Riot Games, renowned in the industry for free-to-play titles like League of Legends and VALORANT, is seriously considering breaking away from its long-standing business model by releasing premium, buy-to-play games. This news was revealed by Riot's co-founders during their 20th-anniversary panel at PAX West and in subsequent interviews.
During a fireside chat at PAX West, Marc Merrill, Riot's Chief Product Officer, stated that there is no strategic mandate within the company requiring "every game to be free-to-play." He frankly said, "We are developing some non-free-to-play games." He emphasized that whatever business model is ultimately adopted must align with the game's vision.
In a subsequent interview, Merrill further elaborated on this statement: "Not every game needs to be a live-service title." He pointed out that the free-to-play model is well-suited for games requiring long-term operations and continuous player engagement—such as those monetizing through extensive skin sales. However, in many other genres, the free-to-play model can pose design challenges and potentially compromise the integrity of the experience.
Riot has achieved tremendous success in the free-to-play sector, but the market landscape has changed significantly. Merrill admitted that players now face an unprecedented abundance of choices—not only are hundreds of new games released weekly, but nearly infinite social media content is also vying for user attention.
"We are competing for people's time and attention, and the barrier to entry is incredibly high." He explained using the recently canceled fighting game 2XKO as an example, noting that unless a title is "incredible," it is difficult to build a player community large enough to ensure long-term sustainability. "Unfortunately, 2XKO did not achieve this."
Riot is not inexperienced with premium games. Its previously launched publishing label, Riot Forge, released several paid titles, but the initiative was discontinued in 2024, coinciding with layoffs of 530 employees. Notably, however, Riot Forge games were developed by external studios rather than Riot's internal teams.
Merrill stated that the original intent behind Riot Forge was to "acquire new customers through storytelling." However, the truly effective method for customer acquisition was the League of Legends universe animated series, Arcane. "We didn't make Arcane to acquire new users; that was a natural result of doing something well."
He revealed that Riot's future strategy is to focus on titles that are "truly excellent and truly distinctive." When discussing the unannounced MMORPG, he even described it as the "holy grail," implying that its development is extremely challenging.