TL;DR: I was in charge of the LPL English Twitter (https://twitter.com/lplenglish) for 9 months, from January to September. I didn’t receive a contract or hear about my pay until 4 months in. Even after I received my contract, I was still not paid. I worked those 9 months with no payment and didn’t get paid until other people got involved.

If you’re planning on working in esports, make sure you have a contract and defined job duties from the start.

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On December 10, 2018, I was contacted by LPL English looking for someone to manage their Twitter. It was supposed to be a part time job, and as a huge LPL fan, I saw it as a no-brainer. I sent in my resume, got interviewed two days later, and was basically hired and ready to go by January 3, 2019.

Initially, the job seemed very open and full of potential. I was able to pitch some ideas of my own (e.g. features focusing on LPL rookies) and they promised that these would become a reality somewhere down the line. It felt like I had a good team of people who wanted to listen to me and take a shot at what I had to offer, so long as I fulfilled my duties. I was told that, apart from posting announcements and schedules, these duties mostly involved live updates on the games. At first, I saw no problem, but I quickly came to realize that time zones, the lack of management, and the structure of LPL English had me working around the clock.

In contrast to other regions like the LEC or the LCS, where games only happen twice a week, the LPL has matches 6 days a week (MON-TUES-WED-FRI-SAT-SUN). The LPL English broadcast only operates on 4 out of those 6 days, but I was asked to work all 6 days.

For the English broadcast days, this meant clipping and posting live-stream highlights, post-match results, and MVPs. As for the days the LPL English broadcast wasn’t on (on the days only the Chinese broadcast ran), I didn’t have to keep a constant flow of live-stream highlights, but I was expected to post the last moments of the games (the “winning” moments) and the post-match results + MVPs, which was only possible if I followed the games live at all times.

But this wasn’t my only task. I was expected to assist with translations and subtitles, create my own content without any direction, create “graphics” for the next day’s starting rosters (even though I was never told my responsibilities would include creating graphics), and download videos (hype videos, teasers, promos, Face2Face, etc.) through a Chinese software which wasn’t well-supported in my country so I could re-upload them to Twitter.

All these videos especially proved to be time-consuming. Since LPL English didn’t have a proper content calendar for when to post what, or any planning for that matter, I was just expected to be on call 24/7. Regardless of how long it’d take to download the videos, scan through them for any faults, upload them, and then post them, I was expected to always be available.

I’m 6 hours behind China, so the LPL starts in the morning for me. Since we didn’t have a proper schedule, I had to bump up my alarms and make sure I was awake for any links to videos or any updates/announcements, something which happened around the clock, because I wanted to make sure everything ran smoothly. This sentiment didn’t seem to be shared by LPL English management, since I would often get wrong details for posts or told to make changes to posts even after I’d received confirmation and posted (Twitter doesn’t allow edits to tweets, something they didn’t seem to understand). It got to a point where any LPL English-related notice gave me anxiety and I had a difficult time just opening the chats.

Thinking back on it, the seeming lack of awareness from LPL English management is pretty shocking. I was asked to do an overwhelming range of things off the bat, with unreasonable hours where vacation and personal time apparently didn’t exist, all while I was not being paid (which I will discuss in more detail below). All in all, I worked around 35 hours a week. They basically saw this job as being “chronically online” no matter what, and expected me to abide by it.

But the workload and poor management weren't even all of it. 4 months in, I was still working without a contract and had yet to be paid. I didn’t even know what my salary was. From the beginning, I was told countless times that “it’s on the way” and “apologies, we’ll try and get it to you.” Maybe I was naive, but since I was dealing with the LPL and Riot - a major company - I put my trust in the people who had hired me and told me that everything would be fine. Because, as I was told when they’d hired me: “screwing over your media person is the dumbest thing we could do.” I didn’t think that expecting a major company to abide by the bare-minimum standards of employment would be too much.

So after 4 months and some pushing, I finally got a contract and found out about my pay. It was much lower than I expected, especially considering the hours and work I was putting in. But since MSI season was about to begin, they told me it was a bad time to negotiate the details and pushed it off again. It took another 2 months for the contract to be finalized and signed. During that time I found out that before I was even told what it would be, my initial salary had already been set. Either way, I had basically worked 6 months without pay by then. I felt rushed since it was already so close to my last day on the job, so I signed the contract expecting no more hassle.

Even after I’d finished all my duties (on September 6, the day of the LPL summer finals), they tried to convince me to stay for the LPL qualifiers. Despite coming to an agreement that summer finals was my final date, I was asked to continue working. I declined.

To make matters worse, I was then told that it would take a while to process my payment due to “certain laws,” and that I would have to wait another “2-3 months" for it to go through (something no one had thought to bring up in the 9 months I had been working). On one hand, I thought I could just wait a little more since I’d already waited 9 months, but on the other hand, I was tired.

I decided to involve third parties and external influences (other Riot offices) to help me understand why the payment, which had already been delayed several months, was now being delayed even further. Amazingly, once these other people stepped in, everything seemed to magically resolve itself. It didn’t take 2-3 months for me to get paid, like they said it would. I got paid in just a day. It felt like they didn’t take me seriously until other people started advocating on my behalf.

I realized then that nothing would’ve truly been resolved if it was just me. If it was, I’d most likely still be waiting for my payment.

I dedicated a lot of time and really tried my hardest for LPL English because I wanted to see all of this become better. This account had been up for a year prior to when I took over, and in half that time I managed to double the amount of followers (from 13.4K to 28.7K) and boost the total impressions by a significant margin: 10.2M to 15.2M (Spring Split YOY) and 4.5M to 15.6M (Summer Split YOY). I wanted this brand to grow into something which could reflect, if only a little, the spirit of LPL as a region.

Personally, the worst part wasn’t working for 9 months in stressful circumstances without knowing when, or if, I would be paid; it was feeling invalidated and taken for granted.

I suppose some people might ask, why did you do any of this? Why did you endure this for so long? It’s because despite everything, I really do love the LPL and LoL esports with all my heart. I always will. But it’s clear to me now that that passion and affection was exploited during my employment.

While I should’ve been more assertive from the start, no employee at any job should have to ask repeatedly when they're getting contract details or a paycheck, or not be paid until after a job contract ends. The way I was treated was unacceptable.

I’m lucky that I had a support network to help me navigate through the incredible amount of unprofessionalism and dysfunction. I can’t imagine what I’d do or where I’d be without their help. And at the end of the day, I did get paid.

But in hindsight, I don’t know if I would’ve taken this job had I known the outcome. I don’t even know if I can call it a job. I guess I just got the typical esports experience.

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