When the current Season 13 of League of Legends, also started a crisis like we had never seen. Riot Games undermined the trust of the community by ignoring their requests in recent times and ended up pulling the rope too tight when He denied the players one of the great annual joys. The campaign launch cinematic didn’t even look like what users were expecting. Rather, it seemed the fruit of a minimum effort culture which apparently had settled in the developer.
Reality matters little when sensations are so powerful. Riot Games had to deny that League of Legends was in a state of maintenance. To gauge the seriousness of the situation, one only has to resort to two proper names, that of Jeremy Lee and Andrei vanRoom. Two bosses usually in the shadows who came out to apologize publicly and ensure that the company had not lost interest in making LoL a better game. However, they had allowed themselves to be carried away by a negative context, betraying one of the most important ideals for the company.
It didn’t take us long to learn that the context of Riot Games’ expansion and the global health situation in recent years had affected the video game much more than we imagined. That the developer’s team had been emptied in order to maintain normality and that, simply, the company was working internally to recover without the effects being observed in the video game. “For us, 2022 was a year of reconstruction (…) the game does not reflect where we are right now, but the point at which we were last year,” explained the two great heads of League of Legends .
The great failure of League of Legends turned into success
The developers knew that the most appropriate response to his speech was a blunt “good time, green sleeves” and that words were no longer enough to convince the community. However, it took just a month and a half to turn the situation around. If at the beginning of January the general climate was that of pity to see how League of Legends began to deflate, at present the situation could not be more opposite. There is still a long way to go, but just a few announcements and two or three changes have been enough to overcome a challenge like this title has never faced before.
Riot Games is already working on the reworks of Teemo and Lee Sin
Everything cannot be fixed from one month to the next, but the developers have managed the crisis masterfully. Riot Games has collected the great requests from the community and acted accordingly. Medium-term projects have been announced, such as the new visual reworks of Teemo or Lee Sinin addition to advance details about the game mode that will arrive in summer. There has also been room for a few imminent adjustments that come to give vent to complaints that had been repeated for months or years. at last there will be changes to ranked matches and also ARAM gameplay will be stabilized after the Howling Abyss transformation a few months ago.
The most significant part of this, however, has been seeing Jeremy Lee and Andrei van Room again. Both starred again in a video in which they had to communicate with the community, but this time with a different face and a less sorrowful tone. It was not time to continue lamenting, but to explain to the community how League of Legends resumes its career to be a better video game. A road that will continue to be bumpy and that will come in exchange for two great sacrifices that were not hidden at any time. It is precisely in the negative section that the key to the future of Riot Games lies.
The two top managers of League of Legends had to explain to the players that, for the next four months, none of the ways they knew will return to the video game. Also that as a consequence of the changes hopened fewer new champions in the next year 2024. There has been no scandal either on the community forums or on social media. It turns out that when you treat your players as reasonable people and explain things carefully, everyone is able to understand them. The ‘hey guys, you have to sacrifice these two things to make LoL better in the long run’ is not that hard to understand.
League of Legends will have fewer new champions in 2024
In addition to posting a video and launching two huge blogs explaining the upcoming changes to League of Legends, the developers posted around 105 different messages on Reddit Responding to the concerns or doubts of the community. Among the authors of the comments we can find some of the top managers of the video game who, after having fulfilled the mission of being more communicative, dedicated a good number of hours to keep in touch with the players. The situation deserved it because, although we do not expect so much effort constantly, these gestures are what make Riot Games what it is.
Almost all of my favorite games are multiplayer, and as a member of various communities, I have often encountered situations like the one League of Legends faced at the beginning of the season. However, I never came across an answer like the one the company has carried out. The attitude of the developers is, almost always, to hold the pull waiting for greener times to arrive, underestimating the ability of communities to understand problems or provide solutions. Perhaps because they think that we will not be able to bear bad news or because they are not willing to admit their own mistakes. However, gamers are not idiots.
