Essentially, Riot Games is still a business, and to survive and grow, they need to operate profitably. Therefore, it’s understandable that Riot Games releases a plethora of stunning new skins for popular champions or new features that entice gamers to spend money. It’s no coincidence that super popular champions in League of Legends like Ezreal, Lux, Lee Sin, Yasuo… have many new skins.
If everything stopped at the skins, or maybe just selling the Chibi eggs, gamers wouldn’t have any complaints. However, the God of Fire feature is receiving a lot of backlash from players who believe it’s not worth the money at all. In reality, not many League of Legends players care about how many Insec plays their teammates pull off or how many enemies get caught in a Trap; they are only concerned about winning or losing.
It seems that Riot Games created God of Fire because they thought it was a good idea, but gamers find it utterly uninteresting. And that is the biggest mistake Riot Games made with God of Fire: They created a product focused on themselves rather than serving their customers, the gamers. Remember that in a MOBA game, whether it’s League of Legends, DOTA2… the community is what keeps it alive.
League of Legends has an advantage over its competitors in that its player community is the largest, along with a massive number of fans and content creators associated with the game. The products created by the community are extremely diverse, with the simplest being self-designed skins, emotes, and custom icons that often receive great support from the community.
Furthermore, many artists have redesigned skill icons and somewhat outdated items of League of Legends. Recently, an artist redesigned components of the Trinity Force, which is considered a comprehensive upgrade, and Riot Games is truly wasting opportunities by overlooking so many interesting contents like this. Some people even create their own champions with details that rival those designed by Riot Games.
Even Riot Games themselves have a wealth of content that they can exploit and could generate massive profits. For instance, the music packages in the game; League of Legends has had many successful music products recently, so why not use the products they created, which are loved by gamers, to make a profit?
Meanwhile, the shoutcasters and famous figures of League of Legends have many fans; Riot Games could definitely use their voices to create some very special announcer packs. In summary, whatever product is released, Riot Games should always aim towards the gamer community, their direct customers. Riot Games has a massive gamer community with boundless creativity; they could make a fortune from that. It’s a pity that Riot’s decision was to create God of Fire, something that no one cares about.