LoL dev Pu "Pupulaser" Liu took to Reddit this week to clear up a few things for the community. One of the issues that needed some clarity was the recent statement regarding premium content in League of Legends.
League of Legends is a free game, with most getting to enjoy it without ever spending a single dollar. There are no pay to win mechanics in the game either, meaning that you can only climb and reach higher ranks by earning LP – and we all know how hard it is to earn LP in this day and age.
But there are cosmetics which players can pay for, with Riot having added in multiple pricing and rarity categories. Their most recent attempt at something exclusive fell by the wayside though.
LoL: Rare Skins Hidden behind Gacha Here To Stay
League of Legends dev Pupulasers revealed some new information regarding upcoming rare content.
He explained that while League of Legends is free to play and that most of the community spends minimal amounts of money on it. There is a small part of the player base that is willing to fork over a lot of cash for highly exclusive content, which is the target audience the Dark Cosmic Erasure Jhin skin was made for.
Each year, players earn a lot of free skins. High spending players effectively subsidize the game for everyone else, allowing us to pay for servers, staff, and dope shit outside of the game itself. We do not and will not sell pay-to-win products in League [...]
Of course, this is a point that Riot Brightmoon has already previously made, but hearing this from another dev on the League of Legends team just hits home that this system for exclusive content will be staying.
Of course, many fans are unhappy with this. Content creator NickyBoi stated on his YouTube channel, "having rare skins is a very cool feeling to have... when you earn it." This basically echoes what most of the playerbase feels; with a gacha system players don't earn skins - they simply have more money.
It's worth mentioning that the way the Jhin chroma was described looks like it's the first Exclusive thing they did for League to help them. So limited emotes, icons, borders, chromas, prestiges (with icons/borders) wasn't exclusive stuff? So why don't bring them back? https://t.co/bgcFf0TeEz
— Bess (@BessWisty) September 4, 2023
Twitter user BessWisty also wrote, "It's worth mentioning that the way the Jhin chroma was described looks like it's the first Exclusive thing they did for League to help them. So limited emotes, icons, borders, chromas, prestiges (with icons/borders) wasn't exclusive stuff?"
It's also important to note that Riot removed unique duo backing animations for Xayah and Rakan from their new skins because there weren't enough players that played the two champions together in the bot lane...
Sometimes no one can understand what Riot is thinking, eh? Exclusive content that costs $200 dollars is alright, but a simple duo backing animation is taking it a step too far, eh?