In the early hours of May 28 (Vietnam time), Riot Games officially introduced the skin line honoring Faker named “Legacy of the Demon King.” Not only featuring skins for Ahri and LeBlanc, this event also includes a series of emotes, titles, and more, based on Faker’s career. These products show that Riot has indeed made a significant investment in the tribute event for the “Demon King.”
However, when looking at the prices of the bundles that Riot Games is selling in this event, the community has become extremely outraged. The reason comes from the Event Ticket Collection of 100 levels, with the exclusive Immortal Legendary Ahri skin priced at nearly 60,000 RP. This amount of RP is valued at over 500 USD (more than 12 million VND) on international servers and is considered an “astronomical” price. Even on the domestic server, this bundle will cost about 6 million VND, leaving many Vietnamese gamers feeling “disheartened.”
It is worth noting that Ahri is an extremely attractive character in League of Legends, and combined with the tribute event for Faker, it is expected to generate significant revenue for Riot Games. Therefore, Riot could certainly set a more “comfortable” price to earn money while avoiding community backlash. Many gamers even have a “conspiracy theory” suggesting that Riot set such high prices to quickly raise funds for a large project. Almost immediately, the League of Legends RPG (or MMO) project was mentioned.
Remember during Riot Games’ 10th anniversary event, they unveiled promising images of the open-world MMORPG based on League of Legends. However, since then, there has been no official information regarding gameplay, characters, or the world. Even in March this year, “CEO” Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill announced some disappointing news that the game would “go dark” for a long time. This means that the League of Legends MMO will take a long time before it can be released.
Moreover, this game is likely falling into “development hell” as Riot has changed three development team leads in just one year. This could lead to the development costs of the League of Legends MMO skyrocketing and requiring significant resources from Riot. Therefore, the community speculates that Riot Games is trying to “milk” players as much as possible through the tribute event for Faker to support this project. If this is true, then Riot’s MMO project is essentially being “saved” by Faker’s fame.
Of course, the above speculations from the League of Legends community are merely at the level of “conspiracy theories.” They are a way for the community to explain the excessively high prices of the bundles in the upcoming Hall of Fame event. If the community’s speculations are correct, it only shows how significant Faker is to Riot Games.