Riot to require four years for imported players to become residents

Riot Games is about to change the rules regarding what it takes for players to become permanent residents of a competitive League of Legends region they were imported into. As it stands, players are required to be permanent residents of a region for two years before they can be considered “Interregional Movement Policy residents” and get around the Riot rule of no team having more than two non-residents on the roster at any given time.

Now, imported players that are already in new regions will have to reside there for four years before they can be considered IMP residents, Riot Games announced today. What’s more, any players that come into a new region after 2017 will have to establish themselves as “lawful permanent residents” (i.e. citizenship or something similar) before they can attain IMP status.

The goal of the rule changes, according to Riot, is to “facilitate a healthy balance of important players and homegrown players, and maintain strong regional identities.” While “fewer than 10 non-residents” worldwide would have been given IMP status by the end of 2016 (again according to Riot), this rule change will affect a few teams’ plans to build their future rosters.

Notably, there’s Cloud9, who has swapped around their starting LCS roster and Challenger roster to accommodate for the rules, who has kept talented jungler Lee “Rush” Yoon-jae on the bench until he gains resident status. As ESPN reported, Rush returned to Korea last month as the rumors of this rule change began to take hold. Cloud9 has kept imports Jeong “Impact” Eon-young and Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen on the roster as their allowed two non-resident players.