Curse Gaming gives up its name

One of League of Legends biggest brands is exciting the League Championship Series.

Team Curse will adopt a new name, as the Curse company must withdraw its name from the team due to the league’s new Sale of Sponsorship rule.

The rule, implemented by Riot Games to combat conflicts of interest between teams with similar sponsors or brands, was instituted with a specific instance in mind: Evil Geniuses and Alliance. GoodGame, the esports agency recently acquired by Twitch, owned both brands, potentially creating conflicts of interest between those teams and teams who use GoodGame’s services to secure sponsorship for them, like Counter Logic Gaming.

Curse is in a similar conflict with Team Curse as the company wants to promote Curse Voice, their solution for in-game voice communication, through other teams in the LCS. That means they can no longer serve as a title sponsor of the Curse team.

The team sought to avoid such problems in April of 2014, when Curse spun off its esports team into an independent venture headed by Steve “Liquid112” Arhancet. But apparently the efforts were not enough—Curse can’t seem to escape the issue. Their amateur team, Curse Academy, qualified for the LCS, meaning the organization must sell off the team to avoid violating a rule that prevents two teams from under the same umbrella.

For the Curse team itself, little will change but the name on their jerseys. Curse will continue to support the team with the same financial obligations as before the change.

But it really is too bad for fans, as Curse was one of the first esports organizations to truly take League of Legends seriously. Curse Gaming is a staple of the League Championship Series but soon it will be a name of the past.

Of course, maybe that’s a good thing for the team. They might finally break their fourth place curse, now that they’re donning different jerseys.