Riot Games plans big changes to the League of Legends item shop

Big changes are coming to the item shop, Riot Games announced through the latest edition of Dev Corner.

The item shop is going through a deep cleanup and will have a completely new look by the end of the year 2019.

According to the announcement shared on the Riot Games message boards, the developers behind League of Legends are looking to remove and rework existing items and add new ones. The idea behind the cleanup is to make the item shop more accessible for all players. At the time of this publication, the shop has over 120 items on offer.

The cleanup is targeting “unhealthy” items, meaning items that remove possible counterplay, items reducing or not adding impactful decisions to the game’s systems, items that are overly similar to one another, and low usage rate items.

Once some items are out, the developers will be able to include new and improved options. Developers are working on a new tower pushing item that can’t be abused as was the Banner of Command, an item that was removed in patch 8.12.

Riot is paying special attention to the items store in 2019. Most recently, the company reworked marksmen items that fell off the meta in 2018 and hot fixed support items that made for unhealthy strategies like the abuse of frostmancy.

“Our approach is to combo future item removals with item reworks or new items that often replace them in spirit and overall make for a more deep and satisfying item system in League of Legends,” said “Scruffy,” lead gameplay designer at Riot Games.

The announcement did not include a date for the changes, but the new items will be hitting the PBE server for testing “soon.”