I think we all know what's going on here. As much as G2A might be a service that gamers have come to love over the past couple of years, where it gets its Steam keys is often a little dubious. More than once gamers had had their keys revoked after it was found they came from... less than savoury sources.
Clearly Riot doesn't want to be in bed with a company like that, but it did have another, more official reason: G2A didn't do what it asked. When requested by Riot Games to stop advertising League of Legends account resellers and power-levelling services, G2A simply refused - presumably because it makes more doing that than it does through sponsoring League of Legends teams.
With that in mind, G2A is now no logner allowed to sponsor any LoL teams. This affects quite a large number of them too, since G2A had its tentacles in a lot of pies. Cloud9, Counter Logic Gaming, H2K and paiN Gaming will all have less revenue because of this move. They've also had to shell out for new jerseys without the G2A logo on them.
"We've already formally banned [G2A] as a sponsor as of September 18th, and have no plans to reconsider the decision at this time," explained Riot's developer relations manager, J Eckert."
"This was NOT a decision we made lightly, and came after many weeks of back and fourth [sic] conversations with G2A to find a resolution, which we were not able to reach an agreement on. We do not at all enjoy affecting the income of the teams, but the LCS rules include guidelines specifically against this sort of thing. We did however keep teams in the loop during the process in an attempt to avoid any surprises.
Do you think this is overkill by Riot? Or do you think it's fair of it to not want certain sponsors linked with its brand?
