Game companies, just like any other company, are composed of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people with diverse positions and responsibilities. Different skillsets are required for direction, design, development, production, marketing, and more. Each of these groups need their own leads and managers, along with more people to facilitate communication between different areas. Somebody needs to create the code for the game; and that somebody needs to be hired by somebody else. Another person needs to test their product and communicate with management about it. The list goes on and on.
All of the people working inside companies are people like you and me. Some of them,although not all, play the same game you do. Sometimes, this can lead to some friction between management and employees—It's not uncommon to put employees in an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) to keep said employees from leaking content for profit, viewership or clout. However, in March, a controversy went down concerning stream monetization, when it comes to Riot employees, which the community did not take very well.
The controversy came out to the public as a tweet from Spideraxe30.
"There's a new policy for Rioters who want to stream. They are no longer allowed to monetize their streams when they're streaming Riot games, but are still allowed to monetize when they are streaming other types of content though. And to be clear, they're still allowed to stream Riot stuff, Mort was still streaming this weekend."
This would mean that a Riot employee who wants to stream League of Legends, TFT, or any videogame made by Riot Games, cannot get any money from it in Twitch. It's unknown if they receive any sort of compensation for their time streaming.
At the time, the biggest rioters who streamed were August and Mortdog, and both streamed the very games they developed and worked on (League of Legends and TFT, respectively). The announcement seemed sudden and with very little motive at first, which piqued a ton of questions from the community on the ethics of the decision, or how financially sound it was.
Feedback from the community came immediately, mostly full of confusion and discontent. Rioters' streams offered a rare sight into the innerworkings of the company and development. It was not uncommon for them to drop scrapped ideas, upcoming designs, or confirm or deny rumors going around. By keeping their content from being monetized, it's likely that this change was meant to discourage Rioters streaming in general to minimize leaks. Judging from how drastic this policy change is, it’s also likely Riot tried to handle this internally at first, before making this change as a final decisive measure.
It is relevant to mention, no meaningful leaks have ever come directly from a Riot employee mouthing off in a stream. Leaks usually come as a result of datamining new patches, or files from the computer of a developer.
Some user’s comments that undoubtedly express their disbelief towards this topic:
@SeeleJun: “What?! I really enjoyed the streams of Riot August and some others and now they are taking away a lot of motivation for rioters to stream at all...what a horrible decision” - X/Twitter
@soars: “Bro wtf? How does that even make sense. They at least participate in the development of the game. A random consumer has more rights than they do to monetization?” - X/Twitter
MuffinLol: “ [...] I just don't get it, this is how they're rewarded for their commitment to the game, love from community and transparency? It's not like the revenue they've been gaining will suddenly be reinvested into Riot now.... Worst case it'll go to streamers of other games... I just don't get it man” - Reddit
There is possibly another reason why Riot could have gone with this decision. It is purely speculative, though. It is possible that a Riot employee could earn more money through streams rather than their job, prompting them to spend less time at their job and more in their streaming business, or even quitting altogether. The likelihood of this is slower, though. Statistically, most streamers will not be able to make enough money from their streams to replace a 9-5 job. Let alone one at Riot, which historically has had pretty good worker retention before 2024. It is perhaps important to note that this change coincided with a wave of layoffs in January 2024 which left 11% of the Riot Games workforce unemployed.
Riot Games is a relatively old game company by this point. 18 years and counting. A ton of developers, artists and designers that now work for Riot are themselves fans of the game; even the initial developer base for Riot was composed of fans of Warcraft and DotA. It's unlikely that whoever moved this decision did so not knowing how it'd affect the public view on the company. It was a purely economical move to make, one to gain more control and leverage over Rioters.
The controversy quietly died out over time, but it's a rare chink in the armor of Riot as a company and their business practices. It's highly likely the decision was made, in the most positive terms, to retain the attention of Rioters into game development instead of other areas of expansion.
