Referring to the story of the Worlds skins, many fans may still vividly remember the incident involving the FunPlus Phoenix (FPX) team. In the tumultuous 2019 season, the “Phoenix” crowned itself champion of the World Championship (Worlds) after defeating the European representatives, G2 Esports. There isn’t much to discuss about the finals, but the controversies surrounding FPX’s Worlds skins remain a topic for the League of Legends community to debate to this day.
Specifically, the design of FPX’s Worlds skins that year was deemed a “disaster”, especially Doinb’s Malphite. Initially intended to “appease his wife”, this skin had to be “discarded” as Doinb’s girlfriend, Umi, stopped playing the game. Overall, this skin line was compared by the League of Legends community to… “the Power Rangers”. Furthermore, according to Doinb himself and the actual feedback from the League of Legends community, this is one of the least profitable Worlds skin lines in League’s history, especially when compared to the skins from Invictus Gaming or, later, EDward Gaming.
Recently, while watching the match between Top Esports and Bilibili Gaming, Doinb once again expressed his frustration. In that match, Crisp (BLG) used the champion Thresh while Tian used Lee Sin. Both names were included in FPX’s Worlds skin group. However, neither former player from the “Phoenix” opted to use those skins in the competition.
Doinb expressed his frustration, stating: “I hope that one day, the skin designers at Riot will apologize to us. Look, even the players who own those skins don’t use them, so how can we expect other players to use them?” Perhaps seeing his former teammates, who once rose to the championship together, not using their own skins left Doinb feeling a bit melancholic.
But this is a situation that neither side wishes for. The timing of the FPX skins’ design coincided with a period when the pandemic was sweeping across the globe. Therefore, the Riot design team and the FPX players did not have the best collaboration for creating this skin line. As a result, it led to one of the “disastrous” skin lines that continues to be criticized by the gaming community to this day.