League of Legends isn’t dying anytime soon, but the developer behind the MOBA megahit is having to work harder than ever to bring in new players.
Back in 2022, Riot Games announced it would be teaming up with Microsoft. As part of the partnership, Xbox Games Pass subscribers scored access to every playable character in League of Legends, Wild Rift and Valorant as well as additional in-game bonuses for Riot’s smaller titles like Teamfight Tactics and Legends of Runeterra.
Asked to elaborate on the outcomes of that partnership at SXSW Sydney, Riot’s Senior Vice President and Studio Head of League Studio Andrei 'Meddler' van Roon admitted that the results have been a mixed bag.
“It’s a good deal from our perspective and we hope from Microsoft [as well] but globally pretty variable,” he said.
Van Roon noted the story told by those figures is further complicated by the uneven reality of Games Pass’ own global footprint.
“Games Pass subscribers are not evenly globally distributed,” van Roon explained, “so in some areas we’re seeing a meaningful number of new subscribers and new players in areas that are largely League player bases and then in some areas we’re not really seeing the overlap or connection.”
Although Riot’s flagship titles like League of Legends and Valorant remain popular among competitive audiences, the studio faces an uphill battle when it comes to the balancing act of keeping the that slice of the community on-side whilst also catering to those coming to Riot's games via ventures like Netflix’s Arcane animated series.
“In terms of Arcane, we did see a substantial increase in play rate for all titles sharing that same IP,” van Roon said. According to him, much of that influx came down to former League of Legends players jumping back into game.
“Many of them had a good time. Some of them played and then realised why they quit in the first place – in some cases – for reasons that are just out of our control.”
In addition to luring back the lapsed, Arcane also managed to attract new audiences to Riot's roster. Getting them to stick around, however, proved more difficult.
“A lot of them bounced off the games,” van Roon said, pointing to the mismatch between the narrative-heavy and character-focused nature of the award-winning animated series and the gaming experiences that Riot itself specialises in.
“You want to be in that world but then a competitive 5v5 top-down action strategy MOBA game that’s often not what you’re looking for.”
“We did some more people stick with Legends of Runeterra, which has a different pace and [offers] a wider look at the world but I think we’ve got some gaps in our portfolio at present. If you want that character or story-focused thing we didn’t, especially at the time, have much of that.”
2 min read
