League of Legends has radically changed e-sports: A season in LoL is now compressed into a few weeks. The summer season only lasts from July 17th to 30th. In 2022 the season lasted 4 months. This shortening is killing players, they say.
This is the change: LoL esports seasons have been radically reduced. The 2022 season is only half as long as before:
This extreme compression of the season appears to be compounding the significant problems that were already circulating in esports. The players, many teenagers, the rest in their 20s, just can’t handle the pressure.
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16 LEC professionals unpack
What is the result? The site Dotesports says in a lengthy report they spoke to 16 current and former players in the European professional league LEC. The results are worrying.
Astralis top laner says: The shortening of the season robs players of the time for “mental stability”: Once the season starts, players have to give everything or they will leave behind.
Veteran Belgian Nisqy says:
You’re expected to be good, but if for some reason you’re not, it’s very hard to come back mentally and regain confidence. At the end you might be wondering: what is my job if all I do is lose and nothing else?
Nisqy was recently criticized for smiling after losing – for which he was harshly criticized by angry fans. The accusation: He would not take a defeat hard enough.
He says: It is difficult to understand from the outside what problems professionals are really dealing with inside.
“The new format is fucking shit”
Professionals only say that anonymously: The shortening of the season to only 13 days leads to problems that players only want to voice anonymously.
A pro at the LEC says: “The new format sucks, to be honest. It’s purely a business thing:”
The anonymous, experienced player puts it on record: There would no longer be an introductory phase in the teams, as there used to be in the first few weeks of a season. Now, careers could collapse under the pressure early in a season. Players could quickly ruin a long career in a top league.
The worst thing for players is not even the pressure in a season, but life after a season: There you have no control over your own fate. The team can replace you at any time. This possibility scares many professionals.
Another player says: For him it was the hardest when he was replaced. Because his own self-confidence depended on the performance:
I saw a player who was so burned out he couldn’t get out of bed. He lived League for so many months without anything else. His brain just couldn’t take it anymore and he couldn’t play for 2 weeks. I’ve seen a lot of players with burnout, but never anything like that.
What does an experienced man sayu? Tim Reichert is a former professional footballer at Rot-Weiss Oberhausen. Today he works as CEO of Excel. He believes many esports players lack the education compared to athletes:
“Most esports players lack a proper education and learning curve on how to be a pro.”
E-athletes would have to find out for themselves as teenagers how to cope with the lifestyle and career risks. Even as young adults, they have to adjust to a very stressful lifestyle when chasing their dream job, says the former soccer pro.
Too much food, too much caffeine, too much tobacco, alcohol, marijuana
What does this lifestyle include? One of the pros says that most young pros copy other people’s behavior and it’s often toxic. Players would develop mechanisms to come to terms with harsh sayings, negative feelings, and toxic environments:
Nisqy says that it is now normal for him to smoke and go to shisha bars. As long as you have that under control, everyone should do what they want.
Other players surveyed, like Germany’s Elias “Upset” Lipp, say they’ve found “unhealthy ways” to deal with stress. Another pro says he started drinking in the worst year of his career.
It is said about another player that his team wanted to get rid of but could not release. This led to a psychological war that caused the player to have a severe insomnia: he was only able to sleep 2 hours a day for 3 months. When he left the team, he played better again.
The teams are currently developing methods to improve the mental health of the players with psychologists and programs, but the radical shortening of the season currently seems to be drastically increasing an already existing problem.
Arguably more problems with Adderall and sex than professionals admit
What is not talked about? What the Dotesports report doesn’t show is that many esports athletes are believed to be using performance-enhancing substances. This is a “dirty secret in e-sports”: Intense abuse of Adderall has already been reported in other e-sports such as Call of Duty or Overwatch. It would be surprising if that didn’t exist in LoL as well.
Especially since it has already been reported about the permanent LoL streamer Tyler1, who swallows Adderall like TicTacs, suffers from insomnia and develops an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
It is noticeable that the professionals only talk about the consumption of socially accepted drugs – there could be a lot more wrong.
Another behavior that you keep reading about is things that lean towards “sexual relationships with fans”, which is arguably more common in e-sports as well, as the DotESports article now gleams from the LoL scene.
The situation already sounds serious, but it could be much more serious. For some professionals, this constant harassment has led to OCD:
LoL pro ends career at 22 due to obsessive-compulsive disorder