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League of Legends Fantasy League? Tencent owned ZAM registers domains

The idea of launching a fantasy league for online battle arena game “League of Legends” has been the subject of many forum messages on LeagueofLegends.com, so the idea is nothing new.

But now it looks like a fantasy league is being developed by ZAM Network, a Tencent owned company that operates a number of gaming and addon sites like Wowhead, LolKing and D3DB.

According to WHOIS records, on November 1, 2012, ZAM Network registered the domain names LeagueofLegendsFantasy.com (WHOIS), LeagueofLegendsFantasy.net (WHOIS), LeagueofLegendsFantasyLeague.com (WHOIS), and LeagueofLegendsFantasyLeague.net (WHOIS).

ZAM didn’t stop there. It also registered LoLFantasyLeague.com (WHOIS) and LoLFantasyLeague.net (WHOIS).

Here’s a look at the WHOIS record for LeagueofLegendsFantasyLeague.com:

Tencent, which also has a majority stake in Riot Games, acquired ZAM earlier this year. Because ZAM is being backed by one of the largest internet companies, you can bet they will have the budget and resources to successfully run a fantasy league.

As of right now, ZAM hasn’t made any official announcement. Nor do any of the domain names direct visitors to a gaming site.

At the time of this story being published, each of the names sends visitors to a parked web page at Go Daddy, where they were registered.

In May 2012, ZAM acquired LoLKing, an online summoner database that boasts over 50,000 users per month according to a rough traffic estimate by Compete.

I’ve reached out to ZAM for more information about the ‘League of Legends Fantasy League’, and will update this post if I hear back.

Talking about this story: Kotaku

(Image of Season 2 World Champions Taipei Assassins via leagueoflegends.com)

Riot Games (League of Legends maker) builds mobile team, gets RiotGames.mobi

Riot Games may dominate the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) market in the PC universe with League of Legends, but today, it has yet to enter the mobile MOBA market.

A market that is very small but has big possibilities.

Though League of Legends may not be ready for gaming on the go, Riot Games is ramping up its mobile development teams as shown by job openings posted online.

This week, the company even acquired the domain name RiotGames.mobi (Whois). Dotmobi is the top-level domain introduced for the mobile web. Of course, while obtaining the name may be nothing more than a move by the company to protect its intellectual property, there are plenty of signs that Riot is focusing efforts in the mobile arena.

In late August, Riot posted a job for a Mobile Product Manager in Santa Monica. The listing says the company is building a dynamic, fast-moving Riot Mobile team to help the company develop and create mobile solutions.

The website RiotGames.mobi is currently a parked web page at the time of this story.

It’s unknown whether Riot had to fork out cash to get the name or if it simply had its legal department contact the previous owner. The domain was acquired through the internet brand protection company MarkMonitor. According to Whois history, the name was originally registered anonymously in 2010 and changed ownership to Riot Games this week.

There are developers in the mobile MOBA market.

This October, Gameloft will be releasing the mobile game Heroes of Order & Chaos.

As Pocket Gamer points out in a recent story, Gameloft will be copying the League of Legends tactic of making six characters free for a week at a time, with the option to buy them outright with real money should they take your fancy.

There hasn’t been much news out of Riot regarding its mobile game plans, but with all the mobile job openings being posted, it may not be too long before more is known.

And in case you’re wondering, Riot Games does own the domain leagueoflegends.mobi. The company has owned the web address name since 2008. Today, the web address redirects users to LeagueofLegends.com.

Talking about this story: Kotaku

(Image of Riot Games Dublin offices via RiotGames.com)