World Championship League of Legends

League of Legends World Championship

League of Legends is one of the most famous multiplayer games. It was released in 2007 and strongly resembled Dota. LoL began to be distributed for free, as the developers made a bet on generating revenue through the sale of in-game items. What’s interesting, initially Riot Games was against releasing the game with a Free-to-Play distribution model that would only have a multiplayer mode.

However, thanks to Chinese holding company Tencent, the misguided decision was avoided. The company first organised the promotion in China, and simply bought Riot Games in 2011. Apparently, it was done right, as already in 2017 League of Legends set a record, earning the company $2.1 billion in in-game buys. In 2020, the amount was also an impressive $1.75 billion. These are very important figures, as there is a constant unspoken competition between LoL and Dota 2 for the number of heroes and skins for them. At the moment ahead is League of Legends with its 140 champions. Dota 2 has 20 fewer heroes at the moment.

That’s not the only thing that makes LoL stand out from the competition. The fact that Tencent and Riot Games have done a much better job with the in-game component. The game has a much higher quality lore, character story and the world itself. There are numerous stories, comics and videos on the game available to fans of Linear. There is even a virtual music band K/DA consisting of League of Legends heroines and regularly releasing unusual music videos.

League of Legends World Cup

This was not enough for the developers, and in 2018 Riot Games became even more active in developing the League of Legends universe. Over the years, the company has managed to present fans with some interesting ideas:

  1. Multiplayer auto-chess game Teamfight Tactics.
  2. League of Legends: Wild Rift for mobile devices.
  3. The LoL universe collectible card game.
  4. The shooter game Valorant which is a direct competitor to CS:GO.

And that’s not all. The company constantly announces new projects in the League of Legends universe. Each such piece of news positively perceived by fans of the series.

Of course, with such active development of the universe, the emergence of tournaments with cash prizes was only a matter of time. Competitions on the League of Legends have been conducted as part of the legendary World Cyber Games. And since 2011 the League of Legends World Championship has been held. Initially, this tournament with a prize pool of 5-6.5 million dollars was one of the most “valuable”.

However, now with the emergence of The International and others, the LoL Championship ranks at the end of the top 10 in terms of prize money. But here we should consider the nuance that Riot Games pays good salaries to the best gamers, rather than trying, like Valve, to increase prize money at the expense of spectators.

In addition, there are other tournaments on League of Legends. Noteworthy among these are the Mid-Season Invitational series with a prize pool of 1-1.5 million dollars, LoL Pro League with a prize pool of 400-500 thousand dollars, and other regional competitions. In total, Riot Games has paid out more than $82 million in prize money for tournament wins over 12 years.