According to Riot's Terms of Service, streamers are not allowed to play League of Legends exclusively for a paying audience. Blizzard, Valve, and many other publishers have similar rules in their own TOS. This regulation has been discovered in light of Twitch's new "Sub-Only" stream feature and is causing some confusion for streamers.

The TOS issue received a lot of attention on Reddit and Twitter yesterday when League streamer Gross Gore tweeted to Riot asking for clarification about the rule. As of this writing Riot has not responded and Gross Gore has refrained from streaming the game until he gets a response. So far no publisher has taken action against any Twitch streamer who has violated the TOS by streaming in sub-only mode.

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The controversial new option for Twitch was launched late last week and has drawn the ire of streamers and viewers alike. Many, including popular streamer Mizkif, believe sub-only streamers are not designed to benefit game streamers on the platform but rather IRL and Just Chatting streams. This conflict in policy between Twitch and game publishers would seem to indicate there is some validity to that thinking.

Gross Gore, on the other hand, has seen nothing but benefit from switching full-time to sub-only mode, both financially and emotionally. In a charged video posted to Twitter, Gross Gore condemns the haters and explains that not only has he gotten MORE  subscriptions since he started streaming sub-only, but he also is no longer being harassed by viewers and, for the first time in months, had a good stream.

Gross Gore originally planned to stream sub-only for "the next few streams/until my viewer count drops to 0." Surprisingly, quite the opposite happened. According to Gross Gore, since switching he has had days where he gained 100-400 new subs and has really enjoyed his experience.

Now, he waits for a response from Riot, who he reached out to 24 hours ago for clarification over whether he is allowed to stream League while in sub-only mode. If they confirm that they will in fact take action against sub-only streamers, this may push Gross Gore away from exclusive streams as League is really his main game. It will also confirm for many that sub-only is designed to benefit IRL and Just Chatting streamers, two categories that some feel have been slowly pushing gamers out of Twitch and changing the culture of the streaming site.

It seems more likely, however, that the sub-only option will be utilized most successfully be professional esports organizations. Though we haven't heard from the likes of Overwatch League or Evo if they plan on requiring audiences to subscribe, it seems probable that this is coming down the line, adding to our ever increasing collection of streaming subscriptions.

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