Screw Tencent
Seriously. Just screw 'em. If you ever wondered why many times Riot has catered to pros and used its resources to make more money rather than making the game a better place and more enjoyable game for the majority playerbase; Tencent.
22 Comments
I'd like some sources for your wild claims.
Tencent bought out Riot literally around 1 year or so after the release of LoL in early Feb 2011. The current state of LoL would only have Riot to blame, Tencent has nothing to do with this.
For any new players present, or any players who don't care much about the business side of things, Tencent Holdings a Chinese telecommunications company that holds something like a 97% share of Riot Games' stock. Business decisions are undoubtedly directed by or made in conjunction with some Board of Directors™ full of Tencent staff, and Riot Games isn't much more than a creative shell at this point.
Fun fact: both founding members of Riot had backgrounds and careers in business and knew nothing about game development. I'm sure they've hired some vaguely qualified people, but the standards of workflow and quality of employee are likely heavily influenced by the first few hires, such as Guinsoo (DotA All-stars dev) and Ghostcrawler (the guy infamously responsible for Flavour of the Month buffs and nerfs in WoW---and the guy who also had no background in game development or even creative arts prior to his work on the Balance Team™ of Wow).
Tencent controls their budget. You're crazy if you think they have no influence when they actually have all the influence.
I know that in 2013 they weren't making a profit from eSports. 2 years can cause a change, but I doubt it. While the viewership has gone up since then, so has the cost of running the events.
Then you realize that Riot said that Tencent doesn't actually tell them to do things...
Yes... Riot has said this, and Tencent doesn't actually interact with many of the stocks they hold. Riot being one of those.