I hope you’re sitting down for this, but I’m about to blow your and Riot’s minds. Apparently, the community hasn’t received the introduction of a single Ahri skin that retails for $500 or R9,205 in the always-popular League of Legends well. Who could have guessed?
So, to catch you up, League of Legends recently released a skin to honour the forever fabulous Faker and celebrate that he has just become the first person to be inducted into Riot’s new Hall of Legends. On the surface, this sounds like such a great, celebratory thing to do. It should have left Faker and Ahri fans everywhere running to grab their wallets and add the historic skin to their collection.
However, this is Riot we’re talking about, so you know there had to be a little bit of bad alongside the good. In this case, the bad was the skin’s price tag—which was, and it pains me to even type this number out again, R9,205.
In an interview with League of Legends game director Pu Liu during Summer Games Fest, this was said on the controversial topic:
I think there are people who are very upset about the Ahri skin. And I also think it’s kind of justified because when you have a 14-year-old product that starts doing new things that are expensive, when players are used to everything living under a certain price point, all of a sudden, it can be kind of jarring.
While it’s great that Pu Liu understands players’ frustration, this doesn’t explain or justify the decision to market a single skin at a higher price tag than the official, physical collectors’ edition statue of Ahri.
But do not fear; League of Legends has now released a video addressing the complaints, and in it, two developers explain that the price tag is there to “cover the costs of esports” and to “celebrate iconic pro players”, so to translate: Get Rekt, Noob.
The vast majority of our players each year play League, they watch esports, they enjoy all the content, all the music, all the cinematics, and they do this at zero dollars. So the vast majority of players spend $0 on a free play game. As a consequence of that, the majority of our revenue comes from a small, single-digit percentage of players.
What we really think about, on the morality side, is that there are players who are willing to spend $200 a month on their hobbies. God knows how much I’ve spent on Warhammer figures. But it’s really important that we capture that willingness and that ability to spend. – Pu Liu
Riot has also made it clear that this skin, alongside others, is purely cosmetic, but I don’t think that’s where any of the outrage stems. And if we’re going to pull at that thread, it’s also not entirely true because multiple skins have been banned from pro-play over the years for inadvertently giving players benefits.
But now I want to know, dear League of Legends players, are you upset about the hefty price tag? Or is this all much ado about nothing? Let me know in the comments while I just sit here, crying in poor.