League of Legends has a new skin to commemorate esports GOAT Faker - and with its near-$500 price tag, it's already got players planning forced boycotts as a form of protest
May. 29, 2024Signature Ahri isn’t going down well
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When it comes to League of Legends, four-time world champion Faker is the best to ever do it. He’s so good, in fact, that he’s become the first player inducted into Riot Games' new Hall of Legends, meant to honor some of the greatest players LoL has ever produced. Alongside that honor, however, is a new commemorative skin so expensive that players are planning to permaban the champion it belongs to.
The Signature Immortalized Legend Collection is the most expensive offering in a range of three different bundles. As well as cosmetics for two of Faker’s best known characters, it comes with several other, smaller bonuses, many of which are entirely exclusive to the bundle. If you want all of those bonuses, however, you’ll be shelling out a total of 59,620 Riot Points - League of Legends' premium in-game currency.
To put that in perspective, most skins cost 1,350 RP, which you can amass through a total of around $16 in spending. To amass the nearly 60,000 points you need for this bundle, by contrast, you’ll be buying four of the biggest bundles, setting you back $100 each, plus another $50 bundle to make up the rest. That’s a total cost of $450, making this far and away the most microtransaction Riot has ever offered - last year,players were angered by a skin placed behind a $200 gacha system, and this more than doubles that price.
Unsurprisingly, the response has been pretty negative. There’s obvious community reverence for Faker, but equally obvious frustration at Riot, with thegame’s official subredditdiscussing the cost at length, andmultiplehigh-profile esports figures speaking out.
Some players are even planning an in-game protest, a form of forced boycott of the skin. While no-one can stop anyone else from purchasing the cosmetic, they can attempt to stop them from using it. League of Legends' ranked matches utilize a pick-and-ban phase, and if your champion is banned before the start of a match, you have to use a different one. With that in mind, players are already planning a mass target-ban of Ahri from the skin’s release date on June 12. If you can’t play Faker’s signature champion, you’re not likely to have much luck trying to use the expensive new skin you bought for it.
Riot does have an unfortunate habit of testing the waters with this kind of thing before walking it back when players make their displeasure known. Whether that happens here remains to be seen, but I’ll be fascinated to see if the developer tries this again with its next Hall of Famer.
I don’t think this bodes very well for theLoL MMO I’m looking forward to either, and I’m already pretty worried about that one.
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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.
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