Once a name that was always ridiculed by the gaming community for its poor game balance in League of Legends, Riot Games is now often labeled as a “music production company” rather than a game company.
Perhaps due to being teased too often, recently, the CEO of Riot Games – Nicolo, decided to “play his cards openly”, bluntly stating that “Yeah, we are a music company, we only make games to promote views for our music videos, so what?”
Since 2014 with the release of the music video welcoming the Season 4 World Championship – Warriors, the media team of League of Legends has been producing higher quality products daily, including music videos, champion introduction videos, and short films that meet “Hollywood standards”.
In contrast, game balance in League of Legends has never received approval from the gaming community. The issue of new or reworked champions being either too weak or too strong, and some champions having such imbalanced power that even Riot has to throw in the towel, leads to the only solution being to dissect and modify them indiscriminately, making the game increasingly chaotic.
Not to mention that the unique gameplay of League of Legends has seen very little change since its inception, with new game modes, except for Teamfight Tactics, being generally regarded as bland and uninteresting.
For these reasons, Riot Games has been mocked by the gaming community as a game company that “makes music videos better than games”.
Of course, with the music and film products from League of Legends, there isn’t much to criticize, but when placed alongside disastrous updates such as repeatedly nerfing Akali or reworking Aatrox only to have to adjust his skill mechanics again, etc., it further highlights the contrast between the quality of products from the music video team and the champion balancing team.
The CEO’s admission at Riot is, of course, just for fun, but it also carries a hint of “whimsical teasing”! If Riot really switched to making films… it would be chaotic.
As for the issue of game balance, players might need to show a bit of sympathy for the League of Legends team, as having over 140 champions catering to many different playstyles has already turned this game into a formula too difficult to balance. (Though just declaring 200 years of game experience and then releasing a reworked Wukong with overwhelming power is hard to defend).