No less than the president of Riot Games, Marc Merrill, stepped up to the plate to defend his company on Reddit, following allegations that the company had become too greedy.
To place this in context, Redditors made this allegation in connection to the changes in League of Legends, Riot Games’ pet project. In particular, they noticed that the game’s microtransactions were starting to get more expensive, and they were placing new restrictions on refunds.
Merrill pushed back, explaining the efforts Riot took to make a free online game successful in the West, thanks to their focus on investing back into the game, providing a quality experience, and providing healthy support to the LOL community, including an ad-free TV show and investing in the esports community.
Merrill explains further that they have taken great pains to make the game an enjoyable experience even if you never spend a cent, betting on ‘premium’ users to invest in it. He also points out the differences in Riot Games’ philosophy to Zynga’s, placing profit and revenue metrics as secondary to engagement and value. Lastly, Merrill acknowledges the issue regarding LOL LPers late last year, and their quick reversal of said policy.
This greed issue was not even the main point of the Reddit; which originally discussed if they were going to get a new League of Legends client. Many had an ax to grind as a fan created client, Wintermint, which was demonstrated to use 80 % less memory than the official client, was itself axed by Riot. Merrill revealed that Riot has actually reached out to Wintermint’s dev, as well as the creators of other clients, and hope to work with and maybe even hire these people for the good of the community.
Riot Games is not a perfect company by any means, but they’re certainly better regarded in the community than many AAA developers. While I’m sure some observers see a scandal here, I think Merrill was justified in defending his company’s name, and I’m also sure Riot will continue to work towards ameliorating these criticisms they have received.
