League of Legends game publisher Riot Games has announced that some of the upcoming skins will not have custom voice lines due to the SAF-AFTRA strike.
Image Credit: Riot Games
SAF-AFTRA Strike – new League of Legends skins to be impacted
The announcement came directly from Riot Games themselves, which stated that the skins won’t be getting any new English-language lines until strike action ends. This will mainly impact League of Legends and some Wild Rift skins.
The company added that they will temporarily use the existing voiceovers for the new skins as they wait to record the new lines with different actors. Custom voiceovers will still be available and created for other languages. Riot also mentioned that while “Wild Rift is not a struck video game”, the game developer will ship the new skins with the base voiceover if actors were to decline projects for the strike.
SAG-AFTRA Strike explained
SAG-AFTRA (which stands for Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) is a union that represents the voice actors in the entertainment industry in the U.S. Earlier this year, the union announced a strike against video game developers related to usage of AI.
As a result, League of Legends was impacted, as union members haven’t recorded new voiceovers during the strike. The skins will be updated once the original actors are allowed to record new voice lines.
“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,” said Riot in a public statement. “We’re committed to bringing you updated VO with the quality you expect as soon as we can.”
While it’s unclear which new skins will be impacted, there are plenty of important releases coming up for League and the new 2025 season with the launch of Patch 25.S1.1. According to the skin preview channel ‘SkinSpotlights’, the upcoming launch of Radiant Serpent Sett shouldn’t be impacted. That said, fans might soon find out which new skins won’t have the new VOs.