League of Legends
League of Legends
All the ranked rewards changes coming to Wild Rift
Nicholas James
Riot Games has announced a ton of changes coming to Wild Rift in Patch 2.6. Alongside a deluge of skins, URF, new champions, and more, the way ranked and rewards for ranked play function is changing. Players will be able to claim skins and other rewards as a part of their ranked play. Glorious Skins are being made a bit more difficult for higher-ranked players to claim, but those who …
League of Legends
Wild Rift Patch 2.6 adds Kayle, Morgana, URF, and more
Nicholas James
League of Legends: Wild Rift Patch 2.6 is coming soon, and there’s a deluge of new champions and changes for fans to take in. Two new champions are getting added, with sisters Kayle and Morgana taking to the rift alongside the reworked Doctor Mundo. New items join the shop, more bans are being added to ranked play, and new rewards are being offered up. Patch 2.6 looks to be bringing …
League of Legends
Riot reveals Worlds 2021 viewership, and it smashed all records
Tokoni Uti
Worlds 2021 was already known to be the biggest event in esports history, but it wasn’t clear just how much bigger it was than anything else. Riot Games has announced that the 2021 World Championship final reached more than 73 million peak concurrent viewers, an increase of almost 30 million from the previous year. The exact peak reached 73,860,742 viewers, up from 46,067,896 in 2020, while the average minute audience …
League of Legends
Riot Games gives details on fighting game Project L
Nicholas James
Riot Games announced a swathe of new titles and projects in the League of Legends universe as a part of League of Legends’ 10th-anniversary celebration. One that grabbed fans’ attention was the 2D fighting game starring League of Legends. Today, after the last act of Arcane aired, Riot has continued their massive publicity train for RiotX Arcane by announcing details on Project L. In the video featuring Tom Cannon and …
Who are Mylo and Claggor in Arcane?
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Mylo and Claggor are two of Vander’s adopted children and members of Vi and Jinx’s childhood gang in the new animated series Arcane. As Undercity Nights winds on, more and more fans are turning their attention to the new characters in the animated show. While fans’ first time hearing them may have been in Arcane’s first act, clues have been laid about their existence for a while. From previous clues …
Most notable players still available in the LoL offseason
William Davis
League of Legends
The League of Legends offseason is currently in full swing but some significant players are still not rumored to be going anywhere and could potentially end without a team for 2022. The ongoing offseason is looking more competitive than ever from a player’s perspective, with many rookies looking to potentially enter the LEC and LCS next season. This means that there might not be room for everyone, forcing current players …
Here’s how Imagine Dragons’ Arcane theme ‘Enemy’ was made
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Riot Games has been going all out to promote Arcane and that isn’t slowing down any time soon. The latest example is a video highlighting the process of creating Imagine Dragons’ theme song for Arcane, the catchy track “Enemy” that was featured throughout Worlds 2021. The video puts into perspective the huge scale of Arcane’s production timeline, as well as giving some insights into the process of putting together a …
Vander may be an existing LoL champion, and we know who
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Riot’s animated series, Arcane, has taken the world by storm. The first act skyrocketed to the most viewed show on Netflix the day after its release, and it has peaked as the most-watched series in 38 different countries. As fans discuss the wild events of the first act, clues that have been in plain sight for years are pointing towards a secret origin story for one of League of Legends’ …
How to unlock Arcane Jinx, Jayce, Vi, and Caitlyn
Nicholas James
League of Legends
There are new skins coming to League of Legends as a part of the RiotX Arcane event celebrating Riot Games’ debut animated series, Arcane. The most iconic champions from Piltover and Zaun will all be getting twists that better represent their look in the animated series. The skins won’t be available all at once, but it’s pretty simple to collect each one. Here’s when each of the skins releases and …
How toxic is League of Legends? A new report has the answer
Nicholas James
League of Legends
League of Legends has garnered a reputation for a toxic in-game chat experience, so much so that the developer is removing the ability to communicate with opponents during a match. But a recent study on the topic found that toxicity in League of Legends may actually be decreasing, as hard as that may be for active players believe. Some other games have risen up to take the mantle of the …
Perkz and Alphari are reportedly joining Vitality for the 2022 season
William Davis
League of Legends
Team Vitality looks to be making some big moves in this offseason as the team is reportedly looking to sign Cloud9 mid laner Luka “Perkz” Perković and Team Liquid top laner Barney “Alphari” Morris. This was recently reported by the Spanish outlet Esportmaniacos, which states that the two LCS players will be brought back to the LEC next season to play under the French banners of Vitality. The signings would …
Is Fortnite getting a surprise League of Legends crossover?
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Dataminers looking into Fortnite seem to have discovered an upcoming collaboration between Epic Games and League of Legends developer Riot Games in order to promote Riot’s animated series, Arcane. According to the alleged leaks Piltover’s most chaotic criminal, Jinx, will be dropping from the Battle Bus and into Fortnite within the next week. Riot Games has been pulling out all the stops ahead of their nine-episode series debut November 6 …
These are all of Caitlyn’s new visual rework skins
Nicholas James
League of Legends
Riot has announced that Caitlyn will be receiving a full visual update to bring her up to date with the League of Legends’ modern design philosophies. With new animated series Arcane releasing in a week from today, Riot has confirmed the rumors of Caitlyn’s in-game model getting a rework with a new video highlighting a brand new theme and tons of concept art for her various skins. Caitlyn is one …
Riot Games announces Arcane skins for Jayce and Vi
Nicholas James
League of Legends
It’s full steam ahead on the Arcane hype train, with Riot Games’ animated series based on League of Legends set to premiere on November 6, the same day as the 2021 World Championship final. In line with the Piltover & Zaun-focused series, Riot has announced skins for some of the characters to be depicted in the series. The League of Legends developer took to Twitter to announce Arcane Edition skins …
This League of Legends bug prints near-infinite gold
Nicholas James
League of Legends
League of Legends is no stranger to game-breaking bugs of a wide variety. From Viego to Veigar there’s plenty of champions who can cause the game to glitch out and perform incorrectly. Vandiril, the most prolific bug-catcher for Riot’s MOBA, published a video highlighting a bug that allows characters to reach full build much faster than intended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShEeh3uVoJE&ab_channel=Vandiril In the video, Vandiril focuses on an NA player profile named Rusella. …
How much money do Faker, Tyler1, and imaqtpie make on Twitch?
William Davis
League of Legends
Ever wonder how much money the biggest League of Legends streamers take home? Twitch leaks have revealed the income of thousands of streamers. Several LoL icons appear in the top 1,000, including Tyler “tyler1” Steinkamp and Ashkan “TF Blade” Homayouni. The alleged leak includes Twitch payouts between August 2019 and October 2021 and purportedly includes subscriptions, bits, and ad revenue. It does not include any money from Patreon, esports prize …
League of Legends
is among the most popular widely-played video games in the world. It has been a consistent trendsetter in the gaming industry, whether as a model for other free-to-play titles looking to monetize their players or as a guiding light for how professional esports can be both successful and sustainable.
It hasn’t always been so though. League of Legends was released in 2009 as an uncertain new project, a game with large aspirations but little proven. In the years since, it has developed into the dominant title that it is today, and one of the biggest games on the planet.
League of Legends drives success of MOBA genre
League of Legends stands out in part because it may arguably be the very first original game released to truly fit into what we now understand to be the increasingly
popular MOBA genre. Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas are a very particular type of game genre that carry out competition between two opposing teams of players on a map. These games test a mix of competition, tactics, and quick reactions, a potent combination that has proven equal parts popular and durable over the years.
While League of Legends was certainly among the first full releases to focus on the genre and its new ideas, it wasn’t actually the origin point for any of it. That distinction belongs to
Blizzard release WarCraft 3,
and more specifically a modified game mode titled
Defense of the Ancients.
WarCraft 3 was a real-time strategy game that featured prominent hero units who could gain in power as they accrued experience points to level up their abilities, and gold to purchase powerful items. Defense of the Ancients was a
user-made game mode
which emphasized these heroes by giving each player control over one such character and teaming them up against an opposing squad of players. It was a dynamite success, inspiring myriad clones and, eventually, an entire genre of games.
But while League of Legends wasn’t the first to bring about these concepts, it was certainly
effective in executing on them. Early developers at publisher Riot Games had a clear idea of what they wanted to accomplish with the creation of League of Legends, and it would be hard to argue against their success given the runaway popularity achieved by their iteration on the MOBA formula.
LoL incorporates esports sustainably
Just as impressive as the long-term success of League of Legends as a game is the continued success of the title’s esports scene. While esports has known multiple peaks and valleys over the years, Riot Games has consistently managed to maintain the prominence of LoL esports. This has been accomplished through an emphasis on
regular regional play
and
sustainability.
Most esports and competitive games at the time used a circuits system, scattering major tournaments for the best teams across the year. Instead, Riot divided the world into separate playing regions. Each region has its own
competitive league
in which the best professional teams play weekly. The best teams in each league are then brought together for an
annual World Championship event
at the end of the competitive year. This allowed for domestic fan followings to develop across such regions as
Korea,
China,
Europe, and
North
and
South America. Fans would closely follow the teams in their region, and from that familiarity would feel invested in cheering them on when they clashed with teams from other regions at the game’s biggest international event.
This basic blueprint has continued to prove successful for Riot Games over the years, though it has expanded and been modified with time. In response to the success of the World Championship, Riot introduced a second international tournament in 2015, the prestigious
Mid-Season Invitational. In 2025,
First Stand
was added to bring LoL esports to three international events per year. Once again the scene was enhanced and this indirectly expanded the opportunities for
League of Legends esports betting. In the meantime, the regional leagues have spread out to include
more regions and lower levels, solidifying their identity.
The basic formula remains the same, however.
Encourage fan support on a domestic level, and then carry that support and interest over to
the global stage. It’s a formula that continues to power League of Legends esports, and looks set to enable it for many years yet to come.
At Win.gg, our coverage of LoL esports spans from the broader competitive updates and their impact on the scene to in-depth high-profile match previews with team analysis, head-to-head analysis,
LoL betting odds
sense-makers and predictions. All of these based on the insights of our experienced esports journalists.
League of Legends
League of Legends
League of Legends
League of Legends
