Riot Games President disdainful of League of Legends Content Creators

Riot Games President tweets on LOL Content Creators started a maelstrom of reactions. Marc Merrill, co-Founder and President of Riot Games, found himself in a short but heated Twitter fight with Christian “IWDominate” Rivera, an established League of Legends player and streamer. In the fight, Marc expressed his disdain for not only IWDominate, but League of Legends content creators everywhere. 

The petty fight began with Rivera making jeers to Merrill in response to his original Tweet.

Merrill immediately responded with a juvenile reply of his own. All this despite being the head of a major corporation.

But while Rivera’s comment could be seen as unnecessarily aggressive, Merrill’s was disgraceful, insulting not only IWDominate, but his whole brand of fellow content creators, and in turn, incriminating himself as the very subject of Rivera’s argument. 

Content Creators are an amazing medium for League of Legends

Creators are arguably a major reason for League of Legends’ success. On just Twitch, League of Legends garners an average of 100,000 unique concurrent viewers at any given time. And most of Riot Games seems to realize this, having implemented the League Partner Program in 2018. But despite that small effort, most creators see their relationship with Riot as weak at best. Riot Games President tweets on LOL Content Creators were just the materialization of this idea.

I’ve always held the notion that Riot doesn’t care about it’s creators and this pretty much confirms it

It’s sad to see creators who spend years building their own brand belittled by the founder himself

When the right opportunity arises I’ll definitely stop supporting this game pic.twitter.com/Ej0wqBBLvd

— Nightblue3 (@Nightbloo) August 29, 2019

At the same time, Riot Games has shown a repetitive pattern of disrespect to not only creators but their employees as well. Riot would have fans forget, but in May of 2019, over 150 employees participated in a walk-out in protest of Riot’s ingrained sexism and oppressive management style. The company claims to have fixed their issues, but evidently their immaturity still persists at the highest levels.

Credit: Devon Huge