For those who have been putting off the League of Legends esports-inspired mockumentary series Players in favor of other titles in their massive streaming backlog, or those who’ve been struggling to justify the cost of a Paramount Plus subscription, the time has finally arrived.
In celebration of the show’s “Esports Content Series of the Year” award win at the Esports Awards, the show’s first season in its entirety will be free to watch on the LoLEsports YouTube channel for the next month. Fans will be able to watch all 10 episodes for free, and each episode is roughly 30 minutes.
The show was created by writer/director duo Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda, the two behind the critically acclaimed American Vandal series on Netflix, another mockumentary series that parodied true crime documentaries.
The show’s creators, Riot Games, and CBS Studios all joined forces to create the Players series, a parody of sports documentaries that follow Fugitive Gaming, a fictional LCS team led by veteran star player Creemcheese who’s seeking to finally win an elusive championship. The series is heavily inspired by sports documentary series like The Last Dance, Cheer, and Formula 1: Drive to Survive.
One of the more daunting challenges of the show was depicting esports and League to a larger audience that didn’t understand the game, and for that, the creators looked at acclaimed Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit as an example. The creators also brought in League community members and ran scripts by the Riot production team to make sure everything was accurate.
The show was received very positively by both critics and the wider audience. It has a 94-percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 80-critic score on Metacritic, with an 84-percent audience rating and 7.4 (out of 10) audience score on each site.
While it’s not been confirmed yet, the ending of the first season (no spoilers here, don’t worry) does open the door for a potential season two.
