Although there hasn’t been an official announcement from Riot Games, several anonymous sources are now claiming that a change in Riot Games residency requirements is on the horizon. I’ve personally heard this news from at least three different sources as well, but I didn’t want to write about it until it was in the wild, since I’m under NDA as a former Rioter. Regardless of if I had prior knowledge of this or not, some might assume I did.

This rule would change the residency requirement from 2 years to 4 years, making many NA Korean-born players, such as Rush and Impact, have to wait much longer to become “residents” according to LCS rules. However, this rule is also impactful for many of the CN residing Koreans who left their homeland during the “Korean Exodus” of 2014 — most of whom are about to reach their 2 year residency requirement.

This issue is extremely complicated and nuanced and can’t be explained as simply right or wrong. Yet again, like many issues that Riot Games tackles, it comes down to people working for their interests.

Region locking as practice

Before we jump into this change specifically, I want to discuss the issue of region locking at a base level, and why this practice is important at all.

In 2012, when I was working for IPL (IGN Pro League), we had an interesting problem. NA talent was dwindling, players were struggling to stay motivated, and Korean players were coming over to the US, Canada, and Europe to win events. Simultaneously, Western players competing against each other drew very low viewership. The highest viewed games were between high profile Western players playing against Korean players.

As a for-profit company, it then benefited the IPL to come up with ways to make Westerners compete against Koreans as often as possible. We did this very successfully in the IPL Fight Club series (among others), where StarCraft II standout (but then relative unknown) HyuN made his start and became notable for winning 14 weeks in a row — 10 more than the next closest streak.

Jin Air Green Wings SC2 player HyuN

Why do I bring this up?

Well at the beginning of 2013, it became clear that IPL was going to fold, and Blizzard and Twitch were our most likely saviors. In the end, it was Blizzard that decided to purchase us, and the former IPL operations team ended up in a position that was slightly different, now with different interests.

Still, all of us knew the writing on the wall. StarCraft II was in trouble. Viewership for Korean players against each other was down. We were able to build up certain personalities, like HyuN, over time, but in general, the Western audiences related most to their own players, going against the Korean pros.

I sat in meetings as people debated what was the best thing to do for the StarCraft II scene. WCS was being re-designed from an Olympics style event to an English Premier League type event.

From my experience in IPL, I recommended locking the regions.

My specific opinion was that we should require players who want to compete in a region to live there. We didn’t get into specifics on the requirements because there was some disagreement philosophically about what we should do. There were good arguments for not region locking, such as trying to level up competition at the top, viewership, and many others — honestly it was long ago and nothing stuck out to me as a bad argument.

However, it was also clear to me that the North American and European players were looking for a reason to compete. They couldn’t win the marquee events any more because Korean players were just better, and all they had left was their regional and local leagues.

There are several issues at heart here.

First, there is the motivation of regional players to compete at the highest level. If players don’t have incentives to try the hardest they can, to compete and be great, then they won’t. A lot of this comes down to mindset of Western players compared to Korean players whom are more intrinsically motivated. Koreans believe that they can always be the best if they practice or work hard.

On one hand I do have to criticize the mindset of Western players in this regard, but it’s understandable that they felt this way after almost 18 months of domination by Koreans. This type of change in mindset doesn’t come instantaneously. More on this later.

Second, there is the issue of Western fans watching Korean players. In general, production quality then in esports isn’t what it is now. Telling stories about Korean players was done very poorly, or in many cases, not really attempted. This is a failure on everyone back then as storytellers (myself included). We couldn’t tell their interesting stories, and thus the perception of Korean players was that of “emotionless robots,” a perception that still exists in the scene to this day.

I felt personally attached to HyuN after helping him attain greatness, and later when he played for the GSL championship at IPL5. I still have a photo I took of him, myself, and the other 3 TSL players at the event because of the connection I felt with these players.

(Left to Right) HyuN, Polt, Me, Shine, Symbol. Excuse potato quality.

Third, there is the issue of raising local talent. Some believe that by flooding the NA ladder with top level Korean talent, that local players will get better. I find this to be an oversimplification.

Yes, players who consistently play against Korean players who can learn something will get better, but that doesn’t fix the problem that by default, a higher percentage of Korean players (in Korea) will start playing StarCraft II (or League of Legends) than players in North America and Europe because of how integrated video games are into Korean culture, particularly youth culture. It’s not really comparable.

The social stigmas about gaming do still exist in Korea, but the gaming sub-culture is so prevalent that Korean youths are able to work around that in many instances.

Hopefully this has given you some context on why Riot Games believes it in their interest to region lock. And more specifically, why they want to keep Korean players out of foreign leagues.

Why now? Why 4 years over 2?

Contrary to popular opinion, I believe that this decision has less to do with LCS regions, and more to do with China. As I mentioned earlier, the players who left as part of the Korean Exodus of 2014 were getting close to their 2 year residency requirement — only one more split was required.

It is entirely possible that multiple LPL teams could have been entirely Korean. I think China was mortified at this possibility.

Having told you that I am for region locking, you may find it surprising that I am very much against this change. And I am against it for a several reasons.

Granted that Riot Games came to the decision that 2 years of living in a region was long enough that you should be considered a resident, why now do they change it to 4? We don’t have a lot of official explanation yet, but to me it ends up simply being about keeping Korean players from becoming residents.

I don’t know what other rationalization could be used. Did 2 years suddenly seem too short for someone to be a “resident?” That doesn’t seem quite right.

Many will cite football (soccer) leagues as examples for why region locking is acceptable, and to a certain extent, I agree. The most prominent example is the English Premier League, where 8 of the 25 rostered players (or roughly 33%) on a team must be home grown from English Leagues. It’s worth noting that this EPL mandate does not apply to clubs playing in other competitions, like Champions League.

It’s also worth noting that their rule doesn’t depend on nationality, but whether or not you played in the English development system during adolescence (between 16–21 years old). This is an important distinction, because their interests are in promoting raised local talent specifically, and not ONLY to exclude foreign talent.

After all, two-thirds of EPL teams’ lineups can be foreign born without having ever played in the UK, and the starting lineups are not limited in any way whatsoever.

I understand that Riot’s motivation is to keep growing local scenes, foster local talent, and not make top level of leagues 5 vs. 5 Korean mirror matches, but there are better ways.

Riot could invest in the collegiate, high school, and amateur levels to introduce competitive league in a healthy way to a new generation. They could work on in game tools to make in game experience better for low-level competitive players. They could financially incentivize teams to start local players in the LCS. They could enable a farm system and/or sister teams for LCS teams. They could invest in social programs to break the gaming stigma in the West. They could partner with LAN centers to host more grassroots tournaments. They could work on the gaming infrastructure in Western countries.

I wanted to spend some time to type out some examples just so people didn’t accuse me of copping out. Needless to say, these are just some examples with their own sets of pros and cons. But to me, the least effective way to cultivate local talent, is simply to ban foreign talent. This does help the psychology of the pro player, and it does help the affinity for pros that local fans have, but it does nothing to enact long term change.

When Riot enacts this change, Western and Chinese players will believe they can win their local league because it isn’t swarmed with Korean players. But what if they believed it because they thought they were just better?

And this is the core of my argument.

Artificially inflating the hopes of local fans via segregation is not going to work for ever. We need better long term solutions to this problem.

Koreans don’t have some kind of racial bonus that makes them better at video games. But they do grow up in an environment where a higher percentage of them are more interested in going pro, or just in competitive gaming in general. Until that changes, the results at the top will not change (at least not with any longevity). This is a hard problem to tackle, but one that Riot is definitely equipped to do so.

Just one of countless PC Bangs

There are some racial / xenophobic issues at work here, with Western and Chinese fans not accepting Korean players, and it’s hard to dance around that while implementing policies that actually reinforce this pattern of behavior. Perhaps this is worthy of a separate article unto itself.

However, Korean players are not “emotionless robots.” Far from it. Korean pro gamers are some of the hardest working players, who pour their hearts and souls into their game. They cry and scream in the face of failure — and often this is internalized. Every defeat is simultaneously a failure, an opportunity to improve.

There are many stories to tell.

If we use region locking as a handicap to isolate our local fans from foreign ones, and not enact any kind of permanent measures to change it, then we failed.

We can do better.