Cable Company Sued By New York Attorney General Over Bottlenecked League of Legends Speeds

Jason Winter
By Jason Winter, News Editor Posted:
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League of Legends Heimerdinger

Free-to-play games are rife with microtransactions. Want a nice hat? Pay for it. Want a cool mount? Pay for it. Want a leveling boost? Pay for it? Want decent internet speed? Pay for it. Wait, what?

That's basically what's alleged in a lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general against Time Warner Cable -- which later merged with Charter Spectrum -- which alleges that the cable provider is "fraudulent and deceptive" in its practices regarding the advertising of its internet speeds. I know, a cable company misleading customers is huge news...

With regards to gaming, however, things get even worse. When demand became too high, and speeds too slow, Spectrum refused to upgrade its infrastructure until Riot Games and Netflix paid them to do so:

Once Netflix and Riot Games agreed to pay Spectrum for access to its customers, performance improved. Meanwhile, it took the FCC’s Open Internet Order to solve the issues between Spectrum and [internet backbone provider] Cogent.

"[Spectrum] lined its pockets by intentionally creating bottlenecks in its connections with online content providers, despite knowing that these negotiating tactics would create problems for its subscribers in accessing online content."

That quote comes from the NY attorney general's brief on the lawsuit, which you can read here. You can also read Polygon's summary of the events here. If you've got lots of time to kill -- say, longer than a typical League of Legends match -- you can read the 87-page suit as it was filed here. The suit could result in a settlement of hundreds of millions of dollars, so you'd better believe that it will be going on for a long time.

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In this article: League of Legends, Riot Games.

About the Author

Jason Winter
Jason Winter, News Editor

Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.

More Stories by Jason Winter

Discussion (10)

trionisshit 7 years ago
Brainless moba for degenerates, one map over and over and over, grow brains better monkeys!
Kog 7 years ago
5G is going to make ALL those cable companies obsolete...should arrive in 2018
View 1 reply
Stardown 7 years ago
Well they better settle this before net neutrality falls.... otherwise this company is going to get away with it..
Bring on google fiber 7 years ago
We need google fiber more then ever. I am glad they are being sued for this I hate when these companies think they can try to pull a fast one to maximize profits for their paychecks. What will happen in 50 years will they want double the paychecks they got now? It will obviously send society in a spiral if they do but I hope google fiber expands all across the USA I'm glad google is scaring the big internet companies who probably wouldn't upgrade for years to upgrade ASAP I mean these companies are obviously filthy rich the CEO especially they should care about their customers service if they don't wanna go out of business. Offering all these sales and promos isn't enough it might trick dumb people but after they stay on for how ever long the promo says you must they are likely gonna leave if the service isn't good. We need quality service and a reliable company who we can depend to bring it and not one who is only in it for the money. I know everyone is in it for the money but I mean also in it to provide good quality service to the customers and not just give the customers service charge them for every little thing. It's almost impossible to talk to service representative nowadays I got to talk to the stupid computer I don't wanna talk to a computer I wanna talk to a real person. I know they are trying to save money I won't name companies but when i tried calling a cable provider the computer kept messing up what I wanted to do and after an hour I finally got it to pass me over to a real person. She charged me just for talking to her like WTF!?!?!!?? She said I would of been better off talking to the automated system since it was free I told her it was broke it wasn't taking payments or recognizing anything I was trying to do I had to hang up and call back a couple times all she said was sorry? And she said the were still gonna charge me for talking to her I felt scammed for doing so but yeah I'm glad this cable company is being sued by the attorney general of new york they deserve it.
kuridomo 7 years ago
G-g-g-google fiber please take over!
kek 7 years ago
I get throttled all the time by AT&T and can't do anything about it, thinking about getting p.i.a
View 2 replies
rickshaw 7 years ago
About bloody time all these companies are getting away with bullshit.
I know its kind of outside of the box, as gamers we have had to bare it all for many moons, but these companies are filthy rich from their deceptions towards us as a customer they dock us all the time at any time they want.

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