SkinSpotlights to scale back content over Vanguard implementation in League of Legends: ‘Motivation is at a huge low right now’

Popular UK-based League of Legends YouTube channel SkinSpotlights will be scaling back on content due to new restrictions around Vanguard.

Vanguard is Riot Games’ anti-cheat system, which is currently live in Valorant and will be added to League of Legends as part of LoL Season 2024.

It’ll run at a kernel level, allow for live match termination and will refund LP to players in games with or against detected cheaters and bots.

Some in the community are upset that Vanguard looks like it’ll make custom skins unusable, and that it could spell the end of League of Legends on Linux.

Beyond that, it’s going to make things much more restrictive for the likes of SkinSpotlights, which said Vanguard will impact ‘Kat dummy, fast video recording, consistent camera positioning, S Mark, interactions, chromas etc’.

The SkinSpotlights YouTube channel, which showcases the latest in-game skins and special champion interactions in League, has racked up more than 2.6m subscribers on YouTube over the years.

SkinSpotlights said last week after Vanguard was announced in League of Legends: “Overall will see how it goes, I don’t think it will but there is a chance Vanguard might be the push for me to move on.”

They later said they’re entering a bumpy period for an unknown amount of time, where ‘everything will be scuffed, slower, bad quality and I’ll have to work unsocial hours again, all for potentially nothing’.

When asked why Vanguard impacts them so much, SkinSpotlights replied: “I have multiple pieces of software that tamper with in game memory, such as specifically setting the camera to a position and hold it there.”

SkinSpotlights on talks with Riot and scaling back due to Vanguard

SkinSpotlight said in this thread on X (formerly Twitter): “Starting with patch 14.4 I’m going to be scaling back what I do and cover. With the extra time I don’t know currently what I’ll do.

“Coverage will be slow, scuffed and some style of videos will be impossible for me to produce going forward. If I decide to move on, I still plan to do Wild Rift [content].

“Just really defeated. My December project was to spin up two new channels. Everything has been made for those and I started to get everything rolling but those are impacted and won’t be possible at all for me to continue.

“And for the record since people don’t understand YouTube money, I make at most in a year £50k. I don’t do 10-minute videos often, interactions are literally the thing that keeps me afloat. Skin videos rpm are anywhere from as low as £0.20 up to at best £0.70 and varies hard.”

SkinSpotlights also said they have spoken to Riot Games confidentially about the situation, and are unable to share much publicly.

They said: “I know it’s impossible for me to create a certain type of video, but I won’t be able to say at a technical level why, as that can threaten security and give a heads up as to what’s happening, even though I’d say it’s easily guessable.”

This time last year, SkinSpotlights passed its 10-year milestone and received a plaque from Riot Games.

Dom Sacco

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.