuff the government.
In this thread:
Westerners attempting to force our superior culture on others.
We should colonize them all right guys? The only reason they don’t follow our ways is because they haven’t been taught properly yet! We can send in our prophets of culture to introduce twerking and sexting!