For those who follow League of Legends -or any other media that has global reach-knows that some narratives are not developed in the same way for all territories.
This happens to avoid bad reception or even the complete prohibition of productions that have more progressive narratives than some governments in countries allow, either by law or by controversial morality ideas.
The victim of censorship and change in the story of the time is K’Santa, the newest champion of Riot Games MOB. Since before its official release, the developer used rapper Lil Nos X, which speaks openly about her sexuality, to be the face of the new stage of League of Legends.
However, even with the giant marketing combining Little in the X and the arrival of the new top of the top route, the developer is not very interested in conflicting with countries that criminalize relationships composed of LGBTQIA+people.
Therefore, some game lovers across the globe do not know that K’Santa was with a lover before arriving in Summoner’s Rift, but that he shared the adventure with a simple fighting partner.
Riot talks about censoring k’Santa
Jeremy Lee, CEO of League of Legends, also known as his Nickname Riot ight moon , said in an interview with Sky News: I want all players to find a champion with which they can relate.
With the speech, Lee wanted to reinforce the developer’s intention with which the game is accepted by all kinds of people-but seems to ignore that part of the company’s main product marketing revolves around LGBTQIA+demonstrations.
Hanna Woo, Global League of Legends RP, elaborated the explanations. Although the game undergoes changes to remain published in all countries in the world where it is now available and adapts to local legislation, video game is a global phenomenon.
Nuances have been made, but the identity of the characters is there for you to see, said Woo.
This justification, however, did not convince most of the players. However, the alternatives are not much better.
The best alternative for League of Legends
In Russia-one of the countries that censored the history of K’Sante-the social networks of the territory predominate. However, they also use Reddit or Twitter, so that users have access to issues that happen elsewhere.
Is it better not to disclose the content or letting members of the country’s community discover the story by themselves? The globalized world can have many bad things, but it also prevents the doors in information from.
In Weibo, a twitter-like platform used in China, no more than a few minutes for the community to discover the story of Diana and Leona, even when the government tried to censor the romantic relationship of champions.
The sexuality of K’Infant soon became public in Russia, a country that has laws against what they call homosexual propaganda.
The decision to remain with a slightly changed League of Legends to gain space and financial return on more territories has been widely criticized by the community, but it seems that Riot Games prefers to conform to such legislation than losing a significant portion of its players.