League of Legends Team Pulls Video of Players' Jobs Being Threatened

CLG showed the world what the lowest of lows in League of Legends looks like. The world didn't want to see

onventional wisdom says there’s no such thing as too much transparency, but like most adages, this one comes with asterisks. Yesterday, esports organization CLG demonstrated this by posting a video in which the general manager of its League of Legends team, Daniel “Tafokints” Lee, told downtrodden players that their days on the roster are likely numbered. The video was so poorly received by the esports community that CLG took it down hours later.

CLG’s team is currently tied for last in overall League Championship Series standings and is in a last-place league of its own in the current ongoing summer tournament (via Dot Esports). CLG’s now-removed video, released as part of the organization’s blatantly branded Bud Light Gaming Cooldown series, depicted a moment in which Lee had a frank sit-down with CLG’s LCS roster.

“I’m gonna be upfront: I’m thinking about roster swaps,” Lee said to the team in the video. “It’s been two months; we haven’t really been progressing, so there’s very likely gonna be changes this week. I’m exploring options, so this might be the last time we have this roster of five playing.”

This is sometimes just a cruel reality of esports, but the question here is whether anybody actually benefits from seeing it—especially as part of a sponsored promo video. It doesn’t help that craterous failures at CLG come after multiple players on the current roster experienced career highs elsewhere. Finn “Finn” Wiestål and Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen made serious waves on European teams before joining CLG late last year, and Jason “WildTurtle” Tran, playing as part of a different team called FlyQuest, competed in multiple 2020 tournaments’ grand finals. Fielding interview questions about what’s gone wrong at CLG, players have come across as dejected and lost.

Source: Kotaku