League of Legends (Lol) content creators and streamers are lamenting the current state of the game’s ‘content meta’ and the popularity of certain videos over others.
Content creator Skooch posted a tweet a few weeks ago saying the League of Legends content meta is ‘a huge load of horse shit and has been for years’.
This prompted a debate in the community, with UK streamer and content creator Kiandymundi sharing his frustrations on original content not doing as well as quick videos made on patch notes, ‘OP’ builds and the like.
He said this was partly due to a new generation of viewers, as well as the likes of ‘patchnote parasites, lazy reactors and reuploaders’ – those who grab clips from others and reupload them on their own channels.
Kiandymundi, who has 164,000 subscribers on YouTube and last uploaded a video 10 months ago, said in his Twitter thread: “The space has gone to shit, let it burn. Quality over quantity, fuck the algorithm, I worked HARD on original animations and got nowhere. It’s a waste of time and YouTube is cancer.
“Be a dentist instead, or a lawyer, I’m in the process of getting a real trade because this industry has reliably gotten worse in so many ways each year. God forbid I reached age 30 still doing that shit and getting no reward for my hard work.
“I am actually disgusted at the concept of writing and animating a brand new video every week for 5+ years and some scab in their bedroom lazily uploading ‘New patch item Jax?!!??’ goes further. I could have adapted but I have principles, and what the people want is shitmulch, no taste.
“It’s even worse in the higher echelons of the creator bubble, riddled with social climbers who boast about sponsors and will sell you out in a spicy Twitlonger for a shot at climbing the fame ladder. An industry built on immature foundations inevitably saps the soul.”
“I would love to write and animate new original weekly animations again, but nobody wants it, they want clickbait mulch. It’s even worse in the higher echelons of the creator bubble, riddled with social climbers who boast about sponsors and will sell you out in a spicy Twitlonger for a shot at climbing the fame ladder. An industry built on immature foundations inevitably saps the soul.”
Kiandymundi
Kiandymundi, who secured Twitch partner status in 2017, admitted to Esports News UK his tweets were salty ‘for years of unrewarded hard work’ and also being upset for the state of the industry and what it’s become since he joined a decade ago, but ruled out quitting entirely.
Kiandy told us: “Although I feel hugely disenfranchised with the state of content right now, considering myself one of the older generation of creators, I have a lot to say on this matter. And it’s not just “old man yells at cloud”, it’s important, hard-to-swallow pills for everyone, the viewers, the creators, the industry leaders.
“I haven’t quit entirely, but between life, and my studies to become an electrician, I find little motivation to even spend a summer’s day streaming League when I could be on a beach or in my garden! (laughs)
“What was originally intended to be one month off quickly became almost 10 months. I long-needed it, evidently. YouTube doesn’t like rest. When I eventually upload my next video, which I will, I will have a small disclaimer at the start explaining everything from the past 18 months, how the pandemic changed life’s perspectives, how the YouTube isn’t financially viable, how the algorithms and people have changed, how I’ve changed, everything.
“I would love to write and animate new original weekly animations again, but nobody wants it, they want clickbait mulch. If they wanted it, the numbers would be different. The maths doesn’t lie, sadly.”
Get to know Kiandymundi more in our old Kiandymundi interview here.
The LoL content creator conundrum – how can things improve?
This quality and popularity of League of Legends content has been discussed on and off over the years, with many frustrated at all the ‘OMG, new item OP’ and ‘unranked to challenger’ kind of content flooding YouTube.
Skooch says in his tweets that algorithms and Riot’s focus on solo queue are also to blame, and that content has become less exciting since the days of 2014.
Gbay added in response to the above tweets: “I don’t think anything necessarily happened. Some of the best editors went on to work in more professional capacities. In general the most creative people probably just felt like they didn’t want to be limited to one game. I’d like to think there’s still some good stuff around.”
Other big content creators like Caedrel and Asmongold (who focuses on MMO content rather than MOBAs) have previously spoken about seeing clip channels crop up taking pieces of their content and reuploading them. Both Asmongold and Caedrel ended up reaching out to the respective owners of those channels and teaming up with them.
Caedrel previously told Esports News UK in an interview on re-joining Excel Esports: “I reached out to one of the clip channels and said: ‘If I give you exclusive rights, will you do it for me under the Caedrel brand and I’ll just copyright anyone else who does it’.
“There were like ten different clip channels and they had clips with 100,000 or 200,000 views of me saying random stuff, and I was like, hang on, this is my content. I guess maybe I should have someone do it.”
Caedrel
“I don’t get paid for all of the clips at all, and the clip channel is doing really well, so I kind of reached out to a place called LoL Drama, who were doing a lot of the League clips.
“So I said: “Hey, you can have the YouTube channel and have everything, I just want to have it all in one place under CaedrelClips, would you be down to do it?”
“And they said ‘yeah’. So they’re doing that for me, which is awesome, and the trade-off is they do all the Caedrel clips and put them on TikTok as well, so it benefits me, in terms of exposure, and it works for them which is cool.”
Scottish LoL content creator RossBoomsocks has also spoken about this topic in the past, in videos like this with Neace:
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.
