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00:00Yo it's Loi and we are back with another one. Today we're watching what happened to Legends
00:06of Runeterra, Riot's failed game by Akshon Esports. Now before we begin I have some insights
00:15as to what this game was. Legends of Runeterra I played it quite a bit. I actually maxed out
00:20in Diamond Elo so I was pretty good but not good enough to make the upper echelon which is Masters.
00:27I'd play a lot of meme decks. My favorite deck I'd play was Zombie Ash. It's just a control deck
00:33where you keep bringing back Ash and you keep destroying your opponent that way. That's what
00:38I'd do. So Legends of Runeterra is a game I played for a bit. When he says failed card game I'm not
00:44sure I'd say it failed. I think the game itself, the gameplay was pretty successful. I think Riot
00:49made a very good product. It was probably because of monetization issues. I felt like towards the
00:55end maybe they were running out of player base. I never felt like I waited long for games. It
01:00always felt like there was an active fan base. So yeah I'm not sure failed is the word we'll use
01:07but let's check out what Akshon has to say about this. League of Legends is a MOBA loved around the
01:14world. Riot Games has given the game incredible dev support, art direction, and unique characters.
01:19So how about a spin-off? A card game with your favorite champions, cheap to get into, and with
01:24lore to support League's Runeterra world. It happened and it's called Legends of Runeterra.
01:28Alright yeah so you see how he said it was cheap to get into? I feel like Riot made a huge mistake
01:34with this game because they just give you everything you needed to succeed. It was the
01:38most anti-peditory model I've seen ever in any game actually. They just gave you the entire game
01:45for free. A game that technically did everything right but still failed. This is how Legends of
01:51Runeterra became Riot Games' biggest failure. So before Hearthstone even came out I knew that
01:58Riot Games was making a card game. The codename for the game was Bacon. My name is Travis Gafford.
02:04I have been covering esports and Riot Games for the past I guess 13 years now and I am an avid
02:12card game player. I've played many TCGs over the years, mostly digital, but what happened was that
02:19Riot Games as they were growing, as League was requiring more resources, and as they just were
02:23trying to figure out how to release another game, and I think chasing this obsession with well
02:28whatever game we need to come out with next also needs to be you know genre defining the same way
02:33that League of Legends was. I think it really slowed down development on this game and it took
02:39them I don't know I mean I heard about it in 2013 or 2012 maybe even when this released. In 2020 I
02:48guess it had been probably eight or so years. That is crazy. You see Riot Games has this
02:55philosophy that they call Riot Polish where they take genres that already work and they just refine
03:01them and they take all of the best parts and they ship that to an audience but for them to take
03:07eight years making this I don't know man because in that time period how many other card games there
03:14was Gwent, there was Hearthstone, Magic is always gonna be there it's a staple. Yeah man it's crazy
03:24because if you think about it they could have been out maybe around just after Hearthstone because
03:29Hearthstone was what 2014? Anyway let's continue. Development that at least I was aware of and during
03:36that time Hearthstone released. Some have speculated that Riot wanted to wait out Hearthstone's momentum
03:41and learn from Blizzard's entry into TCGs but it seems like they waited too long. By the time that
03:46they eventually released the game it seemed like people were either tired of the genre or already
03:50too invested into a card game to switch. If you've put hundreds of dollars and hours learning the
03:55meta and building your collection in Hearthstone, Shadowverse or MTG Arena you wouldn't have much
04:00incentive to swap over to a brand new game. And I think by the time let's uh I mean kind of right
04:06like the thing is with these CCGs, these collectible card games and whatnot,
04:12the actual problem is that I think people get bored. It's kind of like a fad, you play the game
04:17for a little bit, you collect all of the rare cards, you get a cool deck and then you eventually
04:22just get bored of the game and you move on. I don't think it's like people won't try another
04:27game, I just think the games are generally made for people to just enter the game, spend quick,
04:34enjoy it for a bit and then move on to the next one.
04:37As Runeterra came out, a lot of people including folks like myself were already kind of burnt out
04:42on this type of experience. It's similar to the World of Warcraft situation where it's very
04:48difficult for other MMOs to succeed in the space because WoW just has such a huge head start that
04:54anything that comes out later you're kind of like well why would I play this over WoW or I've already
04:59played enough WoW I don't really feel like I want to play another MMO. With all that being said,
05:03Riot seemed to be up for the challenge and was prepared to invest heavily into the game,
05:06even launching a high production cinematic produced by the French studio Unit Image.
05:11The same team behind League of Legends, The Call and the Baldur's Gate 3 intro.
05:15The trailer looks like a series of oil paintings, and while it featured no gameplay, it set the
05:20tone for what Legends of Runeterra was going to be. A serious card game with a ton of support
05:24backing it. Legends of Runeterra was, and still is, a lore lover's dream. The game includes all
05:2910 major regions in the League of Legends world, and each of these regions include all the
05:33recognizable champions from the MOBA. More interestingly though, these would also include
05:38a whole bunch of new characters never before seen that you get to play with.
06:00and that will act as kind of a prequel to the MMO because we know they're building that MMO
06:09so to have this game first I feel is very powerful because it kind of leads people in
06:16it's a pipeline so you have this game telling the lore you have Arcane and the other series
06:21they're working on telling the lore and then you lead people into that MMO experience which I think
06:27is their 20 to 30 year plan just based on how they've seen WoW succeed for such a long period
06:34of time Legends of Runeterra was great in that aspect just world building huge deal for fans of
06:42League lore who wanted to dig into the world of the game further the abilities of champions old
06:46and new would reflect their MOBA counterparts so even if you had a cursory knowledge of League you
06:51could still appreciate the consistency between games all of this was presented through incredibly
06:55smooth animations beautiful expandable art for every card and attractive cosmetics as in-game
07:00purchases speaking of all of the in-game purchases were completely optional the game had an innate
07:05way for you to receive the exact types of cards you wanted just by playing the game on release
07:09you could pick a faction like the shadow isles and then passively unlock those types of cards
07:13when you play any game additionally many things rewarded wild cards a system that lets you get
07:18whatever card you wanted given it was the same rarity as the wild card rewards always felt
07:23plentiful that makes it hard to make money and never drip fed and there was always a clear
07:28relatively easy path to make your next deck this system was objectively incredibly generous
07:33Mark Merrill CFO and co-founder of Riot talked about it during a state of the game update earlier
07:38in 2024 part of the sort of the thesis and opportunity that really excited us as players
07:44was the fact that you know in a lot of CCGs one of the things we all love to do was build
07:48decks and so we wanted to have a business model that would yeah I saw this this was when they were
07:53kind of pulling out of Legends of Runeterra when they kind of realized they made a mistake
08:00in terms of their model and their monetization so they tried to pivot the game into more of a
08:05pve experience yeah I think what killed them was more that all of the creators who were playing so
08:14I think Grappler was playing it I think Mogwai um there were some other guys I don't want to
08:20remember everyone I think Sunny, Sunny's a guy but yeah bro they just they stopped a lot of them
08:27stopped playing a lot of creators just gave up on the game because the pvp experience was being
08:34dumped so it kind of killed the purpose of the game it was incredibly generous to players that
08:40enabled people to have a lot of cards to then get into that fun experimentation and not feel
08:46like I've got to go spend hundreds of dollars in order to go get the cards even build the decks
08:50and figure out let people try it yeah this incredibly generous business model put players
08:55first in a way that no other mass market digital card games were doing at the time instead of
08:59needing to spend hundreds of dollars when a new set comes out just continuing to play the game
09:03more would earn those cards as a reward for playing sounds like a pretty sweet deal right
09:07players get the cards they want so they can get deck building right away
09:11no more opening card packs letting RNG determine what decks you can and can't build
09:15but here is the possible mistake Riot made they didn't realize that although perhaps predatory
09:20there is a reason that business model has been a part of trading card games since the start
09:24the nature of packs loot boxes gacha or whatever you want to call it
09:28brings people in and makes them stick around for more
09:30I've never actually thought about it that way like opening packs actually gets addictive
09:50not only do players like it but viewers like it as well many games similar and dissimilar
09:54that have these mechanics gain a ton of viewership from streamers opening packs or
09:58trying to high roll for a rare cosmetic removing those aspects regardless of what
10:02they do to the industry or a player's psyche was Riot effectively shooting themselves in the foot
10:06now imagine this you make a card game called versus Runeterra and you say yeah well that
10:11addictive part we could just cut it out it's not necessary we're just gonna make a good game
10:15sure they made a great game I still think to this day on the market there's no better card game to
10:19play the playing of Runeterra is amazing but they have that entire addictive part of the game which
10:25is freaking awesome and fun and exciting to collect cards and they said we don't need it
10:29Riot tried to apply the same business model that they had used with League of Legends
10:33they created a free-to-play game that would survive and make money off of players purchasing
10:37non-gameplay impacting cosmetics so naturally they'd want to replicate the success of another
10:42League strategy eSports Blizzard had tried to make eSports work for Hearthstone but despite
10:47modest success it never but it works it worked though I don't think this was their model failing
10:59like I saw a bunch of people actually buy the cosmetics I think the model worked I just think
11:05as a genre itself card games don't really have guap or am I tripping someone let me know does
11:12Yu-Gi-Oh! have guap does Magic have mad guap and I mean I'm talking about the newer games the ones
11:19which haven't had time to establish themselves I think Hearthstone with WoW might be the only one
11:25but again it's Blizzard monetization model versus Riot's monetization model like
11:32maybe Riot could have been more aggressive if they wanted to make money off of this
11:37but I think surely they happy just storytelling in Legends of Runeterra surely that was a goal
11:45that they set as well never really reached the heights that other mass-market eSports did but
11:50people thought that if it was anyone it would be Riot to succeed where other developers failed
11:54and actually build a thriving massively popular eSports scene around a card game however I mean
11:59Hearthstone had a had a big base Legends of Runeterra's player base never got large enough
12:04to successfully fan the flames of a thriving eSports scene although they had multiple worlds
12:08events and qualifiers for one reason or another these events were all held remotely and failed
12:12to reach the same viewership highs that games like League and Dota had despite all of Riot's
12:16best efforts they couldn't solve the big issue that plagues TCG viewership the barrier of entry
12:21to watch and understand what's going on card games are hard to spectate for a casual player who
12:25doesn't have the requisite game knowledge of each card and their abilities anything exciting that
12:29does happen requires a ton of information to really fully appreciate which is something that
12:33other popular eSports usually don't have problems with so in the end only Runeterra players watched
12:38Runeterra tournaments and the ceiling for viewership and eSports growth became capped
12:42from the start this all leads us to the state of the game 2024 in which Riot announced that they
12:47would be ending support for competitive PvP in Legends of Runeterra in early 2024 Riot was
12:52downsizing they had a massive wave of layoffs and even ended support for their Riot Forge projects
12:57their goal was to focus all of their funding and effort on titles that they knew would be successful
13:01and that they believed should be prioritized Legends of Runeterra did not meet the criteria
13:06but we yeah I remember I remember this it was kind of a culling of the company's side projects to
13:14focus on the big things that they're doing which does imply that they are very big games that they
13:21are working on I know they're working on 2x KO the fighting game the window for 2x KO to even drop
13:28so far has been so long bro they've been working on that game for such a long time from the time
13:33they bought over Rising Thunder's team so if you don't know 2x KO is like a fighting game they're
13:39working on and they pretty much took a whole other studio that developed another indie title called
13:45Rising Thunder and they sucked them into Riot but that was like in 2016 or something and
13:52yeah they started developing 9 years later you can sort of you know never really get the formula
13:58right we were always spending a lot more money uh investing in the game and supporting the
14:02community that the game was bringing in and so essentially being as a controversial to say that
14:07Riot actually takes a very long time to get games done that maybe shouldn't take as long as they do
14:14I get that they want to like focus on interesting gameplay and make it addictive but it really takes
14:20them long to get projects done I mean 8 years for a card game bro subsidized by our products
14:27so we tried a lot of things over the last couple years to you know figure out how to grow the
14:30audience and you know what would resonate with players and so we sort of reached a point where
14:35you know we had to make some changes to try to get to a place of sustainability because
14:39players have been so committed to this game and we know so many people love the game that we want
14:43to keep finding a way to deliver this awesome game that people love Riot decided to take their
14:47support of the game and fully focus it more on the pve side they claim that most of the player
14:52base was actually playing pve so they believe the best thing to do would be to develop the parts of
14:57the game that players love the most this meant though that support for things like esports ended
15:02immediately despite seemingly doing everything right this high potential product appears to
15:06have failed but why well it's a nuanced combination of things to start their business model was too
15:12generous while this might seem like an insane thing to say if you ask most regulars of the game
15:16there would be an agreement that runeterra provided one of the friendliest systems in tcgs
15:21beyond just giving everyone every card maybe it was just bad timing maybe the genre just isn't
15:28big enough or maybe it really was that legends of runeterra gave too much away and didn't give
15:32the players yeah i think the genre is not big enough i wouldn't say a entire game can fail
15:39because you didn't have enough peck pulls i just think convincing enough people to play a card game
15:46is the hard part you have anything to chase some speculate that the cosmetics didn't sell well
15:52enough also but travis argues that the lack of sales wasn't a core issue i think i i would disagree
15:58with the idea that the problem is that people aren't buying it's because i don't know if people
16:01are buying them or not but the problem was that we're not people to buy them i think that the
16:06biggest issue legends of runeterra faced was a player base issue because tft has stuck around
16:13been a massive success and eventually they figured out the monetization issue or maybe
16:17they're still working on developing it but like for a long time tft was like i think you could
16:22buy some very basic cosmetics for it or whatever but the game was so successful that there was
16:26never any doubt about whether or not riot should continue to invest into it or like what the deal
16:30should be with it i've always wondered why they haven't used the teamfight tactics sits
16:35to story tell you know for me i hope that riot realizes that they need to balance their desire
16:43to take a long time and be thoughtful about what a game could be etc with the need to move on a
16:50space before it starts to get stale i love and find it so funny that tft came out right around
16:57the same time as legends of runeterra and is massively successful and so much i don't think
17:03riot does a good job of even explaining how successful tft is i think the one time was when
17:08i interviewed john needham and he said it was the biggest strategy game in the world that was a game
17:12that was uh you know what's the the iron man meme about like you know tody stark built this at a
17:17cave or whatever more donk was able to build this in a cave like that was essentially what tft did
17:24while project bacon or legends of runeterra was taking you know eight years or whatever to to
17:28build they were building that basically immediately with sticks and duct tape in the
17:33league of legends client when that genre took off and they ended up owning and claiming that genre
17:38when everybody else was trying to do the gold rush there so what is the current state of the game
17:42is it dead well not really the game has now shifted from its pvp focus to more of a roguelike
17:47deck building game but its systems were never a problem to start even if it wasn't your jam the
17:52lore within is still as full as ever and if anything the game has plenty of story rich
17:56elements for those interested in the setting hopefully even with the few players remaining
18:00and lowered support from riot overall the game can continue to slowly improve because even though
18:05legends of runeterra wasn't the next big thing it was enough but sometimes that doesn't cut it
18:11wow yeah what a what a video from akshon yeah um it's crazy it was a great game dude legends
18:19of runeterra is goated in my opinion uh best squad game i've personally played i got so addicted to
18:25it but again it's like yeah just didn't have the legs and sometimes i get we are theorizing in this
18:34video like what happened could they have done something different sometimes it just be like
18:39that sometimes things just fail and there's no actual reason that makes sense just bad timing
18:48all right let me know what you guys think if you played legends of runeterra this is
18:53broly signing off peace