Legends of Runeterra CCG developer staff cut due to low sales

Against the backdrop of a reduction in the staff of Riot Games developers, the team responsible for supporting the TCG Legends of Runeterra spoke about the current state of affairs and shared plans for the future fate of the project.

The main reason for cutting the team was low sales and the team does not hide this fact. When developing the game and planning the monetization system, the developers set a goal: the player can get all the cards through play, and only cosmetic elements will be on sale. Players can buy emotes, cardbacks, avatars, and other small items. But, as it turned out, in some cases these cosmetics sold so poorly that they did not even recoup the costs of their creation. The community wanted to see something new on sale: animated avatars, more impressionable card designs, etc. But this would require technical improvements to the game, which would not pay off.

Discussions about adding paid card packs were discussed, but ultimately reached a dead end and yielded no results. In the future, more monetization will appear in the game and the developers promise to avoid thoughtless products in the premium store.

Perhaps a release in China would help the game, but for this, it is necessary to make many changes to the graphics and lore of the game to receive approval from the Chinese commission. After assessing all the risks, the team decided to abandon this idea.

Due to layoffs, the team is unable to fully support the game and has abandoned several content. This primarily affected PvP: the 2024 World Championship was canceled, financial support for third-party tournaments was stopped, and PvP seasons and rewards for them were also suspended. The ranking system will change, the details of which will be announced later.

At the moment, the team intends to reconsider its approach to supporting the game and focus on updating the PvE content, where players spend most of their time.

You can view the full version of the answers to community questions at the official website.