LS calls LCS walkout “a total failure” as Summer Split is set to start

LoL community figure Nick ‘LS’ De Cesare has stated that the LCS Players Association (LCSPA) failed to achieve any major breakthrough in its negotiations with Riot Games.

Riot Games and the LCSPA have announced that LCS competition will resume on June 14 after a tug-of-war that put the Summer Split at risk.

Both parties announced the set of terms agreed upon during negotiations, which are a far cry from the list of demands issued by the LCSPA shortly after the players voted in favor of a walkout.

From the beginning, it was clear that the LCSPA didn’t have much leverage in its push for things like a Valorant-style promotion system and a revenue pool of $300,000 per Challengers League (NACL) team. In a statement, Naz Aletaha, Riot Games’ Global Head of LoL Esports, shut down those demands one by one, giving the players’ association very little room for maneuver.

The LCSPA was put in an even more fragile position after star player Peter ‘Doublelift’ Peng revealed that he was willing to give up on the walkout if that prevented the Summer Split from being canceled.

For LS, Riot Games simply “annihilated” the walkout.

“This was a total failure,” he said on his stream. “Anyone who says this was a success or that this is good, I have no idea how you could ever reach that conclusion. They got annihilated.

“These were their asks. They got none of these. Nothing happened. Literally, nothing happened.”

The popular content creator went on to reveal that some of the terms revealed by Riot and the LCSPA regarding player protection “already existed” in contracts.

“A lot of players already have severance pay, sometimes up to two months, sometimes more,” he said.

“This thing on the health insurance for non-US residents, this is something that has happened where Korean players have arrived and they don’t get healthcare until six or eight weeks later. This is something that did happen, at least last year. That’s something, but that doesn’t seem like it’s a Riot thing. This seems like a team thing, something the LCSPA should do with teams.

“They got completely walked over by Riot. I’m assuming Riot was going to remain pretty solid in their stance and eventually the players were going to cave.”

Condensed Summer schedule will impact the LCS’ level

Because of the two-week delay, the regular season of the Summer Split will take place over six weeks, with a third gameday introduced on Wednesdays.

This packed schedule, LS argued, will inevitably lead to a lower level of play and a stale meta as teams won’t have as much time to innovate and prepare for matches.

“This also means they will have one off day and three days of scrims,” LS explained. “LCS teams, from some of the conversations I had, are not getting many scrim games, which now also means the quality of gameplay in NA, I feel like, is going to deteriorate.

“In addition to that, I feel like the meta is going to be very stagnant because to condense this many games in such a short timeframe means it’s going to be played on the same exact patch and the teams aren’t going to be scrimming. This is very problematic.”

Riot Games will announce the full schedule for the LCS Summer Split later on June 9. The split will culminate in the LCS Championship, which will take place on August 19-20 at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.