A couple of UK-based esports organisations have teamed up for a tree-mendous initiative.
Verdant and Lucent Esports, grass–roots orgs that participate in Division 2 of the Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC), the European Regional League (ERL) for the UK, Ireland and Nordics, decided to plant real life trees based on their teams’ in-game performances.
The pair announced they would each donate one tree per kill, two per herald, three per drake, five per baron and ten for a win ahead of their match yesterday evening.
Lucent ended up winning the match 17-4, with head coach Praevius also stepping in as a sub support player. This meant Lucent would plant 47 trees and Verdant 37, however each team rounded up this number to 50.
Not wanting to leaf other people out of the campaign, the pair also gladly accepted an additional 50-tree donation from Danish organisation Fløng Esports, who also play in NLC Division 2. They won 31-9 in their match versus AaB Esport.
Both orgs and the scene were barking about the initiative on socials:
And Owen Mead, Lucent’s head of creative, donated another 50 trees, bringing the total to 200.
After the game, Lucent’s Danish sub mid-laner Killakin told desk talent Roodood and Archarom on the NLC Twitch broadcast: “This [idea came about through] communication between managers like Gleady [Wiliam Gleadall, Lucent’s director of operations] talking to Verdant [owner Sam ‘Sami’ Cunningham], and having this discussion about could we do something good for this.
“Before the game, we were told, ‘hey guys, we’re doing this for the trees’. And I guess Fuyu wants to save the world, so he just went ballistic and got all these kills! So that was nice.”
Gleady was also spamming the Twitch chat during the game, with updates of the amounts of trees to be donated.
Lucent’s UK ADC Fuyu went 8/2/8 as Jinx, while Croatian mid-laner Sintax went 7/0/7 as Corki.
“I guess Fuyu wants to save the world, so he just went ballistic and got all these kills!”
Killakin, Lucent Esports
It’s not the first time Verdant have tree-ted the UK scene to some perennial plants. Verdant have their own Ecologi.com page, where they and friends of the organisation have donated 550 trees altogether.
Verdant bill themselves as ‘passionate about League of Legends, wildlife and the environment’, and this ethos is similar to North American LCS organisation FlyQuest. You could say multiple esports orgs are branching out with initiatives like this.
Similarly, last year, UK esports organisation Guild Esports launched a sustainable Fortnite tournament, with a real tree planted for every tree chopped down in-game.
Looking at the NLC standings, Lucent are currently joint third and Verdant joint eighth. In NLC Division 1, the playoff teams have already been locked in.
Related article: Why orgs like Verdant give me hope for the future of UK League of Legends – opinion
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.
