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Riot lets League of Legends pros stream rival games

"The way we chose to deal with this was clearly an overreach."

Riot Games will now let professional League of Legends players stream rival games.

The developer had blocked pro players from streaming rival games, including all Blizzard games, while under contract with them.

Now, after much debate - and criticism from some of the developers of the games that were blocked - it's changed its mind.

"There's been a ton of discussion around our LCS team contracts, which stipulated active LCS players couldn't stream a variety of other games," Riot's director of eSports Whalen Rozelle wrote on the League of Legends sub-Reddit.

"First, background on why we did this: there've been instances of other game studios trying to buy access to League fans by using (or trying to use) LCS teams/players to promote their competing games on stream.

"The way we chose to deal with this was clearly an overreach. It hit our goal of preventing companies from advertising through LCS players, but it also encroached on pros' ability to have fun and entertain viewers during long Challenger queues - and we realize that's not cool.

"After reading all of your comments and having a LOT of internal debate over the last 24 hours, we're going to be changing the LCS team requirement to something that more closely matches our intent. While under contract to the LCS, teams and players can't accept sponsorship from other game companies to promote other titles. Besides that, they are free to stream any games they want.

"I'll be hanging around to answer questions if you guys have any. Thanks for helping us make a better decision on this."