In a community update on June 8th, Riot Games, the developer of popular multiplayer online battle arena game League of Legends, announced that any high school esports league can now host season-long interscholastic leagues. The move ends the exclusive partnership Riot Games had with esports organizer PlayVS.
The move comes after months of growing criticisms against PlayVS as high schools around the country stated that the exclusivity deal with PlayVS hindered their efforts and made it difficult to sustain their programs with the high entry fees that were demanded. Esports journalist Jacob Wolf reported that PlayVS allegedly misled Epic Games during their negotiations regarding player fees for their exclusive deal with Fortnite. Wolf’s report was followed by a report from The Washington Post that stated both Activision-Blizzard and Nintendo denied that their deals with PlayVS were exclusive in nature, although PlayVS advertised it as such.
PlayVS is a for-profit start-up that was the exclusive home to high school League of Legends since February 2020. The deal barred other organizers or platforms from creating and hosting official season-long scholastic leagues or any tournaments longer than two weeks long. “We’ve determined that the best way to set up high school esports for success is to further open, rather than narrow, avenues for competition…Going forward, our priority with high school esports is to create more opportunities for schools and players to decide how, when, and where they want to compete,” Riot Games said in a recent statement.
Despite losing their exclusive right to high school League of Legends competitions, PlayVS stated that they will continue to host scholastic tournaments on their platform.
Image from: Riot Games
