Smashuk🇺🇦

20 y.o. Ukraine
LoL Journalist for

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

What a shame, @LeagueOfLegends.

How can you justify having a russian community caster while not even adding a single Ukrainian one? @MalzaharBerkut and @NAVIleague have already proven that a large audience in Ukraine actively follows your game. Yet you chose to provide a broadcast for a region where, for many people, Twitch and YouTube aren't even accessible.

Did you even verify who you granted community casting rights to? This person was literally casting a russian tournament on June 15 organized by FunPay—a russian platform that openly offers League of Legends, VALORANT, and other Riot Games account sales as one of its services. Doesn't that violate your own policies?

While I strongly disagree with this decision, I'm not asking you to remove the russian cast from MSI or deny that your game has a russian-speaking audience. That would be dishonest.

What I do find unfair is having a russian community cast while there is no Ukrainian one at the second most important League of Legends tournament of the year.

For the Ukrainian League of Legends community, while our country is still under attack, this feels like a slap in the face.

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

@SterlexD @LeagueOfLegends @MalzaharBerkut @NAVILeague Your response looks like you didn't read past the first paragraph. Either way, I understand what you mean.

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

What a shame, @LeagueOfLegends.

How can you justify having a russian community caster while not even adding a single Ukrainian one? @MalzaharBerkut and @NAVIleague have already proven that a large audience in Ukraine actively follows your game. Yet you chose to provide a broadcast for a region where, for many people, Twitch and YouTube aren't even accessible.

Did you even verify who you granted community casting rights to? This person was literally casting a russian tournament on June 15 organized by FunPay—a russian platform that openly offers League of Legends, VALORANT, and other Riot Games account sales as one of its services. Doesn't that violate your own policies?

While I strongly disagree with this decision, I'm not asking you to remove the russian cast from MSI or deny that your game has a russian-speaking audience. That would be dishonest.

What I do find unfair is having a russian community cast while there is no Ukrainian one at the second most important League of Legends tournament of the year.

For the Ukrainian League of Legends community, while our country is still under attack, this feels like a slap in the face.

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

Are we even talking about the same thing? What "large player base" are you referring to? League of Legends has always been far behind Dota across the entire CIS region. And when you talk about "big money," do you mean Riot cutting costs by shutting down the LCL and relying almost entirely on Russian sponsors?

What business are you even talking about if this is just co-streaming rights? Riot isn't making a single cent from granting those. If the Russian market were really as attractive as you claim, they would have brought back an official Russian broadcast. They still have a studio in Moscow and the people to run it.

I was part of the CIS LoL ecosystem before the full-scale invasion, and the claim that Russia has always been a huge League of Legends market is simply false.

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

@XxErnioxX @accurim_ @LeagueOfLegends @MalzaharBerkut @NAVILeague How much would it cost Riot to let a streamer show the broadcast?🤔

[단니 @dannidaum]

#GUMAYUSI

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

First of all, sorry for the long read🙏

I understand what you mean. But there are two important points. For Riot, this co-stream won’t bring in a single cent, because their sponsors are not interested in the Russian audience (most companies have either left Russia or are under sanctions).

I can understand that this might be a kind of testing phase or that there is still audience interest, etc. But what is the problem with also giving our co-streamer the right to cover the event? It wouldn’t make things worse for anyone.

I personally don’t know of any Russian companies, except casino/betting sites, that would buy advertising for MSI co-streams, etc.

And as for Riot’s existing partners who will be featured at MSI, I don’t really believe any of them care about the Russian market. If they were interested, Riot would have set up a broadcast studio for this tournament.

They still have a team and office in Moscow, where the LCL used to be broadcast and operated.

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

@FigovLelix @LeagueOfLegends @MalzaharBerkut @NAVILeague Of course that's true, but do you really think MalzaharBerkut didn't submit an application?

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

@Fuhrbly @MalzaharBerkut @LeagueOfLegends @NAVILeague Understood.🤝

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

What does Riot have to do with this if I was talking about sponsors buying banner ads on the broadcasts?

And I also don't understand the point of your original screenshot. I never said there should only be a Ukrainian co-stream. My point was: if we're bringing back Russian co-streams, why not add Ukrainian ones as well? I guess it's just incredibly expensive to let people stream the broadcast.

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

I think you misunderstood my post. It was about the fact that Russia, which hasn't had a community cast for international tournaments for about three years, is getting one again, while the same opportunity wasn't given to Ukraine.

The war in my country was only mentioned at the end, where I said that, during such a difficult time for us, this decision feels like a huge slap in the face to the Ukrainian community of this game.

If we didn't have any community casters at all, that would be a different conversation. But Malzahar has held the rights for almost a year now and has been covering the major regional leagues, and there is clearly interest from the Ukrainian audience. Comparing our viewer numbers to the Russian audience isn't really appropriate here. Ukrainian League of Legends broadcasts have existed for less than a year, while the Russian scene has been around since 2013.

So I'm not really sure what the point of your comment was.

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

@coachKezzo @hiaaaaaaia @LeagueOfLegends @MalzaharBerkut @NAVILeague 🤣

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

Thanks for the wishes!

Regarding the fact-checking: at the moment, Roskomnadzor is throttling YouTube. In practice, without a VPN it's basically impossible to watch videos or livestreams in 2K resolution.

As for Twitch, it generally works fine. The main exception is that Roskomnadzor keeps breaking Cloudflare every other day, which causes a huge number of websites and services to stop working. And now they're also trying to block Amazon, the parent company of Twitch. Twitch is still working, but for how much longer?

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

@accurim_ @LeagueOfLegends @MalzaharBerkut @NAVILeague I agree, but then what's the problem with adding a Ukrainian cast as well.

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

@Fuhrbly @MalzaharBerkut @LeagueOfLegends @NAVILeague I'm a bit confused about what kind of business we're talking about when the russian audience is essentially worth nothing to companies that aren't based in russia these days.

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

Little rage baiter, I'll reply to both of your messages at once and that'll be it. I have no interest in wasting any more time on you.

I was talking about the fact that MalzaharBerkut has the rights to co-stream regional leagues in Ukrainian.

Since you love numbers so much, don't compare Ukraine's population to Russia's. Riot's games have been fully localized into Russian for years, including all promotional materials. We only got the chance to watch League of Legends in Ukrainian for the first time last year. Of course our audience is much smaller, but how is it supposed to grow if there's no official broadcast?

Let's also not forget that a large portion of the LoL Esports audience only follows MSI and Worlds. Regional leagues simply aren't that interesting to them, so it's only natural that the audience for those broadcasts is smaller.

The whole point of my post was simple: if Riot is willing to provide a Russian community cast, what's the problem with doing the same for Ukraine? I mentioned the NAVI case only as an example because we've already seen it work, and the number of people watching League in Ukrainian continues to grow.

As for the betting website, before trying to catch me in a "gotcha" moment, at least do some basic fact-checking. 1xBit is our partner, while the Russian 1xBet is a completely different company. They aren't even branded the same.

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

@coachKezzo @hiaaaaaaia @LeagueOfLegends @MalzaharBerkut @NAVILeague XD bcs of this “small” we already have LPL, LEC and LCK cast but to small for msi, you right :)

[League of Legends @LeagueOfLegends]

We've finally done it. We figured out a way to go back to the good ol' days. But can @RiotPabro get @RiotMeddler on board?

Tune in to MSI Finals on July 11 at 11pm PDT to find out.

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

@hiaaaaaaia @coachKezzo @LeagueOfLegends @MalzaharBerkut @NAVILeague Especially for you, his Telegram Channel

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

Holy LoL Classic is real🙏

[SkinSpotlights @SkinSpotlights]

League Classic Models + Chromas of the champions that shold be playable, added this PBE

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

@coachKezzo @LeagueOfLegends @MalzaharBerkut @NAVILeague What's this supposed to mean?

[Smashuk🇺🇦 @Smashuko]

@TroizyVAL