If you have to look for a team in the League of Legends scene that creates content with the aim of media coverage but has many of the most confusing moments, many people would immediately think of Gen.G – the reigning champion of the LCK. No one understands why, in just about 3 months, from November 2023 to January 2024, this team at the top of the world could fall into a deep crisis both in terms of professionalism and media. Especially, the drama surrounding Gen.G has been extremely serious, affecting the entire global League of Legends scene.
As we know, after the conclusion of the 2023 World Championship, Gen.G had a media display that affected their image with both LPL audiences and authorities in the region. Their subsequent cover-ups further deepened their crisis. This led to the match between Gen.G and T1 not being broadcast in the LPL and posed a risk of the LCK potentially being “banned” at MSI 2024, as the Chinese hosts take center stage.
However, as the new season starts, Gen.G’s performance has also “hit rock bottom”. Specifically, they released a clip in which they actively encouraged fans to chant the names of their opponents along with the word “down”, such as “Faker + down” if Gen.G secured First Blood and the player taken down was Faker. However, this “fanchant” was deemed distasteful. In fact, many Gen.G fans commented under the video expressing their reluctance to associate with such disrespectful actions from their team’s media.
Gen.G’s media team had to issue an urgent apology after they were bombarded by LCK fans in the comments of their very own video. However, the apology was not well received. Some fans even bluntly asked: “Why didn’t you check this from the start to prevent the incident before apologizing? The whole team looks like amateurs. Is this some sort of social media experiment to see how many fans will follow?”.
Clearly, Gen.G’s media team is causing the team to lose significant points. No one can say for sure if the players are affected, but at this moment, it can be said that Gen.G is in a serious media crisis, and a poor performance could lead to an explosive situation.