Griffin is getting hit with fines and bans. It’s a good time to be one of the unremarkable people on the team. Read more below.
Remember the recent controversy regarding Griffin that cvMax uncovered? Well, things have finally come to a head. Griffin director Cho Gyu-Nam and head coach Kim “cvMax” Dae-Ho have been permanently banned from all business activities related to the game developer. Additionally, Griffin has been fined $85,000 after the recent investigation into Seo “Kanavi” Jin-Hyeok’s contract.
Minors, not miners: Riot determined that the transfer of Kanavi violated the rules because he was a minor and signed it without the consent of a legal representative. So as a result of this, Riot will be changing the rules further in this upcoming season to ensure such situations never happen again.
Representation without representative: The report further indicated that director Cho Gyu-Nam unfairly used his position of power against Kanavi, pressuring the player into accepting JD Gaming’s proposal and bypassing legal representative. Instead, Griffin’s law firm signed the contract and claimed itself as his legal representative.
A fine fine: The fine leveled against Griffin was done so because, according to Riot, the team didn’t take the proper measures against its former director and head coach.
Esports organization Cloud9 was recently fined $175,000 for contract violations. Cloud9 issued equity as a form of compensation to seven different players, which is a bit of a no-no. The fine amounted to $25,000 per violation.
Who done it: An investigation was first led by LCS staff when it was discovered that players had signed contract extensions, but didn’t submit the contract summary sheets for league review. LCS gave the teams a week to submit. When the sheets began to come in, none of them reflected that there were any other agreements between the team owner and players.
However, it came to light that players had received Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) as a bargaining portion of the contract. When asked about the violation, Cloud9 ownership told the league that they were unaware of the rule violation and they thought it was permissable. Players likewise thought it was permissable because they “did not believe they would be offered equity if it was agains the rules.”
Making amends: In addition to the resulting fine, Cloud9 has also been directed to buy back the outstanding RSUs that were issued to former players and cancel any existing RSU grants, or create substitites.
Simplicity Esports is a sizable organization with facilities all over the US. A good many of them are about to be put to good use with the announcement of a national esports tournament.
The deets: The tournament is for Fortnite and will take place on Black Friday (Nov. 29). It is a free entry cross-platform tournament with a $5,000 cash prize. The goal is to allow everyone the chance to play with no entry hurdles.
Richard Lewis was a memorable part of the 2019 Esports Awards ceremony when during his acceptance speech he decried the current coverage of esports by numerous mainstream news websites. He’s since had to go into his reasoning for taking such an aggressive stance. Well, he has more to say on the topic.
He referenced one early article on Kotaku where the reporter ridiculed esports and said there was something wrong with esports fans, calling himself “one of the Regular People.” Richard then went on to list article after article that showed how happy Kotaku was to push “drivel.”
Examples: One article talked about people who attend Smash events have hygiene problems. Then there’s an article about what prevented women from going pro in esports with a dialogue between two women who had never tried to go pro.
What is wrong: Is there actually a problem with these publishers for allowing such works to go live? Or is it more to do with their readers’ acceptance of such articles as something worthy of mention? Because they’re going to keep publishing whatever gets the most reads. Maybe mockery sells well with their audience? Or maybe the writers just don’t know any better and are simply trying to hide their inexperience with the industry.
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Ubisoft’s senior director of esports, Che Chou, said, “We don’t go out to create esports games.” Instead, they use their creatives that design the games and ask the question “how do you make it esports ready when it comes out?” While not every game is suitable to the esports industry, such as Assassin’s Creed, they still try to shape new games to cater to the booming industry.
This includes super basic things like a spectator mode so that people can more easily telecast the game. Then there’s things like “stats” and “some kind of social system” and how “we handle teams” and other infrastructure items that players can rally around.
Roster changes continue to occur as players explore their options with other teams, teams trade players, and so on. Here’s a continuation of the changes occurring on teams’ rosters:
Riot Games first teased the Zed comic series earlier in the month, giving us all a sneak peak of its collaboration with Marvel on the Master of Shadows. Now we can safely say the first of six issues is here.
The premise: The comic follows Zed (formerly Govos) as he works to protect his homeland Ionia. The first issue has everything from death to reunions to flashbacks.
Read it: The full comic can be found on Riot’s Universe page.
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