Did a Philippine League of Legends Team Commit Multiple Breaches of Contract?
Editorial note: Given feedback from the readership, the editorial staff has decided to remove community speculations from this story to enable the proper entities to conduct an unbiased dissection of these events.
Wargods.GameX, one of the top League of Legends teams in the Garena Pro Gaming Series (PGS), is currently under fire for allegations of contract breaches with the game publisher’s professional league.
Garena Philippines, the country publisher for Riot’s League of Legends, maintains and oversees the PGS. Under the rules of the PGS, teams competing in the league are not allowed to compete in other games.
Yet members of the Wargods.GameX League of Legends team, namely WG.Otchie, WG.Stronger and WG. Light participated in the Heroes of the Storm Southeast Asian Championship country qualifiers last July 25, 2015. Heroes of the Storm is multiplayer battle game owned by developer, Activision-Blizzard.
The tournament was covered by the eSports by INQUIRER.net team. In its tournament coverage article, the Wargods team was noted as participants in the championship tournament.
eSports Inquirer acquired a copy of the team contract for teams competing in the PGS. Under section 3, article 4, Garena stipulates that teams competing in the PGS may not compete in any video gaming competitions or events, under sanctions.
3.4 Non-League Events and Streaming. The Team Owner shall ensure that, during the Term of this Agreement, its Team Members do not participate or compete in any video gaming competitions, tournaments, exhibitions, matches, demonstrations or other video gaming events anywhere in the world, other than League-sponsored Tournaments, Exhibitions or Promotional Activities without the prior written consent of the League in each instance. They can stream or play any game they want privately but cannot be sponsored.
In a post by Garena staff members overseeing the PGS, Garena issued a stern warning to players stating that any player in the PGS who will compete in a tournament outside of the league will incur a P1,000 deduction from their team’s winnings.
By placing in second place for the Heroes of the Storm tournament however, Wargods won P150,000.
The alleged misconduct by gaming team was made apparent in a post on the Mineski-League of Legends page. In their post, the Mineski organization congratulated the Wargods League of Legends team for their second place finish at the Heroes of the Storm tournament.
Further, a reddit thread that outlines the events that lead to the Heroes of the Storm tournament surfaced, calling out Wargods on their alleged misconduct.
eSports Inquirer reached out to Archie “Spiffy” Dimaculangan, Riot Games Community Manager for Southeast Asia, for a comment. Spiffy said that Riot will be looking into these serious allegations.
eSports Inquirer reached out to Garena and Wargods for comments, but both organizations were unavailable as of press time.
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