As eSports continues to grow in popularity, more and more money is becoming involved in the industry, and like traditional sports, professional players often receive significant sponsorships from companies in return for using their products or displaying their logos during tournaments.

But not all sponsorships are agreeable to the studios behind eSports games, as League of Legends developer Riot Games recently demonstrated when it banned G2A.com Ltd. from sponsoring professional players or teams.

The primary reason for this is the fact that G2A promotes third-party sites that sell League of Legends accounts as well as Elo boosting services, which allow players to pay to have someone else increase their level ranking in the game. Riot has previously banned professional players for participating in Elo boosting, such as when it banned Yu “XiaoWeiXiao” Xian earlier this year.

While the news about G2A’s ban has only recently come to light, Riot had apparently made its decision official as of September 18.

“This was NOT a decision we made lightly, and came after many weeks of back and fourth conversations with G2A to find a resolution, which we were not able to reach an agreement on,” Developer Relations and Third-Party Ecosystem Manager J. Eckert wrote in a comment on Reddit. “We do not at all enjoy affecting the income of the teams, but the LCS rules include guidelines specifically against this sort of thing. We did however keep teams in the loop during the process in an attempt to avoid any surprises.”

Eckert added that “remove all account selling and boosting-site links” was a major request in its negotiations, which G2A refused to honor. “We weren’t going to compromise our values on that one in the sake of preserving the sponsorships,” Eckert said.

While G2A may not be able to sponsor players or teams, the site does sponsor a number of Twitch streamers, and there is little Riot can do to change that.

photo credit: IMG_0331 via photopin (license)