Riot’s ‘League Of Legends’ And ‘Arcane’ Statements Contradict Each Other

The League of Legends community is up in arms about a recent explanation for the quiet removal of Hextech Chests from the game, a mechanism to earn free skins that no longer exists as Riot deemed it “not sustainable” from a revenue perspective. This has set off a larger conversation about ongoing League monetization and Riot’s priorities, and things are not really adding up.

In the controversial dev update, Riot leaders explain the Hextech issue:

“As a free-to-play game, skins are the primary way League pays its bills. They’re what give us the ability to continue to develop the game and the wider ecosystem, from adding new game modes to updates to Summoner’s Rift, cinematics, live events like Worlds, patch to patch balance and much longer term investments in League for the future.”

“The number of people playing League has been pretty stable over recent years…our cost to maintain and develop League has also been pretty stable over time too. Ensuring we have an equally sustainable income coming in to reinvest in the game, however, frankly, has been more of a challenge.”

They go on to say that Hextech Chests became the primary way that players were earning skins, leading to an unsustainable lack of spending on paid skins and decreasing returns on investment in skin-making, hence the change.

However, this contrasts with recent statements by top leadership when asked about how an absolutely massive project like Arcane, which reportedly cost $250 million to make, was possible for Riot. Here’s what Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill said at the time:

“These people think we make things like Arcane to sell skins, when in reality we sell skins to make things like Arcane…Do we get everything right? Nope, but we are not focused on the short term extraction of profits – we are focused on delivering exceptional value to our audience over the long term, again and again and again. To be clear, Arcane crushed it for players and so it crushed it for us.”

The explanation here seemed to be that Riot earns so much from skins that means it can invest in other things like big-budget Netflix series (and it’s been confirmed more are already planned). Is that a “longer term investment in League” as stated? It seems Arcane is not some massive boost to playercount, as this video and stats indicate. Meanwhile, the message to players is that despite all their existing spending, free parts of the game are being shelved in addition to monetization being dramatically ramped up with things like gacha mechanics. On the dev side, statements like this are being made in the face of huge layoffs at Riot, where last January they cut 530 jobs, and more have followed since.

So which is it? Is League of Legends barely trudging along to the point where it needs dramatic increases in player spending? Or is it doing so well it can continue to throw money at all these different non-game projects including things like a pricey (though admittedly amazing) show like Arcane? Players may in fact like that show, but they clearly do not want to be footing the bill for it with obvious increases on their end rather than better Riot cost management.

Will this lead to the skin spending level Riot wants? Players certainly are saying this won’t change their behavior, and many say skins are getting worse after portions of the cosmetics team were caught in recent layoffs. The future of League, one of the biggest games in the world, has always seemed solid, but now? Alarms appear to be going off for both the company and the community.

I’ve reached out to Riot for comment, and will update if I hear back.

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