An Open Letter to Riot Devs

Originally sent this to support, but was told "That is a question that is more for the devs! "

So I'll copy paste it here.

When did Riot change the prize support for in-person events?

I am aware they lowered, then removed prize support for online tournaments. News about that is everywhere online and readily available. Of course I knew all about those changes because of how negatively they affected my organization and what we could offer to my university.

But we could work past it, because at least we still received prize support for our LAN events, which made sense as they cost money to run and took a ton more effort to facilitate; but after getting an event for this October accepted today, I saw that the prize support for LAN/in-person events has been slashed to a QUARTER of what it once was and there was ZERO communication about this. I did not receive an email from Riot, I did not see anything on the news page, I cannot find ANY literature addressing this online.

I am frankly feeling betrayed by Riot right now. I put untold hours into planning these in-person events- handling logistics, advertising, making sure we have 40+ participants, making sure everyone registers on your event page... And without so much as a courtesy email you have cut off my prize support at the kneecaps. I honestly thought I had mistakenly registered for an online tournament when I saw the prize support until I remembered there was no more online tournament prize support.

These prizes are abysmal and will not get people to drive all the way to the university or get the weekend off from working on a Saturday.

The timing for this could not be worse. Overwatch is becoming so big at my university but League was clinging on because of the amount of tournaments we could run. Through keeping our community so active we have retained a lot of our players, but now that we will no longer be able to run any events (especially since our university's administration doesn't allow us to charge for events), the league scene here will only be composed of extremely casual events like custom games with no or little prizes (from out of my pocket).

I don't understand the logic behind these changes. The removal of online events, although saddening, did make sense as they were abusable. This change to in-person events however does not make any sense. It honestly makes me scared for league of legends in a broader sense- is the game really in such a declining state that you can no longer afford to give away prizes? Because that is the perception of myself and many others to this change.

I don't even know what to ask of you. I'll assume this change wasn't out of greed and that you truly cannot afford to give out rp. I suppose that if you take nothing else away from this, let it be that you should have communicated better. You guys constantly apologize for your lack of communication on reddit, but it feels like no effort is being made. Your promises of improvement ring completely hollow.

Sincerely, Comeback Kids