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League of Legends Project L: Fighting game champions, release date, gameplay leaks

  ❘   Published: 2022-08-02T01:00:13

  ❘   Updated: 2022-08-02T01:00:11

Project L is Riot Games’ upcoming fighting game set in the League of Legends universe. More details are coming to light after the game’s first reveal in October 2019. Here’s what we know so far, including the roster of champions, release details, gameplay footage, and more.

The League of Legends universe has been ever-expanding since Riot released a can of worms during the League 10 Anniversary celebrations in October 2019.

Project L has arguably been the most secretive game of the lot. As Legends of Runeterra and Valorant launched, and Riot delved into their MMORPG and indie titles under Riot Forge, there hasn’t been much news about the fighting game.

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However, Riot is working towards a big release in Project L, finally sharing more details with the world recently. Here’s what we know so far about Riot’s League of Legends-inspired fighting game, including gameplay footage, confirmed champions, and a release window.

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Contents

• Does Project L have a release date?
• League of Legends champion roster
• Trailers
• Gameplay

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Riot Games

Project L, the League of Legends fighting game, is in active development.

Does Project L have a release date?

Riot’s Tom Cannon said the Project L team still has a long way to go, but they’re working very hard on it. Players shouldn’t expect to get their hands on Project L until 2023 at the earliest.

The developers will continue to give updates in 2022 and beyond though, with the first of two promised info drops confirming Project L will be free to play at launch.

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As of August 2022, devs are “finishing up our work on core mechanics now,” Cannon said. “A lot of our team has moved on to building champions or building game features like competitive play and our social systems.” 

Therefore, development appears to be on track for an initial launch at some stage in 2023.

What League of Legends champions will be in Project L?

On the character side, a few League of Legends champions were spotted in initial Project L trailers, including Ahri, Darius, Katarina, and Jinx.

What’s neat is that there are multiple different types of abilities resulting in numerous different styles. While a champion like Darius uses his axe for combat, similar to a game like Soul Calibur, Ahri could be primarily projectile-based.

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As confirmed on August 1, we also know that Illaoi is on the way to fight against the previously teased roster.

Here’s a full list of League of Legends champions confirmed for Project L so far.

• Ahri
• Darius
• Ekko
• Illaoi
• Jinx
• Katarina

Project L’s original prototype, here shown in 2019, looked a lot like Street Fighter V.

Project L trailers & teasers

League 10 Anniversary announcement

Project L was briefly revealed during Riot’s League of Legends 10 year anniversary stream back in October 2019. Tom Cannon, the game’s director, spoke briefly about their ambitions, with a first look at prototyped gameplay.

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Trailer begins at 33:37

RiotX Arcane Epilogue trailer

The next time we saw Project L was during the RiotX Arcane event in November 2021 — two years on. It has evolved a lot since it was first shown off, with Riot explaining some of the game’s mechanics.

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Project L gameplay

Project L appears to be a 2.5D “assist-based” fighting game. The characters will be 3D models fighting on a horizontal 2D plane — close to Street Fighter V.

It will have tag-team mechanics, where you pilot a squad of two different champions, swapping them in and out to land some nasty combos.

“This is the right foundation to build a game that rewards strategic team building and on-the-fly decision making, on top of strong fighting fundamentals,” the developers said in a November 2021 update.

Riot Games

Project L will be an assist-based fighting game.

Original prototypes featured a standard 90-second match timer. Additionally, the game keeps track of combos indicating how many hits connect with an opponent.

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Character-specific meters also indicate the possibility of EX-attacks and supers, though nothing has been shown off yet.

Riot are also using their RiotDirect netcode that has helped reduce ping for Valorant and League of Legends, with some rollback elements.

We will update this piece with more Project L news as it comes to light.

League of Legends PROJECT 2021: Missions, rewards, and more

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Andrés Aquino

Published: Jun 5th, 2021, 04:26

It’s time to face the threats of the Bastion and charge against anyone, joining the rebellion in the new PROJECT 2021 event.

With the arrival of the new batch of skins based on the dystopian and futuristic world of PROJECT in patch 11.11, a huge batch of content has arrived in League of Legends along with a new special event loaded with many challenges and great rewards.

So today we bring you everything you need to know about this event, along with all its quests and associated rewards, and see what you can obtain through the special event currency, the Tokens.

PROJECT 2021: Schedule and Quests

The PROJECT 2021 event will be available until 28th June, 2021, with tons of special tasks available where you will have to test your abilities and skills in the Summoner’s Rift, working as a team or on your own.

These missions will be sequential, so you must complete one to move on to the next. Each of these will grant you Tokens, which you can use in the event store to exchange them for exclusive rewards.

Mission	Objective(s)	Reward
Recruit: Project Corporation	Earn 250,000 Gold AND Win 10 Games	30 Tokens
Recruit: G/Netic Rebels	Earn 120 Takedowns AND Deal 1,000,000 Damage to Champions (Physical or Magic)	30 Tokens
Recruit: Outcasts	As a Team, Destroy 100 Structures (Towers, Inhibitors, Nexuses) AND Destroy 20 Wards	30 Tokens
Confront the Tyrant	Earn 100 Points Here’s how to earn points: Have more Takedowns than Deaths +2 Points Play with 1 or more friends +2 Points Win a game +4 Points Lose a game +2 Points	40 Tokens
A City Besieged	Win a Game OR Play 3 Games	10 Tokens
City::Factions->Gather()	Play 2 games in a party with 1 or more friends OR Play 5 Games	10 Tokens
ERROR[Dissonance]	Earn 25 Takedowns OR Play 3 Games	10 Tokens
City::Defend()	Earn a Vision Score of 25 or more in 2 Games OR Play 3 Games	10 Tokens
PROJECT Cache	Complete 4 PROJECT 2021 Missions	2021 PROJECT: Event Icon
Up in Flames	Win 2 Games OR Play 5 Games	10 Tokens
Protector::Factions->Diplomacy()	Get a Crowd Control Score of 100 across multiple Games OR Play 5 Games	10 Tokens
Proving Oneself	As a Team, earn First Blood or First Tower OR Play 3 Games	10 Tokens
The Tyrant Strikes	As a Team, Kill Baron Nashor OR Play 3 Games	10 Tokens
PROJECT Resupply	Complete 8 PROJECT 2021 Missions	Eternals Capsule
Approaching the Stronghold	Win 3 Games OR Play 6 Games	10 Tokens
City::Factions->Unite()	As a Team, Kill 4 Dragons OR Play 5 Games	10 Tokens
Now or Never	Win a Game in 28 minutes or less OR Play 3 Games	10 Tokens
Showdown	Play a Game As, With, or Against a Champion with a PROJECT Skin OR Play 3 Games	10 Tokens
PROJECT Armory	Complete 12 PROJECT 2021 Missions	Master Chest + Key

(Picture: Riot Games)

In addition, by purchasing the Event Pass for 1650 RP, you can unlock a series of milestones, which will give you even more rewards. Each goal requires 15 points to advance to the next, until a total of 20 available milestones are added.

Note: Points are obtained by playing with a pre-designed group (5 points), winning a game (2 points) or losing it (1 point).

P ROJECT 2021 Pass Milestone	Reward
Milestone 1	2021 PROJECT: Event Pass Icon
Milestone 2	5 Prestige Points
Milestone 3	10 Win XP Boost
Milestone 4	5 Prestige Points
Milestone 5	Emote: Bwa ha ha!!
Milestone 6	5 Prestige Points
Milestone 7	1500 Blue Essence
Milestone 8	5 Prestige Points
Milestone 9	Emote: Go On, Impress Me!
Milestone 10	5 Prestige Points
Milestone 11	Emote: Questionable Calculation
Milestone 12	1500 Blue Essence
Milestone 13	500 Orange Essence
Milestone 14	Mystery Emote Permanent
Milestone 15	1 Gemstone
Milestone 16	Hextech Key
Milestone 17	1 Masterwork Chest
Milestone 18	750 Orange Essence
Milestone 19	PROJECT 2021 Orb
Milestone 20	1 Gemstone

As mentioned earlier, during the event it will be possible to get Tokens, which can be exchanged for rewards. There are different ways to get these, including buying the Event Pass, which brings with it 200 Tokens and four PROJECT 2021 orbs.

Also, and for the first time in this kind of event, a special one time purchase PROJECT 2021 Starter Token Bundle is available for 1000 RP. This bundle includes an icon and 200 Tokens.

Otherwise, they can be earned by completing weekly missions and challenges.

Weekly Victory Missions

• Week 1: Score 35 Points — 230 Tokens.
• Week 2: Score 35 Points — 230 Tokens.
• Week 3: Score 35 Points — 230 Tokens.
• Week 4: Score 50 Points — 310 Tokens.

You can also get Tokens by playing games in any of the four available game modes:

• Win a matchmade PvP match on Summoner’s Rift — 10 Tokens.
• Lose a matchmade PvP match on Summoner’s Rift — 5 Tokens.
• Win a matchmade PvP ARAM match — 6 Tokens.
• Lose a matchmade PvP ARAM match — 3 Tokens.
• Achieve a rank of 1-2 in TFT — 8 Tokens.
• Achieve a rank of 3-4 in TFT- 6 Tokens.
• Achieve a rank of 5-6  in TFT — 4 Tokens.
• Achieve a rank of 7-8  in TFT — 2 Tokens.
• Win a matchmade Nexus Blitz match — 6 Tokens.
• Lose a matchmade Nexus Blitz match — 3 Tokens.

Finally, these are all the rewards available in the event store, highlighting among these those related to Prestige content:

Skins, Chromas, and Borders with Icon

• PROJECT Prestige Points Icon + 100 Prestige Points 2020 — 2200 Tokens
• PROJECT: Sylas Prestige Edition + Icon — 2000 Tokens
• PROJECT: Mordekaiser (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Sejuani (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Renekton (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Senna (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Sylas (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Varus (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Fiora (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Jinx (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Akali (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Pyke (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Warwick (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Lucian (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Zed (Reckoning) Chroma + Icon — 300 Tokens
• PROJECT: Mordekaiser (Border + Icon) — 250 Tokens
• PROJECT: Sejuani  (Border + Icon) — 250 Tokens
• PROJECT: Renekton (Border + Icon) — 250 Tokens
• PROJECT: Senna (Border + Icon) — 250 Tokens
• PROJECT: Sylas (Border + Icon) — 250 Tokens
• PROJECT: Varus (Border + Icon) — 250 Tokens
• PROJECT 2021 Orb — 200 Tokens

Little Legends Eggs

• LL Series 1-5 Egg — 600 Tokens each one
• Cosmic Companions Egg — 600 Tokens
• Friends From Afar Egg — 600 Tokens
• Immortal Creatures Egg — 600 Tokens
• Random LL Egg (Series 1-Spirit Blossom) — 300 Tokens

Miscellaneous

• Mystery Emote — 60 Tokens
• Random Champion Shard — 50 Tokens
• 3 Keys — 180 Tokens
• 1 Key — 60 Tokens
• 1 Key Fragment — 20 Tokens
• 100 Blue Essence — 10 Tokens
• 10 Blue Essence — 1 Token

the history of the creation of the company and the popular game League of Legends through the eyes of its founders — Offtop on vc.

ru

The history of Riot Games is a list of achievements that seemed impossible. This is a story about an incredibly complex, not user-friendly game that has reached unprecedented heights. This is the story of a company that, despite its resounding success, continued to listen to and interact with its fans. But more so, this is a story about two best friends who loved playing video games and one day decided to make their own.

Riot is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, but to understand how one of the biggest gaming studios in the world got started, you have to go back a few years to Los Angeles. We need to look at two business students at the University of Southern California who were brought together by a hobby unrelated to their major.

When Mark Merrill and Brandon Beck first met in high school, they were studying in the direction that professionals in the banking or investment industry come from. But they weren’t drawn to it. The real passion of young people was video games — especially multiplayer games like StarCraft and EverQuest.

Shortly after graduating from college, Merrill and Beck went their separate ways, pursuing careers in the field for which the university was preparing them. Back worked for a large consulting firm, Bain & Company, and Merrill got a job in the U.S. bank. Very soon, both of them got bored with such work, and young people felt a desire to try something new. They returned to Los Angeles, met and decided to start their own business.

“We lived together in a small apartment in West Hollywood,” says Beck. “It was there, to some extent, that Riot was born. We had almost no furniture at home, only bare walls. But in the room there was a huge computer desk in the shape of the letter L, and on it were two powerful gaming computers. We enjoyed playing together.»

As they delved into the world of video games, Merrill and Beck realized that they were spending half their time actually playing games and the other half arguing with developers on forums. Friends were very disappointed that the creators of their favorite projects did not seem to listen to the fans they considered themselves to be at all.

Over time, the idea came to them that they could possibly make the game better. This started the history of the studio, which created one of the most popular MOBAs in history.

New approach

Among all the problems that Merrill and Back saw in game development, one stood out in particular: the creators abandoned their games very quickly, and active communities that truly loved and attached to these projects were left with an empty trough.

In particular, the duo spent a lot of time playing Blizzard’s StarCraft and WarCraft 3 games. Blizzard didn’t abandon them, but supported them with expansion packs, but when the studio eventually moved on to work on other projects, the community remained active, moreover, as in the games themselves, as well as in custom modifications. Of these modifications, two stood out — StarCraft: Aeon of Stride and DotA: Allstars for Warcraft 3. They provided the audience with a fresh type of gameplay that included control of various heroes, high dynamics of combat, and an emphasis on quick thinking of strategies. Merrill and Beck wanted to spend more time on these games.

We were especially frustrated that the developers stopped supporting us — as players and as a community that is passionate about their games. They felt the pressure and the need to move on. We tried to tell them, “Hey, we don’t need you to add one more line to your games. Stay. There’s still a lot of work to do, and it’s up to you to make sure that this game lives for a long time and brings people pleasure, we love it.

Brandon Back, co-founder of Riot Games

The first person the friends hired for their studio was Steve Guinsoo Fick, one of the designers who helped update DotA: Allstars. Fick, Beck, Merrill, and a few others from the DotA community became the first employees of Riot Games, which opened in 2006. The company immediately took up the development of the first project.

This game initially faintly resembled the League of Legends that players around the world now know and love. It used the same genre structure — a new approach that Riot will call «multiplayer online battle arena» or MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) in the future — but it was only the first draft. She even had a different name — Onslaught.

“The first name was terrible,” Merrill recalls with a laugh. — Metal played on the soundtrack. Instead of minions, there were some unsightly zombies. The game went through a lot of iterations, but at first it was just bad.»

Nevertheless, Merrill and many at Riot were proud of their first job. In 2007, the team traveled to the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco, bringing with them what Merrill calls «our crappy demo,» compiled from four months of development. At the show, Merrill and Back pitched the game to several publishers. The meetings weren’t successful, but they did help Riot understand a thing or two about relationships with traditional game publishers.

“Originally, we planned to just be game developers,” Merrill says. “We didn’t intend to create a whole publishing business. When we started dating publishers, we realized we shouldn’t let these guys take the helm.»

After the meetings, Back and Merrill decided that the publishers were too tied to the classic product release cycle. When the conversation turned to the future of the Riot project, publishers spoke of it as an ordinary big-budget game that will hit store shelves in disc boxes. They talked about intellectual property, the potential for a sequel. All this went against the vision of Riot.

Mark Merrill, co-founder of Riot Games

The developers wanted to create an online project aimed at the interaction of players, which would constantly grow, change and develop. And they wanted to make it free, while profiting from optional microtransactions. In 2007, most traditional publishers only heard about this system and did not consider it viable. They weren’t interested in Riot’s offer.

The team returned to their Los Angeles office and continued to work. Merrill and Back shelved the idea of ​​finding a publisher and switched to trying to get funding through venture capital investments. In mid-2007, Riot ditched Onslaught’s sassy and overly flashy style and changed the name of the game. Now it was League of Legends: Clash of Fates.

Spotlight

Despite the fact that the game has been in development for several years, its first public demonstration took place only in 2008. Riot made an announcement, launched pre-alpha testing and signed an agreement with the Chinese giant Tencent, which took over distribution of the game in its region.

There are many incredible, if not unprecedented, moments in Riot’s history

Partnership with a foreign and large company at an early stage of the studio’s life is just one of them. But Merrill and Beck were already speculating about the potential of League of Legends at the international level. Unlike American publishers, Tencent seems to understand what developers are aiming for.

“The team did a good job on several fronts,” recalls Back. “We felt that the employees shared our philosophy in many ways.”

Riot continued to grow. Merrill and Back focused on hiring, focusing more on passion and loyalty to the company’s culture than experience. The growing team (which Merrill and Back affectionately refer to as the «Righters») worked quickly but not without mishaps. In 2008, Riot had to partially rewrite the server side of its own gaming platform.

Riot Games office

According to Merrill, the decision was not easy for the company: “It set us back tangibly. To some extent, due to the abandonment of previous developments, we had to work hard to create a new platform before launch. When the question of scaling arose, it turned out that the old technology simply could not cope with the loads. A few years ago, when it was created, we did not expect that we would face such demand. I had to adjust.»

In order to meet its planned release in the fall of 2009, Riot threw all its efforts into a new backend. It simply didn’t work out to do everything, and this backfired on the difficulties that the studio eventually struggled with for years — for example, the forced creation of a launcher
(program that launches and updates the game client — translator’s note) games using the problematic Adobe Air system.

Before the end of beta testing and the full release of League of Legends, one more thing had to get rid of — the subtitle in the title. So the team did.

Initially, it was supposed to allow marking content updates. After League of Legends: Clash of Fates, there was supposed to be League of Legends: Wizards, Thieves, Fighters (i.e. LoL: WTF). Or League of Legends: Pirates with Ninjas (LoL: PwN). Before launch, the developers decided that such a decision would not benefit the game.

We tried to sound smart, using all these witty funny acronyms, but then we realized that it was just stupid. We decided that we would develop the game and not bother with the name, because no one pays much attention to it anyway.

— Mark Merrill

In October 2009, after six months of beta testing, League of Legends was launched. The game was completely free, and Riot had ambitious plans for its future: the team planned to constantly update the project and add new heroes, of which there were 40 at the time of release. And no one — not even Riot itself — could have imagined how successful it would become.

“Building an airplane while it flies”

«We didn’t set out to make a game that so many people would play,» Baek says. And this is by no means coquetry: from the very beginning, the founders of Riot were sure that League of Legends would turn out to be a purely niche project for a small hardcore audience.

“She puts a lot of emphasis on the competitive aspect. League of Legends is hard to master and absolutely uncompromising,” Beck continues. “You have to work really hard to enjoy it. No one could have imagined that such a huge number of players would show interest in the project.”

Two months after its release, League of Legends reached its first major milestone — 100,000 users were in the game at the same time. The Rioters opened the champagne while making sure that the servers didn’t crash from such an influx of players.

Screenshot from League of Legends

But the growth in popularity did not stop there. League of Legends was rapidly evolving from a hit to a real phenomenon, and if Riot wanted to keep up with their brainchild, the company also needed to grow, and just as quickly.

To that end, Riot raised new investments in 2009, including capital from longtime Chinese partners Tencent. Riot quickly put the finances to work by expanding the team, fixing technical bugs, and accelerating the production of new content.

According to Merrill, the early years of League of Legends could be described as the process of building an airplane after it had already taken off. The team knew the game would evolve, but didn’t know how. Maybe it was worth doing a single story campaign? Add new maps, modes? Diversify key mechanics?

It turned out the opposite. The audience showed an irrepressible appetite, and they wanted what was already in the game. Thoughtful, difficult-to-learn heroes that could interact with other characters and arrange tactical, dynamic and spectacular fights in Summoner’s Rift — this was the only map available at that time.

Back recalls that the team threw all their efforts into improving the competitive aspect. They were shocked by the rapid growth of the audience. The authors were torn between creating new technical patches, maintaining servers around the world, and satisfying the wishes of the fans.

Riot spent most of 2010 and 2011 “feeling the ground” and finding the right work rhythm to simultaneously streamline new content production and keep the rocket flying farther and farther out of the stratosphere.

At the same time, another realization came that influenced not only League of Legends, but the entire gaming industry. Riot employees realized that people not only enjoy playing League of Legends, but also watching others play.

Rise of eSports

Merrill and Beck have spent years playing StarCraft together. They knew that an esports industry had formed around such competitive games. They wanted to create their own professional league even before they founded Riot. The working title was even ready — Ultimate Gaming League.

But five years ago, eSports was much less developed than in 2016. When Riot released League of Legends, the team did not even think about the fact that someone would want to play the project at a professional level.

Everything changed very quickly. It started with the fact that the fans gradually began to organize semi-professional tournaments. By the summer of 2010, the League of Legends competitive scene had grown so much that Riot had to take it into account.

The company announced the first competitive season and held it in 2011 at Dreamhack, one of the largest esports tournaments at that time, where, in addition to League of Legends, there were StarCraft 2 and Counter Strike competitions.

Back says that during the tournaments, the team, not hoping for much interest, launched a live broadcast from the hall, because there were only 20 seats for ordinary viewers in the hall. In a few minutes, more than 100 thousand people were watching it at the same time. At that moment, the developers realized how great the esports potential of League of Legends is.

Merrill, Back, and Riot’s esports team came up with a grand plan. Instead of letting people run artisanal tournaments, the company decided to take the initiative and launch its own esports league. The plan included weekly high-quality broadcasts and scheduling events for the year ahead. In other words, it was necessary to spend a lot of money and fill a lot of bumps.

The company made its biggest mistake a year later, during the second season of the international championship in October 2012. The group stage leading up to the final was held at L.A. Live, an open space in downtown Los Angeles. Riot staff thought it would be cool and new to host an esports event outside. The company sealed off several blocks and hung giant screens on buildings so that spectators could follow what was happening on the battlefield. It was sunny and hot, but this did not dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd.

Then the unthinkable happened.

2015 League of Legends World Championship Final

The Chinese team WE fought with the Europeans from Counter Logic Gaming. The battle lasted over 50 minutes, the teams went head to head, CLG had a slight advantage. And then everything went down the drain — right during the match, an Internet connection error occurred, and both teams were thrown out of the game. Beck explains that back then, Riot simply didn’t have its own dedicated servers that could be brought to an event of this magnitude and create a local network.

It was not possible to continue the match from the same place, so the battle began anew. And then the network went down again. As a result, Riot interrupted the tournament, and the audience went home without seeing the winners. “It was sheer agony. We just screwed up in front of all our fans,” Beck recalls.

History has taught Riot an important thing: in the world of esports, you should always have a plan B. Backup backup — in case it goes completely awry.

Within five years, Riot’s approach to organizing esports tournaments, as well as the professional scene in general, has reached a completely different level. This process was accompanied by a continuous stream of new problems that needed to be addressed. In the last year alone, Riot has been forced to disqualify several teams from the North American League Championship Series, and Merrill has had to personally engage in a heated online debate with the owner of one of the LCS’s most popular teams.

Then the head of Team Solo Mid Andy «Reginald» Dean criticized the organizational structure of Riot. Merrill posted a response on Reddit and stated that Dean underpaid his players. Soon the tape spread throughout the League of Legends community, and many fans sided with Dean, accusing Merrill of avoiding a direct response to criticism of organizational issues.

“Dean and I had a lot of discussions behind closed doors,” Merrill recalls the incident. “I gave free rein to my emotions by taking the private conversation into the public sphere. I often forget how much the game has evolved. We manage this giant, and we have a huge responsibility. I’m still getting used to it.»

Number game

The company has been accustomed to the success of League of Legends for several years, and this process included several steps — the first was to strengthen the business component of the project. By 2011, the game had already become a hit and brought in a lot of money, but Back and Merrill no longer wanted to report to investors. In early 2011, the founders sold their stake in Tencent.

“Financial investors often prefer not to think about long-term plans when it comes to return on investment,” says Merrill. “We have known Tencent for a long time and trusted them. Therefore, we decided that it would be better if we transfer the main share of the company into the hands of one shareholder who is in solidarity with our views on the future than if we divided the shares among several investors.”

This played into the hands of Riot. Given its success, Tencent has maintained Riot Games’ full independence as a developer. Back says that most of the employees have never seen representatives of the parent Chinese corporation at all — no one interfered in the working and creative process.

Having dealt with financial matters, management focused on improving League of Legends. This allowed Beck and Merrill to create a very friendly atmosphere in the team — many consider Riot the ideal place to work.

In 2013, when the company moved its headquarters to a sprawling, art-like office in Los Angeles, Business Insider ranked Riot as the fourth-best tech employer in the US, alongside Facebook and Google.

As Merrill believes, this is a merit of corporate culture, philosophy of hiring employees and approach to game design. That credo, that spirit that Back and Merrill founded the studio to maintain in the first place, is all for the sake of the players.

“We are inspired by the fact that we work for the benefit of our fans,” says Merrill. “When we let them down, we feel really bad. It’s one of the things that motivates all rioters.»

Riot’s founders credit the company’s success to League of Legends players, whom Baek calls «evangelists.» These are the members of the community who introduce and explain the game to newcomers, promising them that it is worth the time and effort spent. Thanks to them, the game is just «worth it.»

Back believes that the fan-made community is one of the most important components of the success of League of Legends: “Our players delight the team with their dedication. Every day we work to feel that we deserve this trust. They helped create a community where people share fan drawings and tactics with each other, organize gatherings and parties, broadcasts. None of this would have happened without them.»

By «this» Back means the unprecedented success of League of Legends, which is backed up by impressive numbers. In 2014, when Riot last reported on the project, the number of monthly active users (who played at least one match per month) was 67 million people. This month, seven years after its release, it passed 100 million.

Despite the fact that this material was published simultaneously with the publication of information about the popularity of League of Legends
, Beck and Merrill say they hate talking about numbers, which is why they say the company hasn’t reported in the past two years.

“These figures are hard to analyze, they don’t seem real to us at all,” Beck admits. — The coolest thing is when you come to the event and meet the fans in person. That’s when you understand what we’re working for. And so, it’s just numbers on the screen.

Whether the company’s founders value it or not, the numbers keep growing.

Riot Games office

What’s next

The main joke that can be heard from Riot Games employees or people familiar with the company’s device is that the studio should be called Riot Game. In its ten years of existence, it has released only one game — League of Legends. It’s a strange position for a major game company, but Back thinks otherwise: “We’re in a different era. It seems strange to people from the outside that such a large studio in 10 years has not released anything other than a debut project. The team has put so much work into the project that it will be enough for both League of Legends 2 and League of Legends 3. ”

Merrill recalls a list he and Beck and others made when the game was still in beta, a huge collection of things the developers wanted to include in the game. The list has shrunk over the years, but many of the items have remained the same, and the Riot team is still planning to implement them. The studio has been publicly discussing some for several years — for example, replays, a new game client, sandbox mode, and in-game tournaments — and they are still not ready. Merril promises they will.

But on the other hand, Beck assures that he seeks to «add «s» to Riot Games.» The studio has grown from a couple of people to a thousand employees, and despite the fact that the majority is still focused on League of Legends, some «rioters» go to work every day in the secret part of the office with the highest level of security — the research and development department (Research & Development) .

Most employees will never get into the R&D department. When we asked if we could drop by, Beck and Merrill laughed. Somewhere in their office building, small groups of people are working on ideas that could each be the next billion-dollar hit. Some of them will never see the light of day: for example, a digital card game in the League of Legends universe, information about which was leaked to the network in 2013.

At the time, Merrill was laconic about the leak: «Riot is always working on new ideas for League of Legends and beyond.» During an interview for this material, he refused to develop this topic.

Riot Games office

As Back confirms, Riot’s next project may not have anything to do with the League of Legends brand: “We’re working on prototypes and thinking about both options. Some ideas, of course, are better implemented in a different setting and in a different universe. But some developments ****** [beautifully] would fit into the aesthetics of League of Legends. We are very flexible in this regard.»

Looking to the future, the company continues to dedicate a huge amount of resources to the development of League of Legends as a universe. In the early stages of development, there were no full-fledged scriptwriters — a designer could spend a couple of hours and sketch out a simple description of a new hero, not really caring about how he fits into the overall storyline.

Now Riot is planning to fix it. The studio completely «restarted» the story and mythology of the game, hiring a whole team of scriptwriters and creating a separate division called Foundations, which will work on the plot background. The executives believe that even though the genre and structure of League of Legends does not allow players to tell a full story, the careful study of the world and mythology will definitely benefit the game.

Now all information is submitted through texts published on the game website. But soon the company plans to diversify the way the story is presented. Riot, for example, is considering making an animated film, Beck says: “Until now, CGI has been used to create cutscenes, a sort of ‘fight porn’ that emphasizes the fast-paced, action-packed fights that take place in the game. But over time, we want to use this technology to tell deep, compelling stories.”

The future of Riot may lie in expansion. Earlier this year, the company acquired another studio for the first time in its history, Radiant Entertainment, a small independent team working on a Minecraft-style fighting and survival game. Back says the acquisition makes sense because both companies share the same vision: “I think this level of compatibility is pretty rare. I would not say that we plan to often conclude such deals, but we are open to suggestions.”

Riot’s rise to the top of the gaming industry could not have been predicted ten or even five years ago. Beck admits that he himself did not believe that this was even possible. Therefore, you should not speculate about what the studio will do next or where it will be ten years from now. Right now, Merrill and Beck are just trying to meet the needs of the huge audience that has formed around the game.

“Yes, they always have an opinion,” Merrill says of the endless army of naysayers who criticize the company’s decisions on forums and in fan communities on Reddit. “But that just means they care, and we understand that. We were in their place. Brandon and I were the dudes who fought with the developers on the forums, defending their point of view.

Now that they’re running their own studio, Merrill and Beck have promised fans that the company isn’t going to turn their backs on them or stop listening, even in the face of criticism. And they won’t abandon the game even after ten years. League of Legends isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

League of Legends musical universe — Music on DTF

Can you feel the rush now?

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Author — TMiracle

If you still think that Riot Games is just a game development company, and not a universal label with a full-fledged roster and a few tricks up its sleeves, then I hasten to surprise you. The statistics speak for themselves: the first twelve (!) videos on the League of Legends channel by the number of views are music. These are high-budget clips of full-fledged projects, these are epic animated videos with very serious guest names. This is a whole universe in which there are places for both K-pop and hardcore power metal, both for virtual bands and for world-famous musicians.

And today I invite you on a short tour of this strange but attractive world.

K/DA

Well, where else would you start if not with K/DA? The main victory of Riot Games on the musical field for the entire time of the existence of the studio, the main “gaming” musical group (whose popularity everyone else never even dreamed of) and simply the most successful virtual group, probably since Gorillaz (it’s even strange for me to just write about it , but it’s true — “POP / STARS” is mere pennies separate from Gorillov’s “Clint Eastwood” and “Feel Good Inc.” in terms of numbers of views on YouTube) .

«POP/STARS» remains the most viewed video on the League of Legends channel with over a hundred million views. It was such a phenomenal success that no one seems to have expected such a thing. K/DA has become one of the most talked about bands in K-pop in just one track. They began to listen to people who are completely unfamiliar with the League of Legends universe. An insanely beautiful and stylish clip, a track that catches its motive — for many people who are not familiar with K-pop, «POP / STARS» even became a kind of acquaintance with the genre.

More or less well-known names were obviously hidden behind the virtual characters — two members of the K-pop group (G)I-DLE Soyeon and Miyeon (voices of Akali and Ahri), and two American singers who made their careers on YouTube covers — Madison Beer and Jayra Burns (voices of Evelynn and Kai’Sa). Their fame also gave a boost to K/DA’s success, but due to the fact that their success was too resounding and sudden, it seems even for Riot Games themselves, the project was frozen indefinitely without any information about further plans for the future , and unfrozen only in 2020.

In the two years that have passed since the release of POP/STARS, K/DA has become almost a micro-cult. During this time, a lot has happened: Madison Beer, who was the first voice of Evelynn, left the project for a while (according to rumors, she was not happy that the most popular track in her career fell on a side project with virtual characters), the focus of developers and PR people temporarily shifted first to True Damage, then to Serafina, and only then back to K/DA. And only two years later, in 2020, K/DA really returned — now with a full-fledged EP, much more expensive production (both in terms of sound and visual side) and a much more aggressive approach to marketing.

K/DA really became a global band for a while.

Marketing moves, by the way, sometimes reached completely strange things: for example, a verified account on Genius, in which Akali’s 3D model told the viewer about «‘Kali don’t skrr».

This once again makes us think about the amazingness of the time in which we, dear readers, live.

In addition, it was within the framework of the K / DA universe that Riot Games introduced their new champion, Serafina, to the public.

Seraphine

Serafina became a rather interesting social experiment by Riot Games: they began to actively promote her as a performer of , and not as a character in the game.

At some point, a performer appeared on the Internet under the pseudonym Seraphine — a cute pop singer hiding behind a virtual image and making rather pleasant and light pop music, with her own background and real accounts in social networks. It would seem that nothing of the sort, especially in the era of Vtubers?

Nevertheless, theories quickly began to appear that this character was somehow connected with League of Legends. Particularly with K/DA.

Truth seekers from the Internet turned out to be right: Serafina really turned out to be a new character in League of Legends, whose lore was actually tied to the alternate universe of the K/DA skinline. She officially made her first appearance as a member of K/DA on the track «MORE», which is already featured above.

This, however, did not save her from the fact that adoration with the release drowned under a wave of negativity: the champion turned out to be rather controversial from all sides. The honesty of her mechanic is still being discussed, and her lore eventually had to be redone due to several scandals at once. However, from the point of view of the content of the article, this is of no particular value, so let’s stop there.

She also covered Tatu!

Whether she ends up as a K/DA member or not is debatable. On the one hand, many media smashed the appearance of Serafina in «MORE» precisely as the announcement of a new member. On the other hand, there seemed to be no official confirmation from Riot Games, and Serafina herself, within the framework of social networks, said that this was a one-time collab and that solo work came first for her.

Be that as it may, Serafina is not the only project to emerge from the success of K/DA’s POP/STARS. Before that, there were True Damage.

True Damage

The fate of True Damage is somewhat sad. When Riot Games realized that they had miscalculated with the main focus of K / DA (it is obvious that the creators put Ahri first of all, but it was Akali who found the people’s love), they decided to fix it by dedicating an entire “preceding” group to Akali.

Legend has it that True Damage was Akali’s first band before K/DA. The hip-hop visually reminiscent of Gorillaz, which included Becky G, Keke Palmer, Duckwrth and Thutmose, failed to repeat the success of K/DA (largely due to high expectations after the huge success of «POP / STARS») and «froze» after the first and only track «giants» at the moment. At the moment, the fate of the project is vague — there has been no information about it since then.

Nevertheless, True Damage managed to make a collaboration with Louis Vuitton — the characters advertised the brand’s new collection, and the collection itself existed in our reality.

Pentakill

Riot Games’ first (and therefore oldest) music project.

What you need to know about Pentakill is that they are the only band in the entire Riot Games music universe to record two full length albums. And she once took first place in the iTunes metal chart and hit the top 40 Billboard. I think that’s enough. At least for scale.

For Pentakill, Riot never skimped on anything. Jorn Lande (Masterplan/Avantasia) and Zippy Tert (Dragonforce) are on vocals, and former Dream Theater member Derek Sherinian is on keyboards. In addition, Tommy Lee (drummer of Mötley Crüe) and Danny Lohner (keyboardist known for his work with Nine Inch Nails, 30 Seconds To Mars and other equally famous bands) were involved in the group at different times.

Technically, Pentakill was not only the first full-fledged Riot Games virtual group (which, by the way, the well-known music magazine NME just prophesied the glory of the new Gorillaz), but also the first musical project of the studio, which was awarded a full-fledged animated video.

Naturally, with the wild success of K/DA, the question arose — will Pentakill return? In 2020, Riot Games confirmed that a third Pentakill album was already in the works, but the COVID-19 epidemic brought down all plans, and therefore the release was postponed indefinitely.

Nevertheless, there is every chance that we will hear the new Pentakill album this year. All that remains for the average listener is to wait and believe.

DJ Sona

The project, which appeared a year after Pentakill, was the exact opposite in sound and spirit. Sona, who according to the lore of the musical universe of League of Legends is the keyboard player of Pentakill, has got her own electronic mini-album, for which Riot Games invited The Crystal Method, Bassnectar, Pretty Lights, Renholder and Dada Life to work on it.

Things never went beyond one mini-album, but it would be foolish to miss it within the framework of such material.

LEC Production

Perhaps the most obscure guys in this article. This is not a band, it’s not a project, it’s just some European caster fun that’s gone too far to ignore. They don’t appear on any of the official League of Legends playlists, but they do have their own Spotify profile!

In 2019, the European professional league changed its name from LCS to LEC. It was around this time that the European league casters decided that the best way to promote their league was through music. In particular, rap battles. The first of them appeared back in 2019 and did not gain much success. But a year later, the production and approach to the text increased so much that it was already difficult to ignore it. And the 2020 battle quickly became the most viewed video on the LEC channel, surpassing the dance track, which was released at about the same time as it.

Why? Because it turned out not only stylish, but also sharp (although is very geeky ). Hip-hop is still on the rise, and the LEC casters seem to have a pretty good nose for trends.

And just recently the guys showed their new level by making a track in the spirit of Bullet For My Valentine, dedicated to the shooter G2 Rekkles. Despite the fact that the casters did not even play instruments, they still managed to capture the spirit and record the track “as it should be”.

This is my second article in a row where you can find this video, but damn it — how good it is!

Riot Games Music Team feat. Everyone

We have to admit that, in addition to their own virtual projects, the music department of Riot Games simply has an excellent flair for good musicians. And it’s hard to say when it started.

It is quite possible that this course was taken in 2013, when they invited the group Djerv to record the track «Get Jinxed», which became the main theme in the Jinx trailer (by the way, this is still the sixth video on the channel in terms of the number of views).

And everything began to spin. In 2014, they invited Imagine Dragons to record the track «Warriors» as the theme song for the 2014 World Championship. In 2016, Zedd wrote the main topic for the World Cup. In 2017, the most famous and most memetic theme of the World Championship appeared at the same time — «Legends Never Die» by Against The Current.

And in 2018, Riot Games, apparently, decided to issue the most ultimatum theme for the World Cup. «RISE» was performed by The Word Alive, The Glitch Mob and Mako and produced by health.

In addition to the themes of the World Championships, relatively recently the developers have introduced a tradition to accompany the beginning of new seasons of the League with no less high-quality videos and tracks.

Thus, «Awaken», recorded with the participation of the singer Valerie Broussard, now sits in ninth place in the list of the most viewed videos on the channel of the game.

And that’s not all. Over the years and under different circumstances, the Riot Games label has lured a wide variety of musicians into its tenacious paws, from Carpenter Brutus to Jeremy McKinnon of A Day To Remember.