League of Legends

• 1. Introduction

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  League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena game from Riot Games. Its 2019 World Championship drew more than 100 million unique viewers. That same year, the game regularly reached eight million players online at the same moment. It has been free to play since its release in October 2009, and it runs on Windows and macOS. Riot's founders wanted a stand-alone game in the same genre as Defense of the Ancients, a custom map for Warcraft III.

  How did a game inspired by a custom map grow into the largest esport in the world? How does a game that costs nothing to start pay for itself? Why has its community been criticized for rudeness since the earliest days? And what happens when a game spawns bands, comics and television?

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• 2. Inside the Rift

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  Ten players, five to a team, enter Summoner's Rift, the flagship map of the game and the one used in professional play. Each player controls a single character called a champion, seen from an isometric angle and armed with a unique set of abilities. Killing enemies earns experience points, and those points raise a champion's level. Gold arrives passively over time, and players also earn it by defeating enemy minions, champions and defensive structures. Gold buys items, but the shop opens only while a champion stands in the team's base. Every match starts fresh, because levels and items never carry over.

  At the heart of each base sits the Nexus, the large structure a team must destroy to win. Minions, which are non-player characters, pour out of each Nexus and march toward the enemy along three lanes called top, middle and bottom. Turrets guard those lanes. Each base also holds three inhibitors, one behind the third tower from the center of each lane. Destroying an enemy inhibitor summons stronger allied minions in that lane. It also lets the attackers damage the enemy Nexus and the two turrets that guard it.

  Between the lanes lies the jungle, where monsters respawn at regular intervals. Like minions, they pay out gold and experience when killed. Stronger monsters live in the river that divides the two jungles, and it takes several players to kill them. Defeating the Rift Herald gives a team a powerful allied unit. Dragons grant permanent strength boosts. Baron Nashor makes allied minions stronger and more durable.

  A match on the Rift can last 15 minutes or stretch past an hour. The game never tells anyone where to stand, yet habits have settled in. One player usually takes the top lane, one the middle, two the bottom, and one roams the jungle. Lane players practice farming, which means killing minions for gold and experience while keeping the opponent from doing the same. The fifth player, the jungler, farms monsters and joins a lane fight once strong enough.

  Players who want to climb enter a ranked ladder, where a matchmaking system estimates skill and assigns a starting rank. There are ten tiers. Iron, Bronze and Silver sit at the bottom, while Master, Grandmaster and Challenger sit at the top.

  Two other modes are permanent. ARAM, short for All Random, All Mid, moves five-versus-five teams onto a map called Howling Abyss. It has a single long lane and no jungle, and champions are assigned at random. Because the map is small, players must watch constantly for enemy abilities. Teamfight Tactics, an auto battler, arrived in June 2019 and became permanent the following month. Players assemble a team and position it on a board, then the units fight each round without direct control.

  Temporary modes tend to follow in-game events. One for All has a team agree on a single champion that everyone plays. Nexus Blitz sent players through a series of mini-games on a compressed map. Ultra Rapid Fire ran for two weeks as an April Fools Day prank in 2014, with no ability costs, sharply reduced cooldowns, faster movement and quicker attacks. In April 2015, Riot explained why the mode had not returned: its unbalanced design caused player burnout, and keeping it balanced cost too much.

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• 3. Building the League

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  Brian Crecente of The Washington Post said the mod behind it all "lacked a level of polish and was often hard to find and set up." That mod was Defense of the Ancients, known as DotA, built for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Players had to buy Warcraft III and install custom software to try it. Phillip Kollar of Polygon observed that Blizzard Entertainment supported Warcraft III with an expansion and then turned to other projects while people still played. Riot's founders, Brandon Beck and Marc Merill, wanted a game that would be supported for far longer.

  To find talent, Beck and Merill held a DotA tournament for students at the University of Southern California, quietly hoping to recruit. There they met Jeff Jew, who knew DotA well and spent the event teaching others to play. They invited him to an interview, and he joined Riot Games as an intern. He later became a producer on League of Legends. The founders also recruited two figures from the DotA world: Steve Feak, one of its designers, and Steve Mescon, who ran a website that helped players. Feak said early development was highly iterative, much like designing DotA.

  Four months of work produced a demonstration built on the Warcraft III engine, and it was shown at the 2007 Game Developers Conference. Investors were unmoved. Publishers were confused by the free-to-play model and by the lack of a single-player mode. That model was untested outside Asian markets, so they wanted a retail release and room for a sequel. In 2008, Riot struck a deal with the holding company Tencent to oversee the game's launch in China.

  League of Legends was announced on the 7th of October 2008 for Microsoft Windows. Closed beta testing began in April 2009 with 17 champions available. Riot had aimed to ship with 20 but doubled that target before the full North American release on the 27th of October 2009. The full title was League of Legends: Clash of Fates. Riot planned to use the subtitle to flag new releases, then decided it was silly and dropped it before launch.

  Patches have shaped the game ever since. Earlier games used patches to stop any single strategy from dominating, but here, keeping up with Riot's changes became part of playing. In 2014, Riot settled on a rhythm of roughly one patch every two or three weeks. Each patch shifts the metagame, the set of strategies that work, and Riot chooses the changes using gameplay data and product goals. The development team includes hundreds of designers and artists. In 2016, the music team had four full-time composers plus a team of producers. A Mac version arrived in 2013, and the roster has grown to 172 champions. Riot periodically overhauls the visuals and gameplay of the oldest ones.

  In May 2023, the game adopted Vanguard, an always-online anti-cheat program first built for Valorant, Riot's tactical shooter from 2020. On Windows it needs access to the device's kernel, which some users found unnecessarily intrusive. Riot says Vanguard does not collect user data or send it to the company. Some players said it bricked their devices. Riot blamed other problems and said only 0.03% of players reported issues.

  In December 2025, Bloomberg News reported that Riot was planning a large-scale update, internally titled "League Next". The same day, the League team published a video saying it meant to replace the game's client, improve onboarding for new users and overhaul the visuals. Both the report and the video stressed making the game friendlier to beginners.

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• 4. Free Games, Paid Skins

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  An Ubisoft analyst estimated in 2014 that only 4% of players paid anything, well below the industry standard. Riot earns its money from cosmetic goods that have no effect on gameplay, such as skins that change a champion's appearance. Many of these are redeemed with Riot Points, a currency bought with real money. As virtual goods, they carry high profit margins. The analyst suggested revenue was not a priority because the player base was so large. In 2016, SuperData estimated monthly revenue at $150 million. At the 2024 Summer Game Fest, game director Pu Liu said most revenue comes from a "single-digit percentage" of players, colloquially known as whales.

  Skins fall into five basic tiers, priced from $4 to $25. In 2024, Riot added another tier and described it as a luxury good. These skins cannot be bought outright. Players instead buy attempts to win the skin through a slot machine, and a predefined number of failed attempts guarantees the prize. The total cost can range from $200 to $430. Some commentators called this a gacha mechanic, which Riot had already used in Teamfight Tactics since 2023. The first skin drew criticism for being a recolored variant of an existing one, known as a chroma. A YouTube creator known for previewing upcoming skins called the tier a "scam".

  One day after Riot revealed a $430 "Hall of Fame" skin honoring the career of professional gamer Faker, it announced layoffs. They affected Ben Rosado, the designer of that very skin, and drew further anger from players. In early 2025, Riot announced another skin in the tier, one players had long requested. Rick Lane of PC Gamer described the strategy as "whale chasing" and "psychological manipulation". He argued that the skins were chosen to "subtly" entice players into "rolling the dice", at which point the sunk-cost fallacy takes over.

  In November 2024, the studio said it would streamline player rewards, calling the many progression tracks and currencies "needlessly complex". Outrage followed. A viral Reddit post estimated that a free-to-play player needs over 800 hours to unlock a single champion. GamesRadar+ called the episode the studio's "worst PR disaster in years". In mid-January 2025, game director Andrei van Room said Riot had "screwed up". A designer had left the "first win of the day" experience bonus out of the calculations. Riot partly reverted the changes, halving the cost of purchasing a champion and bringing back hextech chests. That loot box system, introduced in 2016, sells chests of random cosmetics, a practice critics have compared to gambling.

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• 5. Reviews and Reappraisal

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  Metacritic recorded generally favorable reviews when League of Legends launched, and many critics noted its high replay value. Brian Crecente of Kotaku admired how items changed the way champions played. Quintin Smith of Eurogamer praised the room for experimentation that champions offered. Rick McCormick of GamesRadar+ said that playing it was "a vote for choice over refinement". GamesRadar+ and GameSpot both said DotA veterans would feel at home. Inventive character design and lively colors set the game apart from rivals. Smith concluded that there was little room for negativity, yet Riot had not yet achieved its goal of refining DotA.

  The launch also had critics. Ryan Scott of GameSpy disliked the grind that non-paying players faced to unlock key gameplay elements, calling it unacceptable in a competitive game. Many outlets called the game underdeveloped. Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot called the retail box an inadvisable purchase, because part of its value was $10 of credit for a store that was not yet available. The German site GameStar noted that none of the retail bonuses worked until the launch period ended, and it declined to write a full review. Steve Butts of IGN compared the launch to the troubled CrimeCraft release earlier in 2009. He said features from the beta had been removed, even for retail buyers. Players also faced long queues, and GameRevolution mentioned frustrating bugs.

  Regular updates changed the verdict. Leah B. Jackson, IGN's second reviewer, said the site's original review had become "obsolete". GameSpot raised its score from 6 to 9, and IGN raised its own from 8 to 9.2. Steven Strom of PC Gamer called the variety of the roster "fascinating", while Jackson pointed to "memorable" characters and abilities. Jackson also faulted the lack of item diversity, noting that the items the shop recommended were effectively required because of their strength.

  Strom thought that in 2018 the female characters still resembled those in "horny Clash of Clans clones". Two years earlier, a champion designer had answered players who complained that a young female champion was not conventionally attractive. He argued that limiting female champions to one body type was constraining, and he said Riot's recent releases showed progress.

  Comparisons with other games continued. Tyler Hicks of GameSpot wrote that newcomers would pick up League faster than DotA, and that dropping skills based on randomness made play more competitive. Jackson called the pace of champion unlocks "a model of generosity". She noted that Dota 2, made by Valve, was more generous still, since its characters are unlocked by default. Strom found League fast-paced next to the "yawning" matches of Dota 2, but slower than Heroes of the Storm, which he called "intentionally accessible".

  At the first Game Developers Choice Awards in 2010, the game won four major awards: Best Online Technology, Game Design, New Online Game and Visual Arts. In 2011, it won Best Free-to-Play Game at the Golden Joystick Awards. Music produced for the game won a Shorty Award and earned a nomination at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards. At The Game Awards, it was nominated for Best Esports Game in 2017-2018 and 2025, and it won in 2019-2020 and 2021. Riot also won Best Esports Event for the 2019-2020 and 2021 World Championships. At the 39th Sports Emmy Awards in 2018, the 2017 world championship won Outstanding Live Graphic Design. For that show, Riot used augmented reality to send a computer-generated dragon flying across the stage.

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• 6. Toxicity and Honor

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  A survey by the Anti-Defamation League found that 76% of players have experienced harassment in the game. Reviewers noticed the problem early. Crecente wrote that the community was "insular" and "whiny" when losing. Butts guessed that League had inherited many DotA players, who had a reputation for being "notoriously hostile" to newcomers.

  Riot has acknowledged the problem while arguing that only a small share of players are consistently toxic. Jeffrey Lin, Riot's lead designer of social systems, said most bad behavior comes from players "occasionally acting out". The company built several systems in response. Players can report teammates or opponents who break the code of ethics. Algorithms monitor the in-game chat for several types of abuse.

  An early system called the Tribunal let players who met certain requirements review reports sent to Riot. If enough reviewers judged the messages a violation, an automated system punished the offender. Lin said that eliminating toxicity was unrealistic and that the focus should be on rewarding good behavior. In 2017, Riot reworked the Honor system along those lines. After a game, players can award teammates virtual medals for one of three positive attributes. Collecting medals raises a player's Honor level, and over time that level earns free loot boxes.

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• 7. The Esports Machine

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  The New York Times called League of Legends the "main attraction" of esports. In 2016, online viewership and in-person attendance for its events outperformed those of the National Basketball Association, the World Series and the Stanley Cup. Harvard Business Review said the game epitomized the birth of the esports industry. Riot reported peak concurrent audiences of 44 million for the 2019 finals and 45 million for the 2020 finals.

  Riot operates 12 regional leagues around the world. Four of them, in China, Europe, Korea and North America, use franchised systems. In 2017, that system included 109 teams and 545 players. Matches are typically livestreamed on Twitch and YouTube, and Riot sells the streaming rights. The North American league playoff is broadcast on cable by the sports network ESPN.

  In China, the rights to international events such as the World Championships and the Mid-Season Invitational went to Bilibili in Fall 2020. The three-year deal was reportedly worth US$113 million. Huya Live holds the exclusive rights to the domestic and other regional leagues.

  The best-paid professional players have earned salaries above $1 million, more than three times what the top Overwatch players earned. The scene has also drawn investors from outside esports. Rick Fox, a retired basketball player, founded his own team. In 2020, his team's slot in the North American league was sold to the Evil Geniuses organization for $33 million.

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• 8. Worlds Beyond the Game

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  Before 2014, players existed in the story as Summoners, political leaders who commanded champions on the Fields of Justice to avert a catastrophic war. Summoner's Rift was one such field. The sociologist Matt Watson said the setting lacked the political themes of other role-playing games and cast everything as good versus evil. Riot had hired no writers in the early days, and designers wrote character biographies only a paragraph long.

  In September 2014, Riot rebooted the setting and removed summoners from the lore to avoid "creative stagnation". Luke Plunkett of Kotaku wrote that the change would upset long-term fans but was necessary as the player base grew. Shortly afterward, Riot hired Graham McNeill, a writer known for Warhammer. A planet called Runeterra replaced the Fields of Justice. It mixes genres, from Lovecraftian horror to traditional sword and sorcery. The flavor text from Riot's storytellers and artists rarely appears in normal play. Instead, it forms the foundation for expansion into other media, such as comic books and spin-off games.

  For the tenth anniversary in 2019, Riot announced several games tied to the property. A stand-alone Teamfight Tactics for iOS and Android was released in March 2020. Legends of Runeterra, a free-to-play digital collectible card game, launched on Windows in April 2020. Wild Rift is a mobile version of the game, and Riot rebuilt its character models and environments entirely rather than porting them. Ruined King: A League of Legends Story, a single-player turn-based role-playing game, came out in 2021 on consoles and Windows. It was the first title from Riot Forge, the publishing arm that lets outside studios make games with League characters. Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story follows the champion Nunu as he searches for his mother with the help of the yeti Willump. Tequila Works, the creators of Rime, developed it, and it was released on the 1st of November 2023 for Windows and the Nintendo Switch. In December 2020, Greg Street, vice-president of IP and Entertainment at Riot, announced a massively multiplayer online role-playing game in development.

  Riot's first venture into music came in 2014 with Pentakill, a virtual heavy metal band that promoted a skin line. It began with six champions: Kayle, Karthus, Mordekaiser, Olaf, Sona and Yorick. Viego joined in 2021. Riot's in-house team made most of the music, with cameos from Tommy Lee of Mötley Crüe and Danny Lohner, a former member of Nine Inch Nails. The second album, Grasp of the Undying, reached number one on the iTunes metal charts in 2017.

  K/DA followed as a virtual K-pop girl group made up of the champions Ahri, Akali, Evelynn and Kai'sa. It also promoted a skin line. Its debut single, "Pop/Stars", premiered at the 2018 World Championship and gathered over 400 million views on YouTube. It sparked wide interest among people unfamiliar with the game. In August 2020, Riot released "The Baddest", the pre-release single for the five-track EP All Out, which followed in November.

  In 2019, Riot created True Damage, a virtual hip hop group featuring the champions Akali, Yasuo, Qiyana, Senna and Ekko. The vocalists were Keke Palmer, Thutmose, Becky G, Duckwrth and Soyeon. They performed the debut song, "Giants", at the opening ceremony of the 2019 World Championship, alongside holographic versions of their characters. The in-game cosmetics promoted by the music video involved a collaboration with the fashion house Louis Vuitton. In 2023, Riot formed Heartsteel, a virtual boy band of Aphelios, Ezreal, Kayn, K'Sante, Sett and Yone. Its vocalists are Baekhyun of the K-pop groups Exo and SuperM, Cal Scruby, ØZI and Tobi Lou. The debut single, "Paranoia", came out in October 2023.

  Riot announced a collaboration with Marvel Comics in 2018, having already experimented with comics on its own website. Shannon Liao of The Verge called the books "a rare opportunity for Riot to showcase its years of lore that has often appeared as an afterthought". The first was League of Legends: Ashe - Warmother, followed by League of Legends: Lux in the same year. A print version of the Lux comic appeared in 2019.

  The tenth anniversary also brought the announcement of Arcane, an animated series made with the studio Fortiche Production. It was Riot's first production for television. The story unfolds in Piltover, a technologically advanced city, and Zaun, its oppressed underground sister city. Arcane explores adult themes and is not meant for children. Hailee Steinfeld stars as Vi, Ella Purnell as Jinx, Kevin Alejandro as Jayce and Katie Leung as Caitlyn.

  After a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the series premiered in November 2021 on Netflix internationally and on Tencent Video in China. The first season won four Emmy Awards and nine Annie Awards. Riot then hired former executives from Netflix, HBO Max and Paramount Television Studios, and CEO Nicolo Laurent pledged to build an "entertainment company for the 21st century". Variety reported that production and marketing for the 18 episodes of Arcane exceeded $250 million, making it the most expensive animated series ever made. Bloomberg News reported that Riot paid Netflix around $3 million for each episode aired and failed to turn the show's success into in-game revenue. Riot had no plan to recoup the costs but said the second season was "on track to break even".

  The second and final season premiered in November 2024 to similar acclaim and won seven Annie Awards, taking every category in which it was nominated. GKIDS produced home media releases of the first season in 2024, including a collector's edition DVD, a 4K UHD steelbook and Blu-ray variants. Collector's, 4K UHD and 4K Blu-ray editions of the second season followed in 2025.

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