A Riot Games executive has confirmed that the League of Legends MMO is still in the works but LoL fans shouldn’t necessarily expect the game, or even any official updates about it, at any point in the near future.
In 2019, Riot Games announced a slate of new games. While the most notable release from that crop to this point is Project A, which later became Valorant, there was also a slew of LoL spin-offs made internally by Riot and externally by other developers through the Riot Forge label. Flash forward to 2024 and the fanfare surrounding the reveals is shocking given how rough things have actually gone for these new efforts.
Following sweeping layoffs at Riot Games that led to multiple projects being canceled, many wondered if the LoL MMO had been shelved or nixed. After months of uncertainty, it’s been confirmed that the game is still in the works, but there’s an asterisk attached to it.
Is Riot Games still making a League of Legends MMO?
Riot Games confirmed that it is still developing a LoL MMO, but the project has undergone changes from what fans first saw.
Riot co-founder and chief product officer Marc Merrill gave a surprise update on Twitter discussing the fate of the game. He stated that it’s still in the works, but the team hit the reset button on development due to derivative gameplay.
“We don’t believe you all want an MMO that you’ve played before with a Runeterra coat of paint; to truly do justice to the potential of Runeterra and to meet the incredibly high expectations of players around the world, we need to do something that truly feels like a significant evolution of the genre,” he said.
As part of this, Merrill announced that EA Games and Bioware alum Fabrice Condominas is joining Riot as an executive producer for the game. Condominas previously worked on Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Dragon Age: Origins. He is not publicly credited with having worked on any MMO games.
What happened to the LoL MMO game?
On March 20, 2024, Riot Games’ CPO said the company is working on the League of Legends MMO but that it’s “going dark” when it comes to official updates for the foreseeable future.
Merrill stated that the game’s development was restarted “some time” prior but did not specify how far into development the current iteration is. The game is evidently a long-term investment for Riot, as Merrill stated that updates might not come for “several years.”
Reaction to the announcement was one of disappointment and skepticism. While Valorant has been a smashing success, that 2019 Riot Games update video has largely been defined by the breaking of a promise that players can “count on Riot to support [players’] needs with a strong, long-term mindset.”
Digital card game Legends of Runeterra is effectively being sunsetted, the fighting game spin-off still hasn’t been released, League of Legends: Wild Rift hasn’t taken over the mobile MOBA space, Riot Forge has been shut down, and LoL esports is struggling with controversy and reportedly slashed budgets.
League of Legends is still rolling, releasing new champions, and repackaging existing ones with VGUs but there’s never any shortage of frustration among the fandom. The game’s player count is still likely high, but there are signs it’s on a downswing and not just because the game is supporting fewer platforms.
Though the wait will be long for LoL fans who want a new MMO, this is still a positive development in many ways. This hasn’t joined other games in the graveyard, nor is it in an apparent limbo like the LoL-themed action RPG that got leaked in 2023.
