League of Legends' Twitch directory page just got an unexpected upgrade. Starting today, you'll be able to sort all live League of Legends streamers on Twitch by their in-game rank, and even filter them to only see streamers currently playing specific champions you'd like to watch. Crowds usually tend to gravitate toward whatever streamers are at the top of Twitch's "most viewers" list, but Twitch and Riot Games may have just thrown a monkey wrench in that system.
This is the first time I've seen Twitch customize a game's directory page to this extent. League of Legends is one of the most popular games on the platform, but I'm interested to know if stuff like this is in the works for other games. While the character filter would be harder for a game like Overwatch, the rank filter could theoretically be used across lots of different games. It would also be interesting to filter a game like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds by how many players are left in each streamer's current match.
The system for League of Legends is all automated as well, with a streamer only needing to link their Twitch and League of Legends accounts together to have their data scraped in real time. Of course, being good at a game doesn't necessarily mean you are any good at streaming it. But anything that can be done to lessen the massive boost streamers at the top of the "most viewers" list get is a good thing for streaming, in my opinion. Now that 10 viewer Teemo main can have their time to shine!
The new filters are already active, though Twitch says they may roll out slower for some. You can play around with your new found power on the League of Legends directory page.
