Hey friends, I'm the author of Wintermint.

I'd like to talk a little about why Wintermint was taken offline, and why, without the explicit permission of Riot, the fate of other clients will be the same.

I apologize for giving the vibe of arrogance (if any), this is not my intention. English isn't my best language.

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Wintermint?

Wintermint is an old project of mine. I wasn't happy with the state of League, so instead of complaining about it on Reddit, I sought to change it for myself. It ended up becoming very big, having a sandbox/private server, competitive replay analysis tools, new game modes and much more (really!). I wrote a little bit about it yesterday. The client aspect of Wintermint is probably the most well known.

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Why Wintermint (the client) was taken offline

Wintermint wasn't taken down for technical reasons, or taken down because of malice on Riot's end. It's all quite simple; this general situation applies to anyone replicating a core component of a business' offering.

If I had to give you a succinct explanation as to why Wintermint was shut down, Wintermint was so good that too many people would use it over the official client.

I certainly wasn't the first to begin writing an alternative client. Thousands have tried to do the same, hundreds promised it but only a few have executed on these promises. What's interesting is that of these, Wintermint was the first time a goodwill project was taken offline.

KolakCC reddit'd lol-jclient about a month prior to Wintermint. It very quickly rose to the top of /r/leagueoflegends where it stayed as the top post for an entire day. Unlike Wintermint, it wasn't immediately deleted. In fact, it was never removed at all.

Why? Because no one was going to use it. Thousands of people tried it, but no one was going to keep using it. Of course not! Setup was painful, the interface was clunky and it was very buggy. Wintermint, on the other hand, was better than that. It was a fast, feature-complete, okay-looking replacement that included things that people have long been asking for. It installed in one click. During closed alpha testing, people told me that they preferred Wintermint so much that they completely uninstalled the official client. Why bother with the official client if you have something else that matches your needs so perfectly?

It's because Wintermint impressed so many people that the situation became scary and dangerous. The League of Legends the client is the entry point to the entire "ecosystem"; it is the only platform which reaches everyone, one hundred percent of players. To allow someone to control the client means to effectively allow someone control to the game and take over the communication platform with players, handing over this power to some person they cannot command!

What if the author decides to start stealing people's accounts?* What if the author has ulterior motives and starts a propaganda campaign against Riot? Or more simply, what if Riot wants to add a new feature? They'd have to talk and negotiate with her! Even if the author was a trusted member of the community, the situation is still unacceptable: Riot are losing their immediate, absolute control over a core piece of the game.

This was the single biggest reason for Wintermint getting taken down. That is, Wintermint was good enough to become a commonly used client, and the consequences of dealing with that were unacceptable. Yes, there were other a multitude of other reasons, but this is the single biggest factor.

Friends from both inside and outside Riot were very impressed and saddened, but unfortunately it touched on a sensitive area where Riot requires absolute control - there is no room for negotiation here.

* Open source does not solve this problem. Wintermint was to be released under the MIT license anyway.

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The future?

I was talking with Riot future possibilities, but I think I've just burnt all those possibilities to a shrivel with this post. Fuck :(

Since Wintermint, I've dabbled in projects for other games (Dota 2 and Guild Wars 2 specifically), but there's still something about League that always draws me back.

I've thought of bringing Wintermint to the web, one that (rightly) surrenders control of the client experience back to Riot. It'd have everything Wintermint had and planned to have except for queueing and the sandbox. We'd start with replays, replay analysis, spectating on mobile devices.

But I've always stopped short of starting this project. I keep thinking back to the perfectly integrated experience that Wintermint had, and I wonder if people would actually use a website that requires 200 more steps than an integrated client would.

Think about one of the most basic features: replay analysis. With the Wintermint client, your game would end with replay analysis built into the end of game scoreboard. But with the official client, you'd need to manually remember "I want to analyze this replay!", open up Windows Explorer, navigate to the replay directory, find the appropriate replay file, open up your browser, navigate to wintermint.net and drag and drop this replay file in. Every time you want to analyze a replay. So of course you wouldn't do this every game. It's too much of a hassle. And most people wouldn't even remember to do it.

I just wonder if this barrier is too high for people to find useful and to use regularly.