The third-party Steam key resellers have fallen afoul of the League of Legends developers, and it could spell disaster for some prominent professional teams.
The report from Daily Dot kicked off what could be a new powder keg in League of Legends. G2A, a third-party reseller of keys for Steam and other digital marketplaces, had been promoting another site that sold League of Legends (LoL) accounts and services where gamers could pay to have their LoL accounts boosted.
Understandably, Riot were hardly impressed by this and after what one of the company’s staffers publicly described as “many weeks of back and forth conversations”, the developer decided to ban the key reseller as a sponsor.
“We do not at all enjoy affecting the income of the teams, but the LCS rules include guidelines specifically against this sort of thing. We did however keep teams in the loop during the process in an attempt to avoid any surprises,” Riot’s Sargonas wrote on Reddit. He added in further comments that Riot specifically requested G2A “remove all account selling and boosting-site links”.
G2A has been a prominent backer for many professional organisations in the past. The reseller jumped on board with ESL to sponsor the ESL One Frankfurt event earlier this year. They’ve put money behind Team Liquid and currently sponsor Cloud9 (whose CS:GO squad is travelling to Melbourne for this weekend’s $55,555 Crown Invitational), paiN Gaming, H2K, Counter Logic Gaming and others.
Those teams will have to drop G2A as a sponsor, and the end result will almost certainly — although it must be stressed that this hasn’t happened yet — result in G2A following rival reseller Kinguin in abandoning all its League of Legends sponsorships.
Sargonas added that teams have been kept informed throughout the process “in an attempt to avoid any surprises”, but given the nature of sponsorships that might not be a pleasant outcome. What will be interesting to see is whether G2A switches tack and moves their marketing dollars into more Dota 2 or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams, where the reseller already has an established presence.
Comments
9 responses to “Riot Bans Key Reseller G2A, G2A Could Abandon League Of Legends Sponsorships”
“Steam key/s” getting tossed around in an article about League of Legends is curious… Especially since neither have ANY relevance to the other.
And before the “But G2A sell Steam keys!” crowd shows up, yeah well they also sell Origin keys, Xbox live keys, PSN keys.
The part where G2A was promoting a league of legends boosting service is probably the relevant part.
And will make everyone else wary of them. G2A will never be fully trusted again.
Not really, that’s primarily what the site sells, which Riot doesn’t have a problem with. The problem they do have is that they
Does G2A own Cloud9? Their logo is even on Cloud9 clothing.
The article says they sponsor that team. It isn’t uncommon to see a sponsor’s logo on the uniform or merchandise of a sporting team, so it doesn’t necessarily indicate ownership.
“Riot bans sponsor website that promotes breaking the terms of service for League of Legends” is what it really boils down to.. has nothing to do with selling Steam keys.
I must admit I’m surprised they aren’t ok with G2A but Alphadraft gets a pass.
Isn’t Alphadraft just a fantasy esports thing? G2A seems to be selling ELO Boosting, which is explicitly against the EULA.
Maybe its because their main products are Steam keys and it is what they are known for you moron.