UPDATE: The LEC has officially ended its sponsorship deal with Neom, as confirmed in an official LoL Esports post. Here is the statement in full:
"As a company and as a league, we know that it’s important to recognize when we make mistakes and quickly work to correct them. After further reflection, while we remain steadfastly committed to all of our players and fans worldwide including those living in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, the LEC has ended its partnership with NEOM, effective immediately. In an effort to expand our esports ecosystem, we moved too quickly to cement this partnership and caused rifts in the very community we seek to grow. While we missed our own expectations in this instance, we’re committed to reexamining our internal structures to ensure this doesn't happen again."
The original story continues below.
A new League of Legends controversy has emerged over developer Riot Games' decision to bring on a new Saudi Arabian partner for the League of Legends European Championship in the city of Neom, which will be the "main partner" for the Summer Season. League of Legends regularly seeks out sponsors for its different championship series, and the LEC has been supported by brands like Logitech while the LCS has attracted sponsors as big as Bud Light.
For those unfamiliar with the city of Neom, it's a Saudi Arabian project sponsored by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been suspected of ordering the killing of a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who had been vocal in his criticism of Prince Salman. Neom will be a half-trillion dollar project that's scale will be over 30 times as large as New York City according to Saudi Arabia. Outside of Prince Salman's reputation, Saudia Araba as a country has also been criticized for its human rights violations, with particularly aggressive behavior towards minority groups in the LGBTQ community as well as with women in general.
All of that - and it's a lot - would be a good reason to avoid Saudi Arabian ties, but Riot Games announced on Tuesday that Neom will become a major partner for the Summer Season of LEC, with Riot Games referring to the city as one that "will be championing the development of esports across the world." The League of Legends community has predictably responded poorly to the announcement, with famous casters like Froskurinn, herself a member of the LGBTQ community, calling out Riot for an announcement that she feels disappointed in.
Some players have taken the time to voice their displeasure as well, choosing to use their social media followings to try to make a change. TSM's Doublelift is one of the more prominent members of the community to have an issue with the decision, though his tweet is a bit more blunt than Froskurinn's more diplomatic statement:
Even League of Legends' own development team is getting in on the movement in the game's community, with lead gameplay designer Mark Yetter - aka Scruffy - taking to Twitter to join in on the conversation and make clear that the decision to partner with Saudi Arabia is not one that's wholly supported by the team.
Riot Games isn't the first major organization to consider Saudi Arabian partnerships - they're lucrative, so some companies find them quite tempting. Most famously, World Wrestling Entertainment made a deal with Saudi Arabia to host special one-night shows in the country - and, despite harsh criticism from fans, WWE has been back since the first event for more.
If the whole situation looks bad, that's because it is. There is no separating Saudi Arabia from the way it treats its women and LGBTQ communities, and to partner with that country is to condone those actions in some way. If there is a small reason to hope for this decision being reversed, it's because the League of Legends community - a vast group of players spanning countless geographical locations, religions, ethnicities, and sexualities - has been so unified in condemning Riot Games' decision. While it might not be enough to stop the LEC and Neom's partnership, it's a reminder that a game's community is not always reflective of the corporation that owns that game's decisions.
Source: Riot Games, Froskurinn, Doublelift, Mark Yetter