Key Takeaways
- The Legends of Runeterra community is divided by the announcement of a physical card game from Riot.
- Legends of Runeterra currently has a smaller team focused on PvE content.
- Players worry that a more popular card game could spell the end for Legends of Runeterra.
Riot Games has announced Project K, a physical card game in active development by a small team within the company. It’s not a physical version of Riot’s digital card game, Legends of Runeterra (LoR). This isn’t surprising considering Legends of Runeterra has been designed with digital-specific mechanics that would be difficult to translate into a physical format. However, the announcement has irked some Legends fans, who perceive this as Riot giving up on the digital card game.
This all stems from Riot’s announcement in January that Legends of Runeterra would change for “sustainability” reasons. This announcement came amid layoffs at Riot and the sunsetting of Riot Forge, the company’s indie publishing wing.
The announcement reads, “As Legends of Runeterra continues its journey, we’re making changes to move the game towards sustainability. We know there’s a passionate community who absolutely love this game, and we do too. However, it hasn’t performed as well as we need it to, despite our best efforts. We’ve been subsidising the cost of development on LoR through our other games, but at this point, that’s just not a viable option. So, we’re reducing the size of the team and shifting our focus to the ‘Path of Champions’ PvE game mode.”
Physical v. Digital
Riot has fulfilled this promise over the last year, releasing several updates over the last few months. With the announcement of Project K, the community is torn between feeling betrayed, and accepting that Legends hasn’t been a successful product for Riot. The top comment of the announcement video on the League of Legends subreddit is “Don’t believe their lies, – Former LoR player,” from MoreAvatarsForMe.
A post on the Legends of Runeterra subreddit collates some of the opinions of the game’s passionate community. “Sigh,” reads one brief comment from EquinoxReaper. Other comments predict that a physical card game will likely make Riot more money, as that genre is in a much better place popularity-wise than digital card games, currently.
“With how they handled [Legends of Runeterra]? I’m not trusting Riot with a TCG for one second. I’d rather stick with the Pokémon one,” writes Groundzer0es. “I got into Runeterra for the player-versus-player and I still play it. Getting rid of it completely would be the biggest kick in the balls so far – it would be evidence they just don’t give a f*** about their player base whatsoever,” adds Wiitab360.
It’s a difficult argument to delve into because physical card games and digital card games are different genres and appeal to different people. The crossover between Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone is smaller than you’d guess, as the former cohort tends to enjoy the social aspects of playing an over-the-table card game. Of course, Magic: The Gathering now has Arena, appealing to both player bases.
Legends of Runeterra players are aggrieved that Riot would invest money in a physical card game after cutting investment in LoR, but obviously, the company believes there’s more potential for revenue in physical, rather than digital. Given the number of people who collect cards and don’t even play their attached TCGs, they’re probably correct.
Legends of Runeterra is a digital collectible card game by Riot Games, heavily featuring characters and locations from the hit MOBA League of Legends.