British League of Legends streamer Bizzleberry has published a video talking about his honest views on the League Partner Program (LPP).
The program is set up to give League streamers perks – such as skin unlocks, unique audience giveaways (such as exclusive chromas), dev and event access – in exchange for playing the game to their audiences.
It requires a streamer to have at least 30% of their content LoL-related, 50+ average concurrent viewers on streams in the past month or 5,000+ average video views.
Grandmaster support player Bizzleberry, who has some 45,000 followers on Twitch, criticised the program in a new video (below), titled ‘The sad state of the League Partnership Program’. Bizzle’s style is calm and chilled and his content is largely educational, but viewers of his stream will know he has a warm sense of humour too.
So it was somewhat unexpected to see him put out a more serious, vocal video like this, but there are some important points Bizzle made worth highlighting. The main ones being that there are many content creators in the program that either no longer fulfil the criteria, or display toxic behaviour and Riot does nothing to address this.
“The main problem I have is the public image and controversy of the LPP is currently outweighing the reward for being in the program. There are lots of people in the program that have been opently toxic on stream or in their videos, and not getting any punishment.
“It kind of gives the perspective these players are getting special treatment. Outrageous behaviour usually wins on the engagement front and that kind of content is always going to be the most popular. But the problem is if you’re in the LPP and you’re not of that kind of behaviour, it’s giving off the impression to LoL players and those that aren’t toxic in the program, that it’s not only okay to do, but Riot is saying it’s okay.”
Reddit user iThinkHeIsRight posted this on the news, calling for the likes of ChaseShaco, IWillDominate, WingsofDeath, TFBlade, Tyler1, Hashinshin, Nightblue and Solorenektononly to be removed from the program due to toxicity.
They also pointed out that streamers like Scarra and Pokimane don’t play much League these days, however they do play other Riot games like TFT and Valorant respectively. This also raises the point that the LPP could possibly be updated to include other Riot games, not just League itself.
In terms of the UK League Partner Program, Esports News UK understands there are several inactive streamers (in terms of not playing much League, or not at all) including Brofresco, GlanFM, Isaacyyy, Wixtoria, SariaArts, Annchirisu, aatrixx and others, however some do play other Riot games like TFT or Legends of Runeterra. Others may no longer meet the requirements to be in the program.
Bizzle said there are those that are scared to speak up, including himself, but urged Riot to look at what’s happening, check streamers in the program are following the Summoner’s Code, and ‘take action’ where necessary.
He also said he keeps getting messages on Discord asking him to report players from their games, which is not allowed.
Bizzle also tweeted the following, sparking a debate on Twitter:
Esports News UK understands Riot is looking into this and we hope to see an update from the developer soon. The developer recently hired KaeyiDream as UK and nordics community manager.
Bizzleberry’s comments come just over one month after popular streamer Voyboy spoke about growing toxicity in League of Legends.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
