Former Samsung Galaxy player and World Champion Lee “CuVee” Seong-jin has revealed that Riot has yet to pay SSG for their cut of the 2017 Worlds skins sales.
It’s custom for winners of the League of Legends World Championship to receive exclusive in-game content upon their victory. This content includes special icons and skins designed after the winning team, usually branded with team logos and colors. This is only one out of many rewards for coming in top place, the others being winning a large lump sum of money and the title of international World Champions.
Once the skins are developed and pushed to live servers, the team gets their fair share of the sales.
Unfair treatment for the 2017 winners
According to CuVee, only some members of Samsung Galaxy have received their payment from the SSG skins sales. Those members being Team Liquid’s Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in and Oz Gaming’s Lee “Crown” Min-ho. After Worlds, both players moved on to the LCS, with CoreJJ starting in TL and Crown in OpTic Gaming. It’s possible that Riot paid them out because those teams are North American, and SSG was South Korean. CuVee shared this information on a recent broadcast, confirmed by LCK reporter Ashley Kang.
The sales for these skins can net out to up to thousands of dollars. The overall sum of money is large enough that Riot has even decided to cut back on the prize money this year, justifying that the sales of skins make up for the rest. Recently, Riot revealed that the winning team receives 25% of the skin sales. “To create a more equitable structure,” Riot Games said. “The first-place prize will be reduced and allocated to the other finishers to better distribute the Worlds prize pool to the remaining competitors, who do not benefit from the sale of the Worlds skins.”
For the moment, there’s no word about whether Riot plans to pay out the rest of the team. Hopefully, this year’s winning team doesn’t go through the same situation as the former SSG players did.
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