Riot Games Invests In Curse Inc.
Curse Inc, a company that creates software, tools and content specifically for gamers has announced that Riot Games has invested in their company.
The announcement was given by their CEO, Hubert Thieblot. While he did not post the specific details, he strongly hinted at it having to do with Curse Voice, one of Curse Inc’s most popular products. Curse Voice is a Voice Over IP (VOIP) program that allows players to communicate with their teammates. Usage of this software is more popular over EU and NA, while Garena has taken over this functionality in PH and the Southeast Asia regions with its own VOIP Gtalk.
In the end of his statement, he had this to say about the implications of this investment for Curse and Riot Games:
This is, of course, exciting and positive news for us. We’ve known Riot for a long time, and know that Riot, like us, cares very deeply about the core gamer. I’m excited and confident that this will be good for Curse and for the millions of players we serve via Curse Voice.
Hubert Thieblot
CEO of Curse Inc.
Players of League may remember Curse Voice as one of the third party programs that Riot had discouraged its players from using due to what was then its feature of largely automated processes that were deemed too disruptive or unfair to other players not using the same software. This, among the other third party applications that were unauthorized by Riot Games led to further development of Riot’s API policy, which can be found here.
Fear not, we will not be going through and punishing anyone who used it in the past, or even 5 minutes after we posted this. This is just the first stage of messaging on the matter, and we will have more to come in the coming days next week as we update other points, like our TOU and other channels. In the meantime we will not be immediately punishing anyone as we make the policy clear, though we do encourage those using it to stop. The door always remains open for Curse to modify the app in ways that do not violate the above policy as well, at which point it would no longer be a concern.
Riot Sargonas,
in a statement released shortly after Riot’s stance on third party applications and Curse Voice on the NA forums.
Curse eventually made the changes to their program to conform with Riot’s new stance, while Riot has since integrated some of the features in their own in-game client such as the much-demanded jungle timers.
This investment may be seen as Riot’s move in making more cohesive player-to-player communication and support system, but the exact details and implications of this remain to be seen.
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