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'League of Legends' mockumentary 'Players' heads to Paramount+ on June 16th
Paramount+ has released the first trailer for Players, its long-awaited League of Legends mockumentary from American Vandal creators Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda.
Vi from ‘League of Legends’ arrives in ‘Fortnite’
The best character from Arcane joins the battle for the Island.
'League of Legends' mid-season tournament canceled due to COVID-19
Riot delayed the Mid-Season Invitational from May to July in a bid to keep it on this year's schedule.
'Valorant' is just the start of a massive year for Riot Games
Riot is launching multiple games this year, including Legends of Runeterra and Wild Rift.
'League of Legends' might be coming to smartphones
League of Legends might eventually take up residence on fans' iOS and Android homescreens. Developer Riot is said to be working with parent company Tencent on a mobile version of the ultra-popular MOBA.
Nike embraces esports with 'League of Legends' sponsorship deal
What was once a rumor is now official: Nike is moving into esports. The apparel giant has signed a four-year deal with the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) in China, a massive competition with 16 professional teams. Nike will supply every squad with sneakers, casual clothing and eventually professional jerseys. In a tweet, the LPL confirmed that Nike-produced garments will be available to purchase at the Mid-Season Invitational in May. The first Nike-produced jerseys will then be revealed during the all-important League of Legends World Championship in Paris later this year.
Facebook's latest attempt to court teens is a 'cringey' meme library
Facebook is once again trying to court the kids, this time with a meme-filled app called LOL. Facebook confirmed the existence of the LOL to TechCrunch. The app, which offers an endless feed of videos clips and GIFs, features content pulled from the most popular meme pages on Facebook but apparently is not resonating with the kids testing it.
Fans are mad at one of the biggest 'League of Legends' teams
Winning a professional League of Legends title is tough. Keeping fans happy, one esports organization has learned, can be even tougher.
Brexit is even making 'League of Legends' champions pricier
As if the prices of tech hardware shooting up as a result of last summer's Brexit vote wasn't disappointing enough, now it's making the cost of entirely virtual items more taxing on the wallet. League of Legends developer Riot Games has announced that from July 26th, it's adjusting the UK prices of Riot Points (RP) -- which players use to unlock champions and buy skins/other in-game swag -- to compensate for the decline in the value of the pound.
The OmniWear Arc is a haptic neckband for serious gamers
There's a lot to keep track of in a game like Counter-Strike. You need to know your location, where your teammates are, your ammo supply and most importantly -- where your enemies are. With all these sights and sounds coming at you, it's easy to miss something, which is why OmniWear is looking to offload some of that cognitive load to another sense: touch. The Arc neckband, launching on Kickstarter today, vibrates to let you know where your opponents lurk, ensuring you don't miss a thing.
'Quake' is coming back to the PC with a modern twist or two
Bethesda kicked off its big E3 2016 showcase with a old favorite: Quake. Big guns, team battles, gore. Quake Champions is coming -- at the moment to PCs and will be arena-style shooter "designed for people at all skill levels". The most impressive technical part? The team is promising 120Hz with unlocked framerates. That's seriously smooth -- and sounds so very ready for VR. Of course, it's also perfectly timed in a current = boom in competitive shooters, especially with the mention of "characters with unique abilities" -- like this thing. Gaze at the trailer below, but be warned it's a bit graphic in that Quake kinda way.
Poorly-named 'League of Legends' players get psychology surveys
League of Legends has roughly 67 million players, so the developer has a big challenge when it comes to monitoring the community the size of a small country — and curbing the worser elements. While it's involved itself with how players interact with the game, this time it's doing something more: it's recently started asking ill-named players to take psychological self-evaluation tests. LoL players can report others for inappropriate character names that don't gel with the game's terms of use. However, this week, some players noticing a different naming process for characters that weren't okay the first time around. Gamers now have to complete a survey, play 50 matches, then follow that up with another survey. After that, players can change their name to something that follows the rules. (Before, cheekily-named users got a temporary name until they picked a better one.)
Live 'League of Legends' coverage is coming to BBC Three
The BBC will tap into the popular world of eSports next week by offering live coverage of the League of Legends World Championships for the first time. From October 15th, BBC Three will deliver action from all four days of the quarter finals at Wembley, with Radio 1 DJ Dev Griffin hosting proceedings. He'll be joined by gaming casters Leigh 'Deman' Smith and James 'Stress' O'Leary, who will offer additional context on the action as it unfolds.
One of eSports' biggest stars retires with repetitive strain injury
If you're into eSports, then it's highly likely that you would have heard of Hai Lam. He's best known as the Mid Laner and captain of Cloud9, which is regarded as the best US eSports team for the popular online multiplayer game League of Legends. Nonetheless, just less than a week after his team finished second in the North American Championship Series, Cloud9's shotcaller has announced he's getting out of the game. Like football players are forced to retire when their knees give out, a persistent wrist injury means Lam can no longer mix it with other A-list players on the big stage.
Hulu's GIF library offers visuals for your reaction tweets
Websites like Giphy and others are useful for supplying a GIF to get your point across. Hulu is looking to help too, so long as your thoughts/feelings/hot takes can be summed up with an image from one of the TV shows streamed there. The company launched it's own repository, which is appropriately housed on Tumblr, allowing you to search for specific shows, actions and reactions to find the perfect moving picture for your needs. Heck, there are even gems like this one from Star Trek: The Original Series.
Get your free League of Legends soundtrack now
You know what's awesome? Free stuff. Free stuff is awesome. And League of Legends is notable for giving away free goodies over the years, so we're not surprised to see that Riot's put the game's brand-new soundtrack album up on the site as a free download -- before it's going to be sold elsewhere. So if you want to get 15 generally excellent tracks (we know; we've listened to it), then head on over and snag it now!
Another university is adding League of Legends scholarships
Robert Morris University made waves last summer when it announced its intention to add e-sports -- and more specifically, League of Legends scholarships -- to its athletic department. This week Kentucky's University of Pikeville followed suit when it publicized its offering of "at least 20 scholarships" to LoL players who will be treated like the school's other student-athletes. "There will be practice time and video time when they have to study other teams for upcoming competitions," said the university's new media director Bruce Parsons.
Riot is building a dedicated network for League of Legends
How important is ping disparity to the makers of the world's biggest MOBA? Well, Riot is currently building a dedicated network specifically for League of Legends, so it must be pretty important. The firm explains why in a Q&A posted this week, and the short version is that your ISP is focused primarily on moving large amounts of data in seconds or minutes, which is fine for streaming video but not so fine for real-time gaming. To make matters worse, your internet connection "might bounce all over the country instead of running directly to where it needs to go," Riot says, "which can impact your network quality and ping whether the game server is across the country or right down the street." The solution is a direct network for LoL traffic as well as some sort of partnership with US and Canadian ISPs to facilitate player access.
WoW and FFXIV see boosted playtime on Raptr; ArcheAge playtime 'cratered'
Another month, another Raptr report. Yesterday Raptr.com posted its most played PC games list for November, and MMOs did rather well. Unsurprisingly, World of Warcraft surged up the list to #2 thanks to the Warlords of Draenor expansion. "The MMO's monthly play time was up 71.3% versus October," Raptr's press release says. And though WoW "likely" drew from League of Legends' numbers, it couldn't quite usurp the MOBA's #1 seat. Among other MMOs, ArcheAge playtime "cratered by 39.97%," but World of Tanks and Final Fantasy XIV both saw rises in theirs. Guild Wars 2 rose in rank, Raptr says, but lost playtime in November vs. October. SWTOR fell two places since October. As always, Raptr roundups come with the caveat that they represent Raptr users on PC, not all gamers; some MMO studios are also known to boost their Raptr numbers with in-game incentives. But since some of these games refuse to release population data, you might call this the next best snapshot of popularity outside of touring the servers yourself.
27 million people watched League of Legends' world finals
Riot has posted the viewership numbers from League of Legends' 2014 world championship, and they're pretty impressive. That said, the total unique viewer count for the finals (27 million) dipped by five million from the 2013. Riot says that this year's viewers tended to watch for longer periods of time for an average of 67 minutes as opposed to 42 minutes the previous year. You can soak up the rest of the numbers at Riot's official website.
