Immortals eSports club is planning to buy OpTic Gaming organization and return to the League of Legends professional scene. This was reported by ESPN journalist Jacob Wolf.
According to Wolf, Immortals is going to bid for Infinite Sports and Entertainment, which owns OpTic Gaming, as well as its Call of Duty, CS: GO, League of Legends and Overwatch lineups. The last two teams compete in the LCS and OWL franchise leagues.
Immortals already have one lineup in OWL – the organization owns Los Angeles Valiant. If Immortals succeed in their endeavors, then Blizzard is unlikely to allow the club to control Houston Outlaws, which was recently acquired by OpTic. What will happen to the team, in this case, is unknown. Wulf has us convinced that Immortals are going to buy Infinite Sports and Entertainment in order to return to the American division LCS.
Immortals recently raised $ 30 million in investment. New sponsors of the organization were John Griffin and the company March Capital Partners. The club also changed its official name to Immortals Gaming Club. According to Wolfe, other changes will follow the rebranding and additional investments will soon be announced. Rumors are that the founder of Immortals, Noah Winston, may resign from a management position.
The return of @Immortals to the #LCS is back on the table: Sources told ESPN on Wednesday that the team has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round and plans to make a bid for a stake in OpTic Gaming's parent company. https://t.co/WJGoX7O43g pic.twitter.com/Jj4QaB80mu
— ESPN Esports (@ESPN_Esports) May 3, 2019
Immortals played in the US League of Legends division from 2015 to 2017. The club lost a slot in the LCS when the league switched to franchise format. According to unconfirmed reports, Riot Games was concerned about the financial situation of the organization.
Riot Employees Not Happy
Several employees of Riot Games are planning a strike. They don’t like the fact that management prevents them from going to court against the employer: their discontent is connected with the scandal with the sexist corporate culture of Riot. This was reported by Waypoint Edition.
According to Waypoint, one of the Riot employees thought to protest after the first Kotaku reports, where the company was first accused of maintaining specific labor relations. Employees anonymously informed the portal that the management promised them greater openness, but this did not happen.
Lack of Transparency
Journalists say that when Riot Games found out about the plans of the employees to leave, they sent letters to them, were they convinced that they were ready for dialogue in “small groups”. Riot CEO Nicolo Laurent made the same announcement to the employees. How many employees are dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the company is unknown.
The sexist scandal at Riot Games broke out in the summer of 2018 after an investigation by Kotaku. Subsequently, the company recognized problems and hired special managers to solve them. April 26, 2019th Kotaku published a new material, in which it was stated that Riot prevents employees from resolving issues with the company in court.
Let’s see what will happen as the story develops. We really hope that things don’t go south for the developer of League of Legends. Since it has done a great job in the management of the competitive landscape.
