[hkes_show_google_ad] Anyone who thinks burnout isn’t a factor in League of Legends needs a Thresh perspective on the scene. Just ask Steve Arhancet. The Team Liquid co-founder and co-CEO appeared on theScore esports Podcast to talk about everything from YouPorn’s entry into esports, to The Big Bluff, a charity poker game featuring League of Legends team owners. The topic of player burnout was front and centre in the conversation, after IEM Katowice saw Cloud9, SK Telecom 1 and Samsung Galaxy all either decline their invites to the event among With the amount of time a high-level player spends bootcamping, travelling and competing, burnout is real, he said.

One of the biggest differences between traditional sports and esports when it comes to being overworked, he said, is the reality of a changing meta. “It would be like in chess, all of a sudden the bishop moves a different way and you just have to relearn the entire game. Or in basketball, and all of a sudden they increased the weight of ball by 10 oz and everybody had to relearn and the body types of the players change,” he told theScore esports Podcast. “They rules of the game, they change, and you have to relearn the game pretty much every 2 to 3 weeks. “There’s a lot of time that goes into mastering that. That’s why they’re playing 8 to 12 hours a day, and then you add on top of that the competitive schedule, which pretty intense. Especially for the teams are going to be performing really well and they’re not going to have many breaks,” he said. “The players’ salaries are increasing, and that’s great, they’re being compensated well for investing so much of their time, but burnout is absolutely a reality.” [hkes_show_google_ad]