Legends of Runeterra 2024 - State of the Game

Jan 22, 2024

Hey everyone! I’m Dave Guskin, Executive Producer and Game Director for Legends of Runeterra. I wanted to catch up with you about what’s going on with LoR, and after the news today, take a moment to talk about what that means for the future of the game.

Let’s jump into why we’re here today. The truth is that despite LoR being an incredible game developed in tandem with the community, LoR has struggled over the years to find its footing as a business. While we at Riot are extremely passionate about LoR and our community, we also need to ensure LoR is sustainable as a business so that we are able to continue investing in games, experiences, and players across our ecosystem. However, we haven't been able to get to the point of sustainability with our approach thus far.

In alignment with the larger Riot-wide business changes going on, we needed to make some very hard decisions about the future of LoR. Starting today and continuing over the next few months, we will begin the process of reducing the size and scope of LoR to a team that is focused on sustainably making the game you love.

Unfortunately, this does mean that the LoR team has been impacted by Riot's organizational changes. This is obviously not an outcome that anyone wanted, but we truly believe that this more focused team will propel LoR towards the point of sustainability for our community. There are still lots of things to be excited about with the future of LoR, but over the next few weeks we'll be focused on people and the impact to them from these changes.

I’ve talked about this before in how we’ve had to be more laser focused on what we work on. We’ve invested a lot of time and resources into LoR to give the team as much runway as possible in an attempt to make the business work - and the truth is, we haven’t been able to do that. Every shift over the last couple of years has been done with the goal of achieving sustainability, but that has required other games here at Riot to subsidize LoR’s exploration to find a business model that works. We know these constant shifts have meant a lot of whiplash for you all around our direction, and that this new reduction in our scope may feel like a blow. However, this current path is necessary to provide LoR a way forward, and to enable us to keep the game around to play for years to come.

After we have regrouped as a team, Legends of Runeterra will once again recenter and refocus, this time with the rising star of the Path of Champions forming the core of the business. The Path of Champions is already a popular and rewarding experience enjoyed by a majority of our audience, and we're excited to explore what else we can delight players with in this space. The new, refocused team will be led by my good friend and strategist, Eric Shen (Riot Shen1138), who has done incredible work over the past years to make LoR the best product it can be while preserving what makes it a great game. Eric brings a fresh perspective to leadership for the team, and is excited to continue serving LoR's community as their advocate both within the LoR leadership team as well as the broader League Studios team. I cannot wait to see what the team comes up with under his leadership as Executive Producer.

As for me, I’ve spent the last 5 years on the Legends of Runeterra team - first as a cards designer and eventual Gameplay design lead, then as head of Gameplay, Game Director, and now, finally, Executive Producer. Over my time on the game, I’ve seen a lot of big exciting swings. I’m really proud of the diversity of champions (including Norra, Jack, and Elder Dragon) and deck archetypes we’ve had throughout the years. It’s a testament to the strength of our DNA (design, narrative, art) team that we were able to deliver such high quality content time after time. Experiments like Lab of Legends have surpassed our expectations, and it's now its own fully featured mode with the Path of Champions. The goal now is to lean into and deliver on those successful pieces in a more sustainable way, continuing to produce champions that players know and love, and more content in TPoC.

This is your game, and in partnership with Eric and the other dedicated devs, an even greater game it shall be. My time with LoR is ending, but I’ll still be here at Riot working on other games and cheering from the other side as a fan and as a player. Thanks everyone for your patience and understanding in these difficult times, and thank you for letting me be a part of this incredible community and the journey we’ve taken together so far.

If you’re looking for more details, we'll go into a first look at what comes next for LoR on 2/2 in a chat with me, Eric, Marc Merrill, and Andrei van Roon, alongside an FAQ for more detail on the specific changes.

--dave

@davetron