Riot Games has announced that some of its upcoming League of Legends skins will be missing new, custom voice lines due to the MOBA being one of the titles impacted by the ongoing SAF-AFTRA strike. While custom VO will still be created for most languages, skins won’t be getting any new English-language lines until strike actions ends.
While the vast majority of new LoL skins are merely a cosmetic transformation of players’ favorite champions, high-rarity and expensive skins can sometimes come with unique voiceover lines. Top-end skins have already been a hot topic in recent months – the new Exalted skins, which are obtained through a luck-based mechanic and debuted with an underwhelming Arcane-inspired Jinx skin, were a particular flashpoint. Now, Riot has revealed that getting new English VO for any future skins will “temporarily” not be possible, due to League of Legends being one of the SAG-AFTRA strike’s targeted games. Mobile spinoff Wild Rift may also be impacted but only on a case-by-case basis.
“For [League of Legends] PC skins for champions with U.S.-based voice actors, we’ll temporarily use existing voiceovers (base VO) instead of recording new lines with different actors,” Riot says in a statement. “While Wild Rift is not a struck video game, if actors decline projects with us because they are standing in solidarity during the labor strike, we will ship with base VO. This temporary adjustment only affects English-language VO. Skins in all other languages will ship with custom VO as planned.”
As for what future skins this will impact, Riot doesn’t give any specific names. However, if you glance at its future pipeline, LoL’s second Exalted skin for Sett is next up. Set to launch early next year on January 9, Radiant Serpent Sett does already have custom voice lines recorded, according to skin preview channel ‘SkinSpotlights.’ If the terms of the strike only impact the recording of new lines, then Exalted Sett should be fine. However, it sounds like getting English voice lines for high-rarity skins further down the road will now be very tricky indeed.
“Once the strike ends, we’ll update skins released with English base VO to include new lines recorded by the original actors, as soon as scheduling and studio availability allow,” Riot promises in its statement.
“We know this isn’t ideal, and we understand it’s frustrating to have to wait for custom VO, but this approach lets us respect the ongoing strike while continuing to deliver new content. We’re committed to bringing you updated VO with the quality you expect as soon as we can.”
After months of failed negotiations with American videogame studios and production companies, the SAG-AFTRA union began striking in July of this year. Initially, Riot and its games were unimpacted. However, in September, the union added League of Legends to its list of struck games after filing an unfair labor practice charge against Formosa Interactive, a company specializing in art and audio that works (alongside several other big studios) with Riot Games. At the time, Formosa denied any wrongdoing and Riot said that it was disappointed with the union targeting League of Legends because the wrongdoing Formosa was accused of was “[related] to a non-Riot game.”
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