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NA LoL Community Guidelines Update
We recently shared new North American Community Competition Guidelines for League of Legends. Since then, we’ve received a ton of feedback from tournament organizers, players, and leaders in the community on how these policies impact them. We’ve been listening and wish to share updates we have made to the guidelines, how we arrived at them, their goals, and where we go from here.
Today we're going to focus on the amateur competition guidelines for League of Legends in North America. We've also heard a lot of feedback on the high school and college sections of the guidelines - we're planning on spending additional time evaluating these ecosystems before revisiting the guidelines, and we will follow up in the next few months to discuss the feedback and any updates as a result.
**Some background:**
Back in 2011, Riot revealed our “Legal Jibber Jabber” - it was not your usual legal terms and conditions page, but rather an attempt to draft guidelines that would allow players and community organizers to use our IP for non-commercial projects.
Over the years, we’ve been aware of times when tournament organizers were creating experiences for players that violated these policies. In cases where we felt that the players were not adequately protected (e.g., tournament organizers promising large prize pools without actually having the money to back it up), we stepped in and removed League of Legends from those events. At the same time, our then-approach of individually licensing tournaments was resource intensive and not consistently scalable.
We came to the conclusion that it was important to create a set of guidelines for Riot’s games - including League of Legends - that gave tournament organizers a consistent and predictable sandbox to work in, without worrying about having a point of contact at Riot, pitching their tournament, and getting formal approval. That is the spirit that drives these guidelines, and if we’re failing to meet that bar we will revisit them, as we’re doing now.
These guidelines don’t describe the entire competitive ecosystem. In most cases, Riot will play an active role in any competitions beyond the scope of these guidelines, such as tournaments that support Scouting Grounds and the College League of Legends Season. As the needs of the competitive landscape continue to evolve, we will reach out to appropriate businesses and community members to address them - together.
**Updates on Amateur Competition for League of Legends**
In response to the concerns raised by the community, we’ve updated our guidelines - primarily aimed at unlocking amateur tournaments that support the higher end of the scene.
We’re a team who deeply believes in the power of constructive exchange - we take feedback seriously. We’re also aware we can’t always make everyone happy - so wherever possible our priority is ensuring we’re preserving the player experience.
**3.2 Prizing**
**- Old:** The total value of your prize pool, including cash value of
non-cash prizes, across all events you organize in a calendar year
may not exceed $10,000 USD (or its equivalent in CAD).
**- New:** The total value of your prize pool, including the cash value of
non-cash prizes, for each event you organize may not exceed $10,000
USD (or its equivalent in CAD). The total value of your prize pool,
including the cash value of non-cash prizes, across all events you
organize in a calendar year may not exceed $100,000 USD (or its
equivalent in CAD).
**3.3 Competition Fees**
**- Old:** You may charge a small entry fee of no more than $20 USD (or its
equivalent in CAD) for each player, which must be used solely to help
offset the Competition Costs or towards the Competition’s prize
pool.If you charge players and/or teams an entrance fee to
participate in the Competition, the value of the prize pool for the
Competition must be at least equal to the combined value of the
entrance fees paid by players and/or teams.
**- New:** You may charge an entry fee for your Competition. Entry fee
revenue must be used solely to help offset the competition costs
(such as venue, web hosting, casters, etc.) or towards the
Competition’s prize pool.
**Sponsors & Partners**
**- Old:** A singular brand may sponsor no more than three (3) events
within a given Calendar Year. You may not sell naming rights to an
event such that the sponsor/partner appears first (e.g. BrandX League
of Legends Tournament). Any brand/sponsor affiliation must be
secondary to the event and as such affiliated brands are not allowed
to use LoL IP or Marks in promotion of such event or as a designation
of partner alignment.
**- New:** Total sponsor contributions for each tournament your
organization runs are limited to $10,000 in value, including the cash
value of non-cash contributions. In addition, your organization
cannot receive more than $100,000 in sponsorships, including the cash
value of non-cash contributions, in a calendar year across all of
your League of Legends tournaments. You may not sell naming rights to
an event such that the sponsor/partner name appears before the event
name (e.g. BrandX League of Legends Tournament). None of your
sponsors or other brand affiliation for any event may use LoL IP or
Marks in promotion of such event or otherwise hold itself out as a
partner of Riot.
The full guidelines, including these changes [can be found here][1].
[1]: https://developer.riotgames.com/policies/na-tournaments
