League of Legends has evolved over its many-year run from a massively popular game with a bad reputation to a multimedia franchise. LoL now goes beyond the borders of its 5v5 free-to-play MOBA with a hit television show and several new video games set in the IP. With the years come different teams at the helm over at Riot Games, League of Legends‘s developer, and there have been undeniable shifts in quality and focus to go with them. With League of Legends‘ reputation already in a shaky place, the choice for the company to step into the world of Trading Card Games just might do more harm than good to their flagship game that started it all.
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If you haven’t heard, League of Legends is entering the world of collectible trading card games, and no, I’m not talking about the fan-favorite but commercial failure that was Legends of Runeterra. The digital card game LoR, which is now no longer receiving meaningful updates out of PVE elements, is being sidelined in favor of Riftbound, a physical TCG that hopes to compete with the likes of Pokémon and MAGIC: THE GATHERING as your new card-stop pack pickup.
You can read all about Riftbound here.
It would seem that Riot Games is moving away from the design philosophy of Legends of Runeterra, which was to create a card game that was accessible to anyone without having to spend money on packs, in favor of giving into the pseudo-gambling norm that is TCG collecting.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, as Riot Games has reportedly been in a bit of a financial hole lately, with Arcane apparently being a major money sink despite its massive growth of the fandom. What seems to be a focus on increasing profits has led to some extremely controversial decisions from Riot Games, with one such decision to remove Hextech Chests garnering so much backlash from the community that it was quickly undone. The community consensus seems to be that League of Legends is getting worse, suffering from lower quality skins, less exciting updates or meaningful changes, and aggressive monetization that has begun to put off even the most die-hard fans.
Though Riot Games has been doing some good with its changes to Ranked seasons, a system that actually meaningfully updates gameplay and changes the map for the first time in almost 16 years, there is still work to be done to repair the game and the company’s reputation in the community. The decision to launch Riftbound, of all things, can seem a bit baffling, and could possibly be the sign of worse things to come for League… or, it could be the game’s unlikely savior.
The way I see it, choosing to create Riftbound now could signal a devastating shift of focus away from League of Legends. In a time when players are consistently complaining about the lowering quality of skins and art assets (the new Ivern skin, for example, is literally just a recolor of his base skin), it can seem a bit careless of Riot to potentially shift resources over to a card game. While the card game doesn’t use in-house Riot artists and instead works with some incredible art studios, taking any focus away from League of Legends, now of all times, runs the risk of reducing the quality of the game and potentially showing that Riot has a disconnect from its players.
This is not even mentioning the fact that launching a TCG is a major investment of capital that Riot Games is not guaranteed to get back, potentially creating an even bigger money pit for the company that would inevitably lead to more monetization and a reduction in quality. We lost the entire Riot Forge publishing label to cutbacks, so we know for a fact that Riot’s answer to dwindling profits is to drawback rather than double down on creativity and quality.
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On the other hand, we can’t ignore the fact that TCGs are, if nothing else, profitable. The reception to Riftbound from League players, fans of other card games (and, potentially, Arcane fans who don’t want to play League) has been shockingly positive. I guess it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that players who love the game and its characters would want to own a collectible art piece; geck, thinking about it, I would love having a foil Aatrox or Viego card just sitting on my desk.
With the potential of Riftbound being a success, chances are that it could be more than just a shift of focus away from League of Legends, and instead, the saving grace the game needs. Should the game become popular and profitable, it would only give Riot Games more incentive and resources to improve the League of Legends experience.
Time will only tell if Riftbound is League’s saving grace, or just another shift in attention and potential financial failure that further makes League of Legends a hard game to love.
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