League of Legends has been the most successful esports game for a long time. We will show you where Riot Games started and how they created the most viewed game in the world.
Riots’ beginnings looked different than the glamour surrounding the LoL World Championships today may suggest. In 2006 Brandon “Ryze” Beck and Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill founded the company as indie developers.
Strongly inspired by the Warcraft III multiplayer mod Defense of the Ancients, more well-known as Dota, the team worked on their own version of a MOBA game until 2009. In contrast to most other games studios, the founders wanted to create the game while putting their focus on the players.
In October 2009 they released their first and to this day most successful game called League of Legends. The game should differ from the rest of the industry from the first day onwards. There was no singleplayer campaign because the devs saw the games’ future in competitive online play.
Also, the game was available for free and completely financed by microtransactions. No money in the World was supposed the influence the course of the matches though, so all the items were cosmetic only.
The concept aroused interest quickly: In 2009 Chinese tech giant Tencent invested $8 million in the project.
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The road to worldwide esports success
From only a few hundred players in Beta, the game and the developer team quickly grew in size. Because of the various bugs and mechanical problems that was an important step.
Looking back today, the game already had all the necessary ingredients for a successful future. The developers listened to the players. Even though there was no singleplayer, the champions were no generic fantasy characters but easy to differentiate from every other game.
Fun-fact: The founders’ nicknames Ryze and Tryndamere are also part of the game now. They named two of the champions after themselves.
The community grew organically from the core of long-standing fans of the genre and created the esports scene on its own. That scene started when the game did not even have a theater mode. Still, in 2011 the first World Championships started with a prize pool of nearly $100.000.
Only a year later the pros played for $2 Million already, a big milestone for the games’ esports history. Back then over eight million people watched the tournament. The Taipei Assassins could decide the final with 3-1 over Azubu Frost.
The second team even had to pay a $30.000 fine for using the spectator screen behind the player stage to gather information on the Taipei Assassins.
Dominance in the market and new projects
A lot has happened since then. In 2011 Tencent invested about $400 Million for a majority share in Riot Games, then bought the company completely in 2015. League of Legends has over 150 by now, starting with only 40. New patches are released biweekly.
The World Championships 2020 are held despite corona with a prize pool of $2.5 million without considering in-game sales. Last year over 100 million people watched the event with more than 44 million concurrent viewers.
And since last year Riot Games finally deserves the “s” in its name. In June 2019 they released Teamfight Tactics (TFT) as their second major videogame. Similar to LoL the auto battler was inspired by a popular fan-made mod called Dota Auto Chess.
Releasing a new IP
But that was not all: In the same time frame, they announced even more projects. One of them went by the name of Project A. Shooter fans know what hid behind that name: Their new shooter VALORANT.
Even Riot’s first shooter follows their recipe for success. Well-known and working ideas were adapted and realized with Riot’s own twist. VALORANT now is a mixture of CS:GO and Overwatch with a clear Riot influence.
Even though the game already gathered some of the biggest names in esports VALORANT still has to establish itself in the scene. The majority of the viewers seem to stick with Counter-Strike.
Besides VALORANT Riot released the digital card game Legends of Runeterra in June alongside two more ominous projects being announced. One of them is supposed two be a fighting game and the second one seems like a Diabloesque Hack’n’Slay.
Time will tell whether the new Riot games will be as successful as League of Legends. The first big VLAORANT tournaments have been announced recently and the game draws more and more attention. We are looking forward to many new esports goosebumps. Even though Riot could open up their tournaments to other organizers.
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