Re: League's Demise Article on Reddit
This is just regarding the article posted today on reddit about League's demise.
I thought I'd just repost the counterargument, lest it get buried under all the posts. Take it as you will.
This article is wrong on so many levels. What they fail to understand is the players who spend money and are invested in the game are not leaving. The casuals are leaving. This is why que times are getting crazy. In gold I hear about people waiting 10 minutes to find a match.
Take a look at the league subreddit stats: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/about/traffic
If this month holds the current pace then league will hit an all time traffic low in the last 3 years and a 50% decline since the high of November.
2 things in my mind caused this:
The community was dissatisfied with never getting what they want. Riot staffers would post about how we wanted something but then tell us that's not actually what we want... In reality they were doing mental gymnastics to convince themselves that what they wanted to do as a company to make more money was really in our best interests.
Other games came along that are treating their communities really well. Overwatch was able to come out of nowhere and was able match 2/3 of the league subreddit's traffic: https://www.reddit.com/r/overwatch/about/traffic
It's simple, people have options. If you are going to tell people they don't want sandbox for 5 years then they are going to switch games. If you devs are going to be snarky about how you think you want something but you really don't then people are going to switch games. If you are going to pump out endless skin content while the game becomes stale then people will switch games. Expect layoffs.
Here is a real eye opener, bjerg was streaming the other day for a couple hours and didn't break 10k before I left his stream. He is the best mid laner in NA and previously was breaking 20k within an hour of turning on his stream. League shit the bed. You make BILLIONS not millions over the years and you don't invest in the things people want like replays? Horrible business management. They probably just threw away the biggest gaming community in the world because they think they know better than players. Meanwhile games like overwatch are pumping out community requested features left and right. Great job Riot.
It's not the people who have spent money who are leaving. I have a couple hundred into my account. The people leaving are the casuals. This is why the traffic is down on twitch, on youtube, and on this subreddit. I saw a fnatic post match discussion vs a top 4 team get less than 300 votes in the first 5 hours. People pretending something isn't happening are living in a fantasy.
Casuals leaving is a huge problem because it will effect a ton of other areas. When sponsors of teams see leagues traffic down the will pay less to sponsor them and will funnel money into other games to sponsor instead. Traffic from the casuals matters. It affects everything.