Team Immunity Punished by Riot for Not Paying their Players

Professional eSports are still in their infancy, and League of Legends developer Riot has been acting as nursemaid for the past few years, perhaps doing more to improve the legitimacy of eSports than Nintendo, Capcom, or even Blizzard and Valve. There’s no denying that those companies have done great things for the e-sport scene, and a lot of them also offer more money to winners than Riot, but Riot has made huge steps to improve the e-sports culture, put marketing dollars behind eSports teams, and get some of the best (or, in my opinion, THE best) shoutcasters on their payroll.

And sometimes, like raising real children, when the carrot doesn’t work, you gotta use the stick--especially if the problem is 'not enough carrots’. Australia’s budding eSports scene, small even by eSports standards, has gotten a huge hit today when it was announced that Riot Games was banning Team Immunity players or owners from participating in any Riot-hosted eSport event, for two years.

Their crime? Not paying the players enough. See, League of Legends mandates every team pays their players an undisclosed minimum salary, and reports have been leaking in that Team Immunity players were working for less than that minimum amount, if they were even getting paid at all. Therefore, they won’t be able to participate in the upcoming World Finals, which they had recently qualified for in the Wildcard bracket.
 

“In both splits, multiple reports from players alleged that Team Immunity failed to pay them their owed match payments within a reasonable margin of time. Upon investigation, we confirmed that these payments were outstanding within the agreed-upon time period and that Team Immunity were in violation of their team agreement.”

So this may seem like a dick move on Riot’s part, right? Punishing the players for not getting paid enough? Well, only kind of: while they won’t be participating in the worlds, Riot says the players have “earned their slots” in the Oceanic Professional League and can re-join at any time… but they need to do it with a new team. A task that shouldn’t be difficult, considering their skills, but still--busywork.

Anway, odd bit of eSport news there. Usually bans are levied against players for their toxicity, not teams for money woes, but, hey--good to see no one is immune to justice.