[News] Riot Games co-founder and CEO speaks out against SOPA

I never know quite what to do about these articles--part of ne says, no way they'd take such a bold stance. Another part remembers the chain letters of cuts to PBS funding that just weren't true.

Obviously something like this is MUCH more easily verifiable, but it still has that horizon effect. I still find it hard to pull the trigger on doing something. And yes, there's "Just send a mail to your congressman..." but really, I would like to do more than that. Because without a free internet, I'd never have had the chance to explore and do so much of what I've been able to.

The question isn't whether this would allow bad situations online. It's obvious that it would. The real question is whether or not people would choose to act on that, whether or not companies would press for sites to pull offending content and put pressure on ad networks (which make most game sites possible with a subscription-free setup) or hosts (which make it possible for a site to remain online) or whatever. I think recent history shows us again that we can count on that happening. SOPA is just a hideous, ugly mess of a bill and the best steps we can take involve educating one another on its real impact so that more of us take the time to write to our representatives in Congress.

Riot Games' stance doesn't surprise me at all because this would hurt them probably more than any other game company. League of Legends is huge as an e-sport. It is the biggest competitive game in North America along with Starcraft 2 and probably more popular than SC2 in Europe.

SOPA is a huge threat to streamers. Most professional gamers make the majority of their revenue by streaming and this threatens to shut down the streaming sites (own3d.tv and twitch.tv in particular). Also it hurts their online community, tournaments, etc.