When it comes to League of Legends, fou🌸r-time world champion Faker is the best to ever do i♔t. He's so good, in fact, that he's become the first player inducted into Riot Games' new Hall of Legends, meant to honor some of the greatest players LoL has ever produced. Alongside that honor, however, is a new commemorative skin so🤪 expensive that players are planning to permaban the champion it belongs to.
The Signature Immortalized Legend Collection is the most expensive offering in a range of three different bundles. As well as cosmetics for two of Faker's best known characters, it com𒆙es with several other, smaller bonuses, many of which are entirely exclusive to the bundle. If you want all of those bonuses, however, you'll be shelling out a total of 59,620 Riot Points - League of Legends' premium in-game currency.
To put that in perspective, most skins cost 1,350 RP, which you can amass through a total of around $16 in spending. To amass the nearly 60,000 points you need for this bundle, by contrast, you'll be buying four of the biggest bundles, setting you back $100 each, plus another $50 bundle to make up the rest. That's a total cost of $450, making this far and away the most microtransaction Riot has ever offered - last year, pla෴yers were angered by a skin placed behind a $200 gacha system, and this more than doubles that price.
Unsurprisingly, the response has been pretty negative. There's obvious community reverence for Faker, but equally obvious frustration at Riot, 🌠with the discussing the cost at length, and high-p🐈rofile esports figures speaking out.
extremely disappointed that this whole concept that looked like a great way to celebrate players has now obviously turned into a massive cash grab500 dollars for a skin & 30% reꦕvenue 💫split is absolutely disgustingdoubt it'll change //t.co/zpQlmBd2Sk
Some players are even planning an in-game protest, a form of forced boycott of the skin. While no-one can stop anyone else from purchasing the cosmetic, they can attempt to stop them from using it. League of Legends' ranked matches utilize a pick-and-ban phase, and if your champion is banned before the start of a match, you have to use a different one. With that in mind, players are already planning a 🅠mass target-ban of Ahri from the skin's release date on June 12. If you can't play Faker's signature champion, you're not likely to have ꩲmuch luck trying to use the expensive new skin you bought for it.
I’m thinking we all com𒁏e together as a community and have ahri permanently banned so the people who spent $400 on a skin can’t play her //t.co/j64Krn4VAA
Riot does have an unfortunate habit of testing the waters with this kind of thing before walking it back when players make their displeasure know🦹n. Whether that happens here remains to be seen, but I'll be fascinated to see if the developer tries this again with its next Hall of Famer.
I don't think this bodes very well for the LoL MMO I'm looking forward to either, and I'm already pretty worried about that one.
I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you m🐈ight be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.
