Competitive Ruling: Echo Fox

Riot·Jan 23, 2016·3 votes·61,922 views

TL;DR: Echo Fox has failed to submit an eligible roster for Saturday’s game and will forfeit that game. Despite multiple deadline extensions, they were unable to field a roster in time to give fair notice to their Saturday opponent.

CONTEXT:

Late last week, we received reports from multiple teams questioning the eligibility status of multiple foreign players. Our previous work eligibility process was based on guarantees made by teams as well as high level spot checks of visa paperwork, but given the seriousness and breadth of the allegations, it was clear that such a system was not adequate for proving eligibility in the case of disputes.

Accordingly, we instituted mandatory submission of full work eligibility documents for all players. All teams were required to submit eligibility proof by this past Tuesday, January 19th, at 11:59PM PST. In the spirit of competition, we worked closely with Echo Fox through multiple deadline extensions to get an eligible roster. Unfortunately, they were not able to submit an eligible roster, and with no time left to give their Saturday opponent reasonable and fair knowledge of any potentially compliant roster for preparation, we have no choice but to disqualify FOX for Saturday’s game against NRG.

We are working with FOX to get an eligible roster in place in time for their match this Sunday.

RULING:

According to Rule 1.3 of the LCS Rulebook all players must be work eligible to play in the LCS, and as such we will be imposing upon FOX a Game Forfeiture for their Week 2 match against NRG.

81 Comments

wineFXJan 23, 201626 votes

Trump is coming for Fox

kamoosekaziJan 23, 20164 votes

How has this not got more up votes? lol

RightClickForWinJan 23, 201612 votes

Who wants to vote for trump?

kamoosekaziJan 23, 20167 votes

touche

REPORTING TEEMOJan 24, 201612 votes

you mean toupee?

KetiaXJan 24, 20162 votes

Echo Trump incoming.

You know what, it might be genius. Trump is just gonna buy all the best players from the entire world and make a ridiculous Super Team. Echo Trump with Faker, Dandy, Mata, imp, Ssumday incoming.

QuartzGolemJan 24, 20163 votes

Half of those players aren't even that good

JangbolsalJan 24, 20162 votes

1 is two time world champ senpai, three is legendary samsung white members and Ssumday is LCK summer MVP. Not that good? Then ur team Origin's roster is just terrible

QuartzGolemJan 25, 20161 votes

Dandy and Mata are washed up compared to other players as of late. So is imp, just look at LGD's worlds performance. And its Origen.

JangbolsalFeb 8, 20161 votes

Lol, dandy, mata and imp won the worlds so easily and suddenly all of them are washed up? Also, imp was the only one who did well among the LGD players at worlds. The chinese players such as GODV hold the team from qualifying to the round of 16. Do you even understand this game at all? http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=Quartzgolem I searched ur username. Nice talking to you season five BRONZE. It was such a waste of time

QuartzGolemFeb 13, 20161 votes

LOL, my solo queue skills have nothing to do with my knowledge of competitive League. The fact that you went to look up my rank means that you more than likely didn't have enough material to go off of for an argument for your side. Recent showings by all of the SSW season 4 crew have been sup par when compared to other players in the same role. Now lets look at you, just like you took to criticizing me. A team fire icon? Sounds like someone is a Korean fanboy who completely blinded by hype. Getting gold through boosting doesn't carry much weight either. Btw, if you would actually know your stuff, then you would know GODV is We1less at the moment, just a heads up.

JangbolsalMar 4, 20161 votes

Lol, your bronze status shows ur understanding of the game. Also, I made my reasoning and evidences before talking about u being bronze. The reason I searched you is because youve been making dumbest arguments ever. All ou are saying is SSW crew is sub par sht OHHHHHHHHH and I forgot to mention. fckin see the rosters of RNG right now. You dumsht

QuartzGolemMar 11, 20161 votes

Did you watch the IEM Katowice championship? Both LPL teams(RNG & QG) preformed poorly and were knocked out of the tournament by FNC(5th in EU LCS) who then lost to SKT(7th in LCK) 3-0. The reality of the situation is that these teams with former SSW members aren't preforming as well as other teams. And those teams aren't even the best in their respective regions. The fact that RNG is in first in their group in the LPL shows that the LPL is currently a weaker Pro league than the other major regions leagues(EU LCS, NA LCS, LCK, LMS).

TooPrettyToDieJan 25, 20163 votes

Lol Quartz. You obviously don't watch LPL. Mata is washed up? You mean bringing Royal to number 1 team in the LPL? Even on Vici, their macro plays were good. They never had the talent to support Mata. Imp played great in China and even in Worlds. Mechanically, he is a top adc. Not his fault his team played terrible.

QuartzGolemMar 11, 20161 votes

Talent to support Mata?????? Mata is the support, are you completely clueless on this subject?

Damorion215Jan 24, 20164 votes

What does Trump have to do with this? I really love it when people try to politicize something that has nothing to do with politics. Pretty childish if you ask me.

TooPrettyToDieJan 25, 20162 votes

Big part of Trumps campaign "promise" is that he is going to expel all the illegal immigrants out of the country. Since the accusation is that fox is giving jobs to immigrants without proper documentation, Trump is coming for Fox.

Damorion215Jan 28, 20161 votes

Oh yeah, the connection there has been made. But in this day and age, connection or not, anyone will say anything referring to [insert political figure here] to start a flame war.

theTotemJan 28, 20162 votes

It's just trolls man... Take it easy

Damorion215Jan 31, 20161 votes

I know it is and I am taking it easy, lol. I just like talking to them to see how long it takes for them to get bored and salty. [slayer-jinx-wink]

EleshakaiJan 23, 201613 votes

I knew Echo Fox was going to be a free win for NRG... but I didn't expect it to be literally. Well, that sucks, one less game for today. :(

Owatatsumi KamiJan 23, 201612 votes

"...we instituted mandatory submission of full work eligibility documents for all players. All teams were required to submit eligibility proof by this past Tuesday, January 19th, at 11:59PM PST." Shouldn't this have all been taken care of BEFORE LCS started? These teams already played for one week of the new LCS season. Why is this just now being done?

MadorundJan 23, 20164 votes

Read the first paragraph of Context. They were accepting rosters in good faith that everything was legit, and they would spot check it from there in the coming weeks (due to visas being processed and the like.) The only reason they demanded this eligibility proof now is because multiple teams did not believe that the players were allowed to be here, and felt like something shady was going on. From what it sounds like from this post, it looks like EF has multiple players that have not been approved for the work visa, or at least they could not generate the proof that these players had an active visa.

EDIT: Made sentence structure cleaner

Spiral ContinuumJan 24, 20165 votes

This "in good faith" business is honestly just poor business/league management sense by Riot. No international sports federation would let players hit the field unless they were fully verified to work after trades. Riot needs to study how this sort of thing works for other sports like Soccer and Hockey so that this sort of thing stops happening. Players got subbed for a lot last year at the start of the season; given that this problem is repeating itself(now in a more dramatic form) it just indicates that something on Riot's end is facilitating these mistakes. They CAN'T leave it up to the individual teams because some of the teams are managed better/worse than others and sometimes the government is just slow.

Maybe international trades need to make a player inelligible for a brief period of time(a month?) unless they show that their visa paperwork is done. At any rate, it can't continue if Riot wants this sport to be taken seriously. They are making the whole sport look massively unprofessional and at this point it's a significant PR issue.

Anyway, hopefully they get it fixed, because I for one want to see international League of Legends remain an active sport for more than 15 years. I'd like it to become a thing that people see as seriously as Football(international or american) long-term.

Owatatsumi KamiJan 25, 20162 votes

I read the context. Why are they accepting rosters in good faith at all when what they are following up on is a requirement for playing in the LCS and this has been a reoccurring problem? Why is this not part of the standard paper work teams have to submit before the LCS starts along with their other roster paperwork. It seems silly to me that they even had to ask for these documents, especially considering how teams were plagued with these same issues last year. Riot needs to re-evaluate this process if they want the LCS to be stable and esports to grow. At the very least they should've gathered all this information a week before any matches were played. And made deadlines during the week to submit this type by if their roster was changing for the next week matches. They have some of this in place but evidently not enough. I have nothing against foreign players in the LCS but the rules governing them being allowed are wishy washy at best. This is a disservice to the League, the teams, players, and the fans.

inReluareJan 23, 201611 votes

how will this affect fantasy points???

B IL A K EJan 23, 20165 votes

There won't be points for those games. The players that play this weekend will receive the "Win" but only points associated with that "Win" status will be granted. Replace your NA players that have matches against NRG on that day.

Smart KittyJan 23, 20163 votes

{quoted}

how will this affect fantasy points???

Simple, if you have NRG, you're most likely done for. If you Echo fox, you're even worse off. 2nd week in a row I gotta start Impact when he's only playing one game.

MorpeyJan 23, 20167 votes

The fact that almost every comment here is players worried about how their fantasy points will be affected, is immensely amusing.

DJApokJan 23, 20166 votes

Damn, Fantasy has been completely screwed over this season. 10 roster changes every week and now a forfeit that makes any NRG or Fox players worth nothing. Now I have to drop GBM, a high priority pick just so i don't auto lose this week.

Smart KittyJan 23, 20164 votes

{quoted}

Damn, Fantasy has been completely screwed over this season. 10 roster changes every week and now a forfeit that makes any NRG or Fox players worth nothing. Now I have to drop GBM, a high priority pick just so i don't auto lose this week.

Idk about you, but I'd rather suck it up and take a 1 week loss than drop GBM for some terrible replacement.

I Isaac IJan 23, 20165 votes

Idk why people drafted anyone from liquid knowing that at any moment people could be shifted around. And idk man, I would just keep the 1 week loss rather than lose GBM

Spiral ContinuumJan 24, 20161 votes

I kinda agree about GBM but there were a couple of safe picks on Liquid: Piglet and Fenix. Not coincidenntally I'm playing them. Hope to crap that Fox fields a team for Sunday or I am completely screwed.

Von FillerJan 23, 20166 votes

This is how you don't play fantasy sports.

Petey PastramiJan 23, 20165 votes

Really wish the viewers were given more heads up about this. Now I'm screwed because Keith was my ace in the hole and the only player on my roster that I'm eligible to swap him with.... is NRG's support, Konkwon -_-

kamoosekaziJan 23, 20163 votes

If they don't fix this by tomorrow, I'm screwed for my TL points... definitely screws a ton of people for the week, but I'd rather lose the week than to rearrange my roster completely

Bramble BerryJan 23, 20164 votes

If a team that's wasn't headed by someone famous had done this they would have been fined out the ass and been made an example of.

NoxsolumJan 23, 20166 votes

I don't think this is a fine worthy offence if an offence at all, I'm not exactly sure on how the recruiting process goes but I can't imagine it is easy.

Bramble BerryFeb 19, 20161 votes

It'd be nice if people that are dumb enough to not understand the point didn't respond with an entirely irrelevant thought.

KilkinJan 23, 20164 votes

/work night shift /get home and crash at 7am. /wake up at 3:30 PM /no time to changer roster, just automatically lose two players for today, one for tomorrow most likely.

...That twitching you see means I doing great. item 3901

Spiral ContinuumJan 24, 20164 votes

Riot it was really almost inevitable that this would happen eventually, given international trading, if you hadn't already instituted mandatory work eligibility submission. This is poor league-management and hopefully will be standardized going forward. Sure, it means that last-minute trades won't work as well, but honestly international trades should be orchestrated by teams with enough notice to fully secure visas. If they can't submit full work-visa eligibility then they shouldn't be able to play. Maybe institute a delay on play eligibility for all international trades up to 1 month OR until a successful visa application has been resolved.

Also hopefully they are setup to get players "P visas" because those can have a certain amount of priority but have limits on number available every year. Riot should be securing a quota of them and then doling them out to teams as needed. Because seriously, this doesn't look bad for Echo Fox, it looks bad for Riot when it happens every year that players have to skip games(or in this case an entire team) because Riot isn't helping them get their visas secured.

I see this as a failure for League of Legends Esports that seriously needs to be remedied, not something to blame Fox for. Riot, this is said with deep respect and love for the sport you guys are trying to create: please get it together. I want to see your Esport succeed long-term and this sort of stuff makes it all look extremely unprofessional and disorganized. That's on you. This should be a learning time for whoever is managing the Esports wing of Riot's business.

::Edited for clarity::

PhatWhiteFeb 13, 20161 votes

Is it really Riot's job to get players their visa's? I dont feel like it is. Seems to me it is the responsibility of the team's management to ensure their players are fully documented. Riot is cutting a new trail with what they are doing with LoL for the eSports scene on such a scale, so naturally there will be hiccups. Having said that, if a team ignores the rules and then gets caught and penalized, it actually looks better on Riot as they followed through on something and are amending the rulebook to prevent recidivism. If anyone looks bad, it's Echo Fox: the team is already trash, and now they are caught trying to field ineligible players so their record gets yet another point in the L column. Hopefully they can find some real (read: legal) players for their matches to avoid relegation. Though honestly if they don't then no one will care because all EF did was buy their spot in the LCS anyway, so it's fitting thay they lose it. Personally I think if a team is splitting while owning a spot in the LCS then that spot should be played for and earned by the Challenger Series teams, not purchased, but that is a topic for another post.

Well done Riot and the whistle-blowers.

Editted for grammar

TirefruckkJan 23, 20163 votes

Will their game Sunday against TL be canceled too?

babycakes0404Jan 24, 20162 votes

again i get snubbed of my impact fantasy points wtf ... Impact played only one fucking game so far like wtf... so annoyed

NicJinJan 24, 20162 votes

[zombie-brand-facepalm]

V0LJan 23, 20161 votes

[deleted]

brian radJan 23, 20162 votes

We are working with FOX to get an eligible roster in place in time for their match this Sunday.

Do you even read?

V0LJan 23, 20163 votes

You're right, I should asked the what the chances of Sunday's game not happening instead.

EllyndyJan 23, 20161 votes

I hope to god that they get their roster fixed by sunday. I have lourlo, Fenix, and Piglet on my team and I can't get rid of them without someone sniping.