Today’s cartoon is about the groups linked to the LCK (KeSPA and the LCK Organizing Committee) losing public trust at a fast rate, but most importantly, about Riot Games Korea.

Riot Korea, who has the honor of hosting the most popular game in all of esports, recently faced an incredible amount of criticism from the community. Riot Korea already had a bad reputation for providing macro answers to the players’ in-game support tickets and having obscure standards for competitive rulings. However, they’re being heavily criticized for poor external management & communication, and for their approach to problems. 

The public opinion on Riot Korea, which has gotten pretty quiet after their uproar on poor production of LCK, got noisy again after the incident with Griffin and cvMax, and the most recent competitive ruling on Doran, which made the promise that the Head of Riot Korea made irrelevant. Not only was the standards of the ruling obscure in and outside the game, but the slow and untrustworthy responses from Riot Korea also directly contradicts their statement in reflecting on ‘the absence of communication’, so the users are in outrage. 

Many users are demanding change not only from Riot Korea, but in the Korean esports scene as a whole. They demand change in a system that was created by the people. Without great change, such flaws within esports will not see any improvements because the system within esports has been created by men over a long period of time. Responsibilities lie within many people, and simply saying ‘I’ll do better’ is simply too insufficient.

There are still too many controversies with no concrete decision making from Riot Korea. In order to regain the public’s trust, it’s critical to get rid of their customs that are far too outdated to meet the higher public expectations, and to make firm decisions in a swift manner. As League of Legends is still a very popular game in Korea, the influence that Riot Korea has is more than enough. I hope that they will be able to make constructive decisions that will benefit not only the users and the pro players, but also the esports industry as a whole.