You may not know, for professional players, official commentators, and staff operating within the formal tournament system of Riot Games and its partners (including all League of Legends titles, League of Legends: Wild Rift…), broadcasting games from other publishers is strictly prohibited.
This issue is even outlined in contracts, and depending on the nature of each region, violations of the contract will be handled in various ways. This is relatively understandable, as not only Riot but any other gaming company would never allow any “promotion” for other companies’ products, specifically streaming games.
Recently, the League of Legends community in China has been shaken by the “survival swordplay” game NARAKA: BLADEPOINT, and naturally, professional players are no exception. Of course, no one prohibits them from playing the game, but they must do so “silently” and are not allowed to stream this game live. However, there is still a rare case that dares to… “defy” Riot, which is Baolan – the support player of Invictus Gaming, as he calmly streamed NARAKA: BLADEPOINT to duo with his girlfriend, despite Riot Games’ ban.
In fact, Baolan even shared that he had received a warning that he would have to pay a fine of 50,000 yuan (about 176 million VND) if he livestreamed NARAKA: BLADEPOINT or any game not owned by Riot. But the former 2018 World Champion seems to be hardly concerned about this.
To be honest, Baolan’s actions do not affect the community, and the only one who suffers is Riot. Therefore, League of Legends fans are only curious about why Baolan dares to “go big” like this? Some hypotheses include two cases: One is that Baolan… is already wealthy, so paying a 50,000 yuan fine is insignificant compared to the experience of “running and shooting” with friends, his girlfriend, and fans. Moreover, this rare livestream of NARAKA: BLADEPOINT was also to please his girlfriend, so money is not a concern.
The second case is that the rule prohibiting livestreaming games from other companies has loopholes. Some documents suggest that the 50,000 yuan fine will actually be deducted from the total income in the streaming contract of the players, and Baolan is notoriously lazy about streaming, rarely fulfilling the minimum KPI in the livestream contract that IG brings in, so he almost… has no income from streaming. And if there’s no income, how can they deduct a fine?
Another hypothesis raised is that Baolan may be planning to retire, so he no longer cares about Riot’s rules, since the ban on livestreaming games from other companies only applies to professional players and not to former players or regular streamers. However, this hypothesis is less supported, as recently, Rookie stated that the IG roster will remain mostly unchanged for the 2022 season.