League of Legends: Reborn in Season 3, Tuning the Entire League

Chapter 258: Live Skin Selection and the Whereabouts of the Others
Why is it said that Team One sets an excellent example for the other members of the NXG youth academy?
Looking at the prize money earned by Song Yuan and the other four players after their World Championships this year, as well as the market offers they received, it's not hard to understand.

Take the recently concluded S3 World Championship as an example. The champion's prize money was as high as one million US dollars, and Jiang Ming, as the person in charge of the club, set a champion reward ratio of 60% for the players!

This means that 60% of the $100 million (i.e., $60) will be divided equally among the five people, which translates to nearly one million yuan per person.

This means that in just one year, they went from being ordinary players in the 2200-point rank of LOL ranked matches to becoming high-income earners with millions in savings!
Furthermore, the contract amounts offered by outsiders for the five NXG players are astronomical:

The C9 team from the North American region has its eye on yihan and Song Yuan, offering each of them an annual salary of $20 as foreign players. It has to be said that with the strong support of the North American Air Force, this is quite a generous offer. This is also why Jiang Ming is determined to bring in big names from outside the esports circle to invest in his club. After all, the salaries offered by those competitors are indeed exceptionally generous for esports players.

If NXG wants a virtuous cycle, it cannot follow the example of those companies that have real businesses to back them up or that are simply burning money for advertising and promotion.

Without spending money, NXG is very likely to fall into the same predicament as WE in its previous life: the club's generous salaries cannot retain players, the talents it cultivates will always belong to other clubs, and in the end, it can only become a ticket seller.

Although the other three had no intention of staying in North American clubs to play, the annual salaries offered to them by domestic clubs were basically in the millions of yuan.

It's worth noting that this is just the players' basic salary. If you include commercial endorsements, live streaming contracts, and the revenue from NXG's mature marketing and sales system, the players' total income is now vastly different from the dire situation they faced when the League of Legends project first started.

The camera shifts to a restaurant on the west coast of Los Angeles:

After two days of fun at the beach, the NXG team members were lounging in chairs in various relaxed poses, the sun making the skin of several young men noticeably darker.

While waiting for the food to be served from the kitchen, Song Yuan fiddled with the sunglasses he had bought for two hundred dollars, only to find out they were made in his own factory, while Xu Jing and Pang Ran, the two of them, were looking through various photos taken during their trip.

Just like most Chinese tourists, they can't help but take lots of photos at tourist attractions, even though these photos may end up gathering dust in their phone albums or even be completely deleted when they change phones.

Little Stone was scrolling through his phone with his head down. Perhaps it was because he had been spending too much time in the wilderness, but he had recently become somewhat addicted to surfing the internet on Chinese online forums and message boards.

Especially the newly established Baidu Anti-Stress Bar, where every guy is a genius, with all sorts of amazing posts and such pleasant to talk to...

Still undecided?

Jiang Ming's gaze fell on Yihan on his right. Seeing that the other person was fiddling with the knife and fork in his hand, he couldn't help but ask him a question.

He shook his head regretfully, "There's nothing to hesitate about. Ming-ge, your advice has been thorough enough. I already have the answer in my heart whether to stay or leave."

After the match, Jiang Ming immediately found the two players and told them about C9's transfer request to the club and the salary offer they had made.

At the same time, from Yihan's and Yihan's perspectives, a detailed breakdown was done for them: language barriers, cultural differences, version adaptation period... After weighing the pros and cons, it was indeed a clearly visible upward path.

"Then what's the reason now?" Jiang Ming asked with some curiosity.

"I'm a bit anxious," he said regretfully. "I feel that a million-dollar annual salary is a bit unreal, and I'm also a little worried."

"Worry?"

"Yes, I'm worried that I'll quickly become corrupted after coming to North America."

He said this with lingering fear, but during his two days in Los Angeles, apart from realizing that the air and water in North America were no less sweet than those back home, he witnessed firsthand what true decadence and debauchery were all about.

The wind in Los Angeles is so strong it can make you feel lightheaded. The dazzling luxury stores often make it hard to leave, and then there are the bikinis on the West Coast… well, it seems like it doesn't really matter whether you step out or not.

"When I was at the base, I would wake up every day to play ranked matches, and before going to bed, I would sit with my teammates in the training room to review the games."

"But in North America..."

He was well aware of his talent, and he was afraid that after leaving the NXG family, he would not be able to maintain the same high-intensity training as he did in China.

But once his competitive level declines, what awaits him...

"Hey, Qiangzi, what are you worrying about, a bubble teapot?"

"Two hundred thousand US dollars! That's a yearly salary of over 1.5 million RMB. If we're frugal and work hard for two years, we can achieve financial freedom."

While Yihan was struggling with her dilemma, the simple-minded Song Yuan was incredibly carefree. After consulting with his parents immediately, Song Yuan readily agreed.

"Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on you while you're competing in North America."

"What if you also fall into depravity?" Little Stone suddenly betrayed him after finishing scrolling through his phone.

"Ahem, swimsuit beauties and all that, well, we still have you guys here." Song Yuanyi said sternly, "You're in charge of supervision. If their competitive form and performance decline, just come knocking on their door with knives, okay?"

"Bullshit, I don't have time for that. It's good that you've declined. You can sit at the same table as the audience at the World Championship in the future."

"Hahaha!"

The room was filled with cheerful laughter. Perhaps they had prepared in advance, or perhaps they had already rehearsed this scene countless times in their minds before the World Championship. In other teams, the change in the team roster might have caused a huge uproar, but at this moment, the NXG players, who had accepted the fact, did not show any sadness about the upcoming separation.

"Let's eat first, we still need to go to Riot Games headquarters tonight."

"What are you going there for, to choose a skin?"

"Yes, that's on the agenda. At the same time, Riot Games is organizing a live stream event where designers and players meet face-to-face, and I'm a special guest." Jiang Ming didn't play coy and directly told his team members about the itinerary and tasks.

Riot Games originally didn't include a skin selection process for the winning team; their plan was to choose a few popular champions from this year's new releases to create skins for.

However, when Jiang Ming talked about this matter during his visit to Riot Games headquarters with his senior, he casually mentioned that they could organize a live-streamed skin selection event, giving fans several options to vote on, which would also generate anticipation for the championship skin.

Judging from today's process, it's clear that the head of Riot Games' operations department adopted this suggestion.

Not only did they adopt it, but they also quickly announced their arrangements and plans online, and released some hero options for the five positions, allowing players to start a debate about their favorite heroes in advance.

There are three champions nominated for each position for the championship skins;
Top lane: Desert Butcher Renekton, Future Guardian Jayce, and Desert Reaper Nasus.

Jungle: Lee Sin, Aatrox, and Elise.

There aren't many options for choosing championship skins for the Ueno and Noh positions, or rather, there isn't much controversy surrounding them.

As a jungler's faith, unless a Sword Demon player gives Little Stone an irresistible sum of money for a round, or a Spider Queen player does a stunning cosplay and climbs into his bed in the middle of the night, the jungler championship skin will 99% of the time go to Lee Sin.

As for the top lane, logically speaking, Renekton would be Song Yuan's first choice.

But there's no way around it. As the moderator of the Nasus forum, and with his signature champion going to the World Championship, where he successfully withstood pressure and turned his opponents into Nasus in the mid-game, it would be unreasonable not to pick Nasus.

In the mid-lane, unlike in the previous timeline, substitutes did not have championship skins.

The unique nature of NXG's mid laner prompted Riot Games to take the lead and give both the starters and substitutes championship skins.

There's no way around it; NXG's starting player, Yihan, fought his way from the quarterfinals to the finals, so he absolutely deserves a championship skin.

As for JM, it's even more impossible for him to be left out. If Riot dares to omit this man from the championship skin options, angry fans will probably run to Riot's gates tomorrow and throw grenades full of the spirit of freedom at them.

Some designers even suggested adding JM's coaching role to create a special championship skin.

Thus, there are now six hero candidates for the mid lane.

Jayce, the Guardian of the Future; Zed, the Master of Shadows; Master Yi, the Wuju Bladesman; Lissandra, the Ice Witch; Syndra, the Dark Sovereign; and Ahri, the Nine-Tailed Fox!

There aren't many hero choices for duo teams.

Firstly, regarding Ezreal, whom Xu Jing really wanted, since a championship skin had just been released in Season 2, Riot designers subtly indicated that they would try to avoid Ezreal.

Therefore, the three options for AD fell to the female police officer, Vayne, and the plane head respectively.

Pang Ran was quite happy. When it was his turn to play support, whether it was Thresh, Zyra, or even Nami who filled in, they were all heroes he usually liked to use.

When it came to deciding which one to choose, it even resembled an emperor choosing a concubine.

During the meal, everyone simply started chatting.

It is widely known that Song Yuan and Yihan will most likely remain in North America and join C9.

The arrangements for the others are still unknown.

"Old Xu, I heard EDG has been calling you a lot. What do you think about that?" Song Yuan asked.

Pang Ran: "What's EDG's current roster again?"

"Factory Director plus Curly Hair, former WE jungler and support."

"Oh, that's good. Curly Hair and Factory Director are both quite strong, and they're good at ganking bot lane. If you go to EDG, you should have a pretty comfortable time playing there."

"Ugh, I really don't want to go to EDG!" Xu Jing said with a bitter expression, his face full of resistance.

"Why? The price offered by EDG's owner probably won't be much lower than what we're offered together."

"Their food was absolutely terrible!"

(End of this chapter)