League of Legends fans baffled as Riot lays off more devs - including the $500 Ahri skin designer - only to unveil a gacha-fueled $250 Arcane skin 24 hours later
Oct. 18, 2024League players could spend up to 32,000 RP trying to get the Arcane Fractured Jinx skin
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Earlier this week, League of Legends developerRiot Games announced a wave of layoffs, notably impacting skin designers including the person behind thecontroversial near-$500 Ahri, and it’s now confirmed that the studio is introducing a whole new gacha system to sell even more expensive skins.
Although the number of affected developers wasn’t initially confirmed, Riot later revealed in astatement to Eurogamerthat 27 people on the League of Legends team have been affected, as well as five people in publishing roles. As previously mentioned, these include Ben Rosado, who designed the Ahri skin that was part of the Signature Immortalized Legend Collection bundle to celebrate four-time world champion player, Faker. This bundle set purchasers back a whopping $450 in RP (in-game currency), and while the exact number of sales isn’t known, despite the fact thatsome planned to boycott the character, plenty ended up buying it.
Rosado isn’t the only skin designer affected, as Tereza ‘Teya’ Rozumkova, a character artist behind 23 different skins including Star Guardian Akali and Mythmaker Irelia, was also impacted after four and a half years at the studio. It’s a shocking loss of talent, and even more surprising when you consider Riot’s claims that the layoffs weren’t about saving money, but “making sure we have the right expertise so that League continues to be great for another 15 years and beyond.”
Just to make matters worse, the reveal of this new gacha system came just one day after the layoffs were announced.
The gacha system ties into the introduction of a new, potentially very expensive tier of skins – Exalted skins.Riot has explainedthat they’ll be obtainable using a new currency called Ancient Sparks, which can be bought for 400 RP each. Using one will give you the low, low chance (0.5%, to be exact) of pulling “S-tier content” such as the shiny new Arcane Fractured Jinx skin – the first of this new tier. There’s mercifully a pity system so that you’ll be given a guaranteed S-rank pull after 80 attempts, but that’s going to cost 32,000 RP – a ludicrous amount of currency that, if you’re spending the absolute minimum amount of real money you can on bundles, will cost you $240. It might not be the $450 Ahri bundle, but it’s still averyconsidered purchase if you end up having to go all-in.
Needless to say, the reaction to this series of events hasn’t been positive, with some calling it"disgusting,“and others saying that they’re"not spending another penny on this game.“Riot admits that “there’s been a lot of focus on luxury goods this year,” but claims that “we’re also exploring new technologies, features, and content types (even outside of skins) that are meant for a broader audience, which we’ll be able to share more on later this year.”
5 days after reports of 650 more Microsoft gaming layoffs, the company announces plans to pay out even more money to shareholders.
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I’m one of GamesRadar+’s news writers, who works alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield’s student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming’s news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you’re sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.
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