Popular NA League of Legends streamers Tarzaned and Neace (pictured) have been involved in some drama after streamer Tarzaned criticised the League of Legends coach’s refund policy.
Tarzaned posted a tweet saying one of Neace’s clients couldn’t attend his $300 coaching session and was unable to receive a refund.
Neace responded by calling Tarzaned a ‘poopy pants’ in a video, saying: “If [the client] got screwed over in some way, I’ll happily refund him, just like I have 30+ clients in the past three to six months.
“Generally, if clients are 15 minutes or more late, I no longer do the coaching, I set up a stream and a day around them, I have Paypal fees and I have to make sure my other coaches are taken care of. I don’t have time for clients that schedule and don’t show up on time. Just stop the weird drama, just text me buddy.”
Tarzaned then responded again, calling Neace a ‘money hungry sociopathic piece of shit’ on Twitter.
Tarzaned also shared more views on Neace in this video.
Tarzaned added: “The coaching is so bad, there’s no explanations, so I tweeted [what I did], it got 1,000 likes in three hours, I use my platform to help my viewers.
“You sucked at this game your whole life, went to Fortnite then came back to League of Legends and you (Neace) s*ck d*ck at this game, you RNGed your YouTube channel.
“I deleted my tweet because I don’t care about social media attention – for the next 16 hours I got mentioned the whole day.
“If you pay $300 for a session, you deserve to get scammed. You tell him [you’re dropping out] 24 hours prior and he said he might refund 50% before 24 hours. It’s insane.
“How does Neace have any relevance in the scene? He’s an actual fucking failure.”
Tarzaned said he is now going to release free coaching videos on YouTube himself going forwards.
Tarzaned currently has 128 patrons earning him £1,114 per month on Patreon.
Tarzaned’s coaching offerings start from £11.50 per month for a monthly voice call OP.GG jungle analysis, and at the top end, cost £92 per month for a monthly 45-60 minute coaching session, live or vod review.
Neace also started one of his recent coaching videos talking about the drama. The video was titled: ‘Tarzaned threw a tantrum over my refund policy lol’.
The news comes half a year after Neace responded to criticism of his League of Legends coaching fees from the likes of coach Nelson, and one month after this Reddit post on Neace and Coach Curtis criticised their advice.
It also comes after Excel Esports player Markoon was accused of stream sniping and challenged by Tarzaned.
“I’ve had coaches that are better, social media influencers that are bigger, and people with more clout, do all this BS to try and drive down my business and what I’ve built because they’re projecting, they’re mad they didn’t get the maximum worth they should have gotten. That’s their cross to bear. Other people really resent what they can’t have.”
Neace
The whole drama got people in the League of Legends community talking about coaching and what it’s worth once again.
It prompted other content creators to share their views, with Tyler1 saying if you spend $300 on LoL coaching, then “you deserve to have your life savings ripped from you regardless”.
“$300, are you dumb?” Tyler1 said. “Getting coaching is hilarious, unless you’re top-tier. No offense to Neace, but you can find random Challenger players on Twitch that have like 10 viewers and they coach for $20, if you want paid coaching. Watch YouTube videos, streams, watch what other people do [instead].”
Neace also added that he doesn’t fear competition in coaching as ‘no one else wants to do any work’.
Neace currently charges $250 for a single on-stream coaching session, $300 for a private coaching session, or other prices for sessions with other coaches.
For example, it costs $150 to book coaching with Oorix, Shogo, 5fire, Saskio or Phylaris via the Neace website.
It’s clear Neace produces a ton of coaching work in League of Legends, and Neace recently spoke about burnout in this video.
Why I think Neace makes some other LoL content creators and coaches mad – opinion
Esports News UK editor Dom Sacco shares his views in this comment
Coaching in video games and esports is nothing new, yet Neace is the coach I see get the most hate and criticism on social media from others. Why?
Is it his style? Is his coaching bad? Does he attack others?
For me, the answer is no to all of these questions (update: some have messaged me on Twitter since I posted this article, saying Neace has made sexist and transphobic comments in the past, linking here and here, with Neace responding here). Tarzaned may disagree with this stance, as he said Neace sucked at the game and that his coaching his bad. When you’re peak Challenger and dozens of people are paying for your coaching every week, you can’t be bad at what you do.
On the contrary, what Neace has done is he has marketed himself very well, put the hard work in, and created an offering and platform that is attractive to League players who are trying to improve. And other creators and some in the community don’t like it. Why?
It’s the amount Neace charges for coaching. At $300, it’s not cheap, but neither is individual/bespoke coaching in other areas in life.
“For me, Neace’s haters (in general) come across as jealous. They might be at or around his level of play in League of Legends, and when they realise what they could be earning had they put effort into coaching, they get annoyed that they didn’t think of doing this themselves, or how much other players are willing to pay for this.”
I feel like they are too focused on Neace and not enough on his paying clients. They don’t respect that other players want to improve and are happy to pay Neace to help them do so, or maybe they do, and it makes them mad. Instead, they focus their ire at him.
I’ve watched a lot of Neace videos. The man puts in a ton of hard work, and bar perhaps Coach Curtis and Veigar V2, I’ve not seen many LoL coaches out there produce decent, consistent quality coaching content, and none that package it up in a way Neace does.
Like Neace said in his video half a year ago: “If you think you can do this job, get more clients, make more content and do what I do, stop talking about it on Twitter and do it.”
League needs more coaches for the average player, in my opinion.
Neace also said: “I’ve had coaches that are better, social media influencers that are bigger, and people with more clout, do all this BS to try and drive down my business and what I’ve built because they’re projecting, they’re mad they didn’t get the maximum worth they should have gotten. That’s their cross to bear. Other people really resent what they can’t have.”
This is the crux of the issue. Just this morning, I’ve also seen YouTuber ThatUmbrellaGuy getting attacked by mainstream media because he makes $60,000+ per month making videos about Amber Heard.
Society is obsessed with money, and jealous of those who are good at making it in ways they don’t believe they should.
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.
I enjoy neace content on youtube and have genuinly gotten much better at the game from watching his coachings