League of Legend Dev Responds to Greed Accusations

StewShearerOld

Geekdad News Writer
Jan 5, 2013
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League of Legend Dev Responds to Greed Accusations



According to president Marc Merrill, Riot Games success is a result of careful investment in a "really fun game."

There are parties in the game industry that you could probably brand as being greedy with some degree of fairness. We're not going to name names, of course, but such companies do exist. According to president/cofounder Marc Merrill however, Riot Games isn't one of them. Commenting on a recent <a href=http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1u35tu/are_we_going_to_get_a_new_client_for_season_4/cee9zns>Reddit thread, Merrill offered a heated defense of his company after accusations of greed arose.

"It's pretty frustrating when people try to position us as greedy," he said. "Millions upon millions of our players spend zero dollars on league and enjoy it endlessly. We're COMPLETELY OK with this. Greedy how? You do not have to spend money, it is completely opt-in." Merrill also reminded those in the thread about the millions spent by the company "building a pro-esports scene to help some of our best players become global superstars." According to Merrill, Riot earned its success "by building a really fun game, constantly investing over and over to grow and improve this game and by NOT selling power or being money hungry."

It's kind of hard not to agree when he puts it like that. That being said, even if Riot did make its decisions based primarily on its fiscal fortunes, we're not sure it would be deserving of criticism even then. Setting aside obviously important things like workmanship and artistic vision, videogames are still a business. The very existence of games like League of Legends depends on their ability to earn money for the people that make them. We aren't advocating for flat out <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/8626-The-Wolf-of-Wall-Street>Wolf of Wall Street exploitation, of course, but it's kind of silly to get mad at a company for earning money off of a product they make and you enjoy.

Source: <a href=http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1u35tu/are_we_going_to_get_a_new_client_for_season_4/cee9zns>Reddit


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Eri

The Light of Dawn
Feb 21, 2009
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Really if you have any amount of wealth people are going to call you greedy. Company or individual.
 

SomeLameStuff

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Apr 26, 2009
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I think those claims stem from their heroes being pay-to-play. Dota 2 doesn't do that, and I think Heroes of Newerth has moved away from that too (I'm not totally sure. I'm on the Garena servers which charges extra for EVERYTHING.)
 

Fat Hippo

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League of Legends is the only free-to-play game I have ever played for any large amount of time, precisely because it contains no trace of pay-to-win or any of the other crappy business practices other companies have employed in similar situations. If anything, Riot should be lauded for the restraint it has thus far shown. I have never once felt the need to spend money on the game, despite the many hours I have spent, and whether I'm competitive or not depends solely on my skill.
 

balfore

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Nov 9, 2006
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I've played the game since early release and I didn't buy anything from the store for almost two years. The lack of pay to win in the game got me excited for the free to play game, and I eventually felt like financially supporting a company that gave me a game I dumped so much time into for free.
 

shintakie10

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Sep 3, 2008
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Greedy? Nah. You can get away without payin a cent unless you really really want some skins and even those are reasonably priced. There are far far greedier things than chargin a couple bucks for a low resolution texture change. MWO devs, PS2 devs, SWTOR devs? Now those are some greedy mofos that will gladly bleed their playerbase dry.

Douchey as all hell though? Absofuckinlutely.
 

dumbseizure

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Mar 15, 2009
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SomeLameStuff said:
I think those claims stem from their heroes being pay-to-play. Dota 2 doesn't do that, and I think Heroes of Newerth has moved away from that too (I'm not totally sure. I'm on the Garena servers which charges extra for EVERYTHING.)
But they aren't pay to play, you earn IP from playing games and can buy heroes with that IP.

I never understood that argument, because they aren't exclusively pay to play.
 

Hoplon

Jabbering Fool
Mar 31, 2010
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shintakie10 said:
Greedy? Nah. You can get away without payin a cent unless you really really want some skins and even those are reasonably priced. There are far far greedier things than chargin a couple bucks for a low resolution texture change. MWO devs, PS2 devs, SWTOR devs? Now those are some greedy mofos that will gladly bleed their playerbase dry.

Douchey as all hell though? Absofuckinlutely.
Wow, someone has never play a Perfect world game, in STO new ship models are as much as $25 and the decent loot in locked in crates that are a dollar each to open, EA's Stores seem cheap by comparison.
 

SomeLameStuff

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Apr 26, 2009
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dumbseizure said:
SomeLameStuff said:
I think those claims stem from their heroes being pay-to-play. Dota 2 doesn't do that, and I think Heroes of Newerth has moved away from that too (I'm not totally sure. I'm on the Garena servers which charges extra for EVERYTHING.)
But they aren't pay to play, you earn IP from playing games and can buy heroes with that IP.

I never understood that argument, because they aren't exclusively pay to play.
The heroes are still expensive as all heck with IP though. Like, 6300 for the new ones? And you get about 100 IP per game I think.
 

shintakie10

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Sep 3, 2008
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Hoplon said:
shintakie10 said:
Greedy? Nah. You can get away without payin a cent unless you really really want some skins and even those are reasonably priced. There are far far greedier things than chargin a couple bucks for a low resolution texture change. MWO devs, PS2 devs, SWTOR devs? Now those are some greedy mofos that will gladly bleed their playerbase dry.

Douchey as all hell though? Absofuckinlutely.
Wow, someone has never play a Perfect world game, in STO new ship models are as much as $25 and the decent loot in locked in crates that are a dollar each to open, EA's Stores seem cheap by comparison.
It takes about an hour a day for a month or so to buy the best ships in STO. On top of that, the 25 dollars is the most expensive ships there are (not includin bundles obviously). The keys you can buy about 1 a day as well at current rates. Perfect World games have the absolute best F2P business model of them all because of the simple fact that you can buy literally everythin in game with in game money and its not a gigantic fuck you grind to do so.
 

dumbseizure

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Mar 15, 2009
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SomeLameStuff said:
dumbseizure said:
SomeLameStuff said:
I think those claims stem from their heroes being pay-to-play. Dota 2 doesn't do that, and I think Heroes of Newerth has moved away from that too (I'm not totally sure. I'm on the Garena servers which charges extra for EVERYTHING.)
But they aren't pay to play, you earn IP from playing games and can buy heroes with that IP.

I never understood that argument, because they aren't exclusively pay to play.
The heroes are still expensive as all heck with IP though. Like, 6300 for the new ones? And you get about 100 IP per game I think.
200+ if your get first win of the day, but that doesn't make the "pay to play" stance any more true, you can still get all the champions for free.

Hell I know someone myself who hasn't spent a cent yet owns all but 3 of the champions.
 

Fappy

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Jan 4, 2010
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It's been awhile since I have used the term myself, but I feel it is warranted: entitlement.

Riot is a business and is up-front about how its F2P model works. They don't sell power and everything that isn't an optional skin or a banner can be earned through free gameplay. Entitled little brats are being entitled.

I hate people sometimes.
 

Cecilo

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Nov 18, 2011
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Though some people will argue that for the first week or three after a new champion's release, they do sell power, they jack up the price of that new champion for IP only, RP stays the same as the other 6300 champions, but it goes up to. 7300 (Might be a bit more, I forget).

Though if those champions are OP at release and later scaled down, or just people aren't used to them or their skills is part of the greater question.
 

Sniper Team 4

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Apr 28, 2010
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Eri said:
Really if you have any amount of wealth people are going to call you greedy. Company or individual.
So true. And if you try to donate it, give it away, or something noble like that, people will think you're trying to cover something up and get even more suspicious of you. It's rather funny and a little sad.

The guys over at League of Legends seem to have figured out how to run their business very well. Keep the customer happy and the customer will keep coming back.
 

shintakie10

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Sep 3, 2008
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dumbseizure said:
SomeLameStuff said:
dumbseizure said:
SomeLameStuff said:
I think those claims stem from their heroes being pay-to-play. Dota 2 doesn't do that, and I think Heroes of Newerth has moved away from that too (I'm not totally sure. I'm on the Garena servers which charges extra for EVERYTHING.)
But they aren't pay to play, you earn IP from playing games and can buy heroes with that IP.

I never understood that argument, because they aren't exclusively pay to play.
The heroes are still expensive as all heck with IP though. Like, 6300 for the new ones? And you get about 100 IP per game I think.
200+ if your get first win of the day, but that doesn't make the "pay to play" stance any more true, you can still get all the champions for free.

Hell I know someone myself who hasn't spent a cent yet owns all but 3 of the champions.
My only real annoyance with LoL's model is that its grindy as all hell and older champions dont ever seem to go down in prices in anythin remotely resemblin a reasonable time period. Considerin how there's not supposed to be tiered characters and the only difference between a new character and an old character is that new character smell, it feels meh that only the oldest of old champions are actually cheap.
 

SecondPrize

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Mar 12, 2012
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I dunno, their behavior has changed a lot since tencent purchased them. They used to be pretty cool with pricing and champion sales affecting IP prices but there's some merit to an argument that raising their prices for stuff, changing sales so the discount only applies to the currency you don't earn in game as well as reducing the rate you gain the in game currency isn't exactly generous. They may not be greedy, but they're greedier than they used to be.
 

Qvar

OBJECTION!
Aug 25, 2013
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shintakie10 said:
My only real annoyance with LoL's model is that its grindy as all hell and older champions dont ever seem to go down in prices in anythin remotely resemblin a reasonable time period. Considerin how there's not supposed to be tiered characters and the only difference between a new character and an old character is that new character smell, it feels meh that only the oldest of old champions are actually cheap.

Then you must be the new guy around. Most of the 3100 champions were 6300 last year at season 2.
 

Mitzeh

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Dec 26, 2009
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Cecilo said:
Though some people will argue that for the first week or three after a new champion's release, they do sell power, they jack up the price of that new champion for IP only, RP stays the same as the other 6300 champions, but it goes up to. 7300 (Might be a bit more, I forget).

Though if those champions are OP at release and later scaled down, or just people aren't used to them or their skills is part of the greater question.
Champions are 7800 at release and then go down to 6300 after a week. This is to let Riot fine tune it a bit, the Beta Server environment is different than that of the normal servers, so they can't really test each champion to 100% and be sure it's completely perfectly balanced. But that does not make that champion overpowered. Take Lucian's release for example, he was utterly useless on release. And the ones that looks and feel stronger than others on release are that way mostly due to people not knowing how to counter them yet.
And every time a new champion comes out, older ones go down in price.
All this being said, I do agree that they need to fix the IP gain as it is a bit low at the moment. It feels like it took a lot less time to get IP for a champion in season 1 than it does now. But hey, Season 4 is just around the corner, and Riot seem to have big plans for it, so all we have to do is be patient. They have always listened to their community, with enough feedback things can and will change.
 

DrOswald

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Apr 22, 2011
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SomeLameStuff said:
dumbseizure said:
SomeLameStuff said:
I think those claims stem from their heroes being pay-to-play. Dota 2 doesn't do that, and I think Heroes of Newerth has moved away from that too (I'm not totally sure. I'm on the Garena servers which charges extra for EVERYTHING.)
But they aren't pay to play, you earn IP from playing games and can buy heroes with that IP.

I never understood that argument, because they aren't exclusively pay to play.
The heroes are still expensive as all heck with IP though. Like, 6300 for the new ones? And you get about 100 IP per game I think.
I personally have never purchase a hero with RP, and I am sitting on 20000 IP because there are no champions I want to buy right now. They give you plenty of IP to build up a good variety of champions fairly quickly. And they have their weekly champion rotation. Heck, one of my friends rarely buys champions with RP (he spends it on skins) and he owns all but 8 of the champions.