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League of Legends Dominion mode previewed on video
Perhaps our hefty preview of the upcoming Dominion mode in League of Legends wasn't enough. Honestly, for die-hard League of Legends fans, we doubt anything would be. With that in mind, check out a preview video put together by Riot itself. And yes, there is gameplay. So much gameplay.
League of Legends Dominion preview: The squared circle
League of Legends recently reached a total of 15 million registered players. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that all of those players have played their matches on just two different maps, one made specifically for Defense of the Ancients-style 5v5 play, and one made for 3v3 combat (there are a few other maps in the game, but they're used for training, not full game modes). That's about to change. Last week, Riot Games invited Joystiq over to its headquarters in Santa Monica, California, to see a brand new game mode for the online competitive title. It's coming along with what Senior Producer Travis George calls "the biggest update we've ever made for League of Legends," a new content release subtitled Dominion. Dominion is a brand new gametype and is especially notable because all of the games in the growing DotA (or MOBA) genre have basically used the same premise: two armies of minions fight with equal strength across a series of parallel lanes, and player champions fight minions and each other to gain ground and win the battle. Dominion, however, is a brand new set of rules, combining elements of the DotA genre with scoring, much more akin to EA's Battlefield games or Call of Duty's Domination mode.%Gallery-129944% p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 14.0px; font: 11.0px 'Lucida Grande'; color: #141414}
League of Legends boasts 15 million registered players
League of Legends has officially surpassed the 15 million player plateau. That means it's time for a smattering of silly stats from the marketing department to help illustrate just how large that number really is. In a new press release published this morning, Riot Games touts everything from its peak concurrency numbers (500,000), to its daily player totals (1.4 million), to the headline-grabbing registered players figure. While those numbers are quite impressive, Riot doesn't stop there. "An average of ten games of LoL start every second of every day," the company says, before adding that "gamers spend 3.7 million hours in-game [...] every day." The title's first season of competitive play is coming to a close, and Riot CEO Brandon Beck has a hearty thank you in store for the title's faithful. "We're committed to continuing to match their dedication with our relentless focus on ongoing enhancements to the player experience with great new features, content, and polish – and we have some very exciting surprises in store just around the corner," he says.
Riot CEO Brandon Beck on forging success with League of Legends
Riot Games has announced player numbers for its extremely popular League of Legends title, and they're pretty phenomenal. With over 15 million registered players, the Defense of the Ancients-style online multiplayer RTS can now brush shoulders with games like Blizzard's World of Warcraft (12 million players), Call of Duty (13 million players on Xbox Live), and The Sims (16 million copies sold), as one of the biggest PC games in history. Granted, as a free-to-play title that relies on microtransactions for revenue, League of Legends has more access to a wider audience than games driven by retail sales or subscriptions. But there's no question at all that this is a huge and exceptionally popular game. Joystiq got to talk with CEO and co-founder of Riot Brandon Beck about today's announcement, and he says that even the company was surprised by how big LoL (as it's called in shorthand) has gotten. "The growth of the League of Legends community far exceeded our expectations," he tells us. "We are proud of the numbers we are hitting on our platform and are confident our fantastic team can continue to grow and evolve our PvP.net technology to handle even greater numbers."
League of Legends surpasses 15M registered players, 1.4M play daily
Riot Games announced today that League of Legends has over 15 million registered players, with 3.6 million monthly active users and over 1.4 million playing daily. The company also revealed its peak concurrency (number of those LoLing at the same time) as over half a million players. This is the first time the company has publicly shared its user numbers since launching in October 2009. The League of Legends Season One Championship drew in over 1.69 million online viewers, with 210,000 checking in for the final match. Riot Games plans to expand LoL in 2011 to Southeast Asia and China, home of its parent company, Tencent. Riot also made headlines recently with the human acquisition of Mass Effect 2 lead gameplay designer Christina Norman, who has taken a lead designer role. Check out more coverage of today's announcement in our interview with Riot Games' CEO and co-founder, Brandon Beck.
Mass Effect gameplay lead Christina Norman now at Riot Games
Christina Norman, lead gameplay designer for Mass Effect 2, announced on Twitter today that she has taken a new Lead Designer position at League of Legends developer Riot Games. Last week, Norman announced that she was leaving BioWare and moving to Los Angeles, but didn't disclose the identity of her new employer until today. Preston Watamaniuk, Mass Effect series lead designer, will take Norman's place at BioWare. "I'm looking forward to working with Riot on innovative new approaches to game design and game development in the rapidly-changing video game market," Norman told Gamasutra. League of Legends and Riot are emblematic of these changes, as a free-to-play, microtransaction-based game developed by a company recently acquired by China's Tencent.
League of Legends splits European servers into two regions
Riot Games made the decision this week to split up its European server into two separate platforms in order to help out with lag and other issues. The company is now running both "EU West" and "EU Nordic and East" servers on the Old Continent, each offering League of Legends matches and services to their various regions. Feedback on the official forums is mostly positive (and the split should provide faster games to those on either of the new servers), though a lot of players seem concerned that there's another division between the two regions. You can read the full press release after the jump -- Riot says each server is designed to support "hundreds of thousands of concurrent players." Just between us, though, if they could send a little extra lag to Evelyn players, there'd be no problems with that.
League of Legends championship draws nearly 1.7 million viewers
With the League of Legends Season One Championship over and done with, Riot Games has announced that the event's live coverage drew more than 1.69 million viewers. The final match between team FNaticMSI and Against All Authority brought in 210,000 unique viewers by itself. We're not experts in eSports viewership, but that certainly sounds impressive. In case you missed the final matchup (spoiler: Against All Authority's nexus doesn't survive), you can watch a recording on the League of Legends championship website, which also features loads of other coverage, including full match recordings and highlights from each day of the tournament.
League of Legends shows off new champions, spectator mode at E3
Riot Games' League of Legends is one of the biggest free-to-play titles around -- it started off as a spiritual successor to the old Defense of the Ancients mod, but has since grown, strictly by word of mouth and organic growth, up into its own industry. Riot hasn't actually announced player numbers for the title yet, but this is a huge game online, consistently landing in the top spots on Xfire and other services' most-played lists. If you've never played (and why not? It's free!), the basic structure of the game has you controlling a champion on a real-time strategy-style battleground, and Riot has been releasing one of these new champions every few weeks for quite a while now. In the game's booth at E3 last week, we got to hear about three of the upcoming new champions, as well as brand new feature to the game designed to get even more players involved: A spectator mode.
The MMO Report: Scorpion Lobster Battle edition
Today's MMO Report is all about League of Legends, the amazing arena-based... what? Never mind -- Casey's not talking about League of Legends, just to spite "some guy." Well, there goes the whole show. I guess if you want to hear about how RIFT messed up its first ever event, then he might talk about that game. The newly announced class for The Secret World made the show. Somehow some silly race from Guild Wars 2 known as the Charr was good enough for Casey to cover. It seems the only redeeming factor of the show is a crazy Scorpion Lobster Battle sent in by a watcher. (Don't ask.) Anyway, if you really want to catch the latest episode of the MMO Report despite the lack of League of Legends talk, jump past the break or hop over to G4TV to see Casey Schreiner in his full high-def glory.
League of Legends Season One championship announced with $100,000 in prizes
For anyone who has ever wondered what the whole "league" part of League of Legends was referring to, Riot Games has announced the season one championship, which will be held at this year's Dreamhack Summer event in Sweden this June. The season one circuit will end on May 2, at which time Riot will choose the world's top eight teams (three from North America, three from Europe and two from South East Asia). These teams will be flown to the Dreamhack event and compete for three days beginning on June 18, culminating in the championship round on June 20. Riot hasn't specified exactly how much the winning team will walk away with, though there is a total of $100,000 in cash prizes up for grabs. And to think Mom said "those free internet games" wouldn't get you anywhere! Lest a flight to Sweden is a bit too much for your pocketbook to bear, the championship matches will be available via live streaming.
PSN, League of Legends charity initiatives bring in big sums
PSN users and League of Legends players have demonstrated the power of really easy participation in charity initiatives. From March 19 through March 31, the PSN charity drive, which allowed users to donate to the Red Cross directly from their PSN wallets (and get a special theme as thanks) raised ¥109.6 million ($1.3 million) worldwide for Japanese earthquake relief. Riot Games diverted 100 percent of the proceeds from sales of the discounted "Champion Akali" character and a special Nurse skin to charity from March 21 through March 27. As a result of this initiative, Riot raised over $160,000 for the Red Cross. Display those Nurse skins and PSN themes proudly! ("Display your nurse skin proudly" sounds really creepy out of context.)
Japan relief roundup: League of Legends and a special Final Fantasy Tactics
Companies, organizations and individuals connected to the games industry continue to come forward with offers of support for the ongoing rescue and relief operations in Japan. We'll be collecting the latest opportunities to lend a hand in end-of-day roundups like this one as they're announced. Head past the break for details on the today's happenings. If you'd prefer to donate to the efforts directly, you can always do so through the American Red Cross (www.redcross.org).
League of Legends adds Co-op vs. AI mode
Riot Games has announced that a new mode has been added to League of Legends. The new Co-op vs. AI mode allows players to team up against an opposing group of computer-controlled opponents. The mode features "newly overhauled" AI and two levels of difficulty, and still awards players with XP and IP (points used to make in-game purchases). Riot's Travis George promises the AI will "put up a fight" and will use "coordinated teamwork and advanced tactics." In case you don't believe him, Riot posted a video recap of a recent match played by its own staff, in which the people who made the game lost handily to their own creation. Find the video after the break.
Riot Games' Marc Merrill on the Tencent acquisition and the future of League of Legends
Last year's "focus," if you can assign such a thing to the Game Developers' Conference, was probably Zynga and its Facebook games, but for 2011, there was one company that kept getting brought up in the hallways and various panels in San Francisco: Riot Games. Not only did the makers of free-to-play MOBA League of Legends clean up at last year's GDC Online awards, but last week, the Riot booth was constantly surrounded with developers, all wanting to get in on one of the quickest-growing companies around. Riot President Marc Merrill kindly sat down to chat with Joystiq about the game and the company, and we talked about the recent acqusition by Chinese giant Tencent, why Riot is growing so fast, and what's next for the game affectionately dubbed LoL. And yes, LoL players, we asked about Magma Chamber and the Mac client.
Riot Games confirms Tencent majority buyout
Riot Games has confirmed that a majority of the company was bought by China's Tencent, putting its stamp of approval on rumors of the deal last week. Brandon Beck, Riot's CEO, is quoted as saying that "Tencent's investment will provide our talented team of designers, developers and community staff with additional resources to focus on innovating around League of Legends and launching new projects that push the boundaries in the gaming space." Financial Times has a nice analysis of the deal -- it sounds like this agreement will help both sides, as Riot will not only get that nice cash infusion of a rumored $350 million, but also invaluable assistance and insight for what it was already hoping would be a nice overseas adoption. And Tencent, of course, gets to lay claim to League of Legends and any other titles that Riot developers, along with the huge microtransaction-based revenues that go along with them, both here and eventually overseas. Plus, this is a sign of the growing trend of Eastern publishers picking up Western companies to develop content for the large audiences over there. Chinese publisher The9 recently bought another Blizzard spinoff, Red 5 Studios, for $15 million, and Japanese firm DeNA picked up iOS developer ngmoco for $400 million as well. Western audiences are big, but Eastern audiences are bigger and, as a result, there's high demand for well-developed games in that market.
Reports: Chinese online giant Tencent acquires majority stake in Riot Games
China's biggest Internet company, Tencent, has reportedly acquired a majority stake in Los Angeles-based Riot Games for the sum of $350 million. Tencent has already acquired a number of other Western properties, including Crytek's free-to-play FPS and Take-Two's NBA 2K Online, and also runs the QQ messaging service, boasting over 600 million-plus users. Riot makes League of Legends, the free-to-play DotA-style multiplayer title, and has said it will stay in Los Angeles and continue to "aggressively" hire through 2011. This deal likely won't affect the day-to-day of League of Legends (or any other titles Riot has under development), but given Tencent's contacts and assets in China, Riot will likely get a lot of help in spreading its games to players overseas. The transaction is still subject to regulatory measures, but is expected to close within 30 days.
World of StarCraft modder offered interview by Riot Games
Despite World of StarCraft mod creator Ryan Winzen having videos of his work removed from YouTube after Blizzard requested as much, the ingenious gentleman was offered a job by League of Legends developer Riot Games this past week. Pixelated Geek picked up on the back and forth in its own comment section between Winzen and a Riot Games employee identified as "epak", in which the Riot Games employee said, "Ryan, I'd like to speak with you about potentially working for Riotgames (League of Legends). You can contact me directly at [redacted] since I think you're awesome." The interview offer was confirmed by Riot Games design director "Zileas" on the developer's forums, where he notes, "I shot him [Ryan] an email recently asking if he was interested in exploring an opportunity here. As to what comes of that, who knows -- that depends on the mutual fit and his own goals." Mr. Winzen, for his part, is ecstatic. " I've waited my whole life for something like this. I feel like I'm in a dream man ... been up for 36 hours straight with all this craziness going on ... How did this even happen?" If you'll excuse us ... we've just ... there's something in our eye.
[Updated] Starcraft MMO modder wins the internet with a job offer from Riot Games
Modifying video games is nothing new. Most mods are overlooked by game developers because a good chunk of them are not malicious and the modders themselves aren't looking to break the game; they just want to improve it in some way. However, yesterday, we reported that a talented modder named Ryan created an MMO mod using the Starcraft II engine calling it World of Starcraft. Blizzard had the trailer for the mod pulled from YouTube citing copyright infringement, but no other contact was made. Ryan attempted to make contact with Blizzard regarding the issue, but was directed to another department leaving the issue unresolved for the moment. There is, however, a silver lining in all of this. The popularity and quality of the mod caught the attention of Riot Games, the creators of League of Legends. A developer from Riot contacted Ryan via Pixelated Geek offering him a job. This was later confirmed as an actual offer on the League of Legends official forums. Lead Designer Tod "Zileas" Cadwell said this: "When I see a modder with a lot of drive that has done something cool, I tend to contact them. I shot him an email recently asking if he was interested in exploring an opportunity here. As to what comes of that, who knows -- that depends on the mutual fit and his own goals." Cadwell believes the legal issues do not extend beyond the name of the mod, so it is very possible Ryan will be living out his dream as a game designer. Sometimes dreams do come true. [Update: We want to clarify that Riot Games is only talking with Ryan at this point, and no actual job offer is pending (despite previous reports).]
League of Legends admin fired after streaming misuse of power
Riot Games has fired a customer service representative who live-streamed his misuse of administrative powers during a League of Legends bout. VE3D reports the employee verbally abused a player and inappropriately banned him. Riot Games' community relations director Steve Mescon announced today the employee is no longer with the company and it will be reviewing internal policy and training procedures to "prevent such incidents from happening in the future." Another incident for the employee-related community relations nightmare file.
