A new Bloomberg report says Riot Games is currently working on an update to League of Legends, known internally as League Next, that will be the biggest in the game’s history. The overhaul of League’s “visual aesthetic,” as Bloomberg put it, will impact characters, battle arenas, and the interface, and is aimed at making the game more welcoming for new players.League of Legends has a reputation for being rough on newcomers, which is probably inevitable for a game that’s been around for 16 years. To put that in perspective, you could’ve started playing before the Covid-19 pandemic hit and still be 10 years behind the real veterans.That’s a big hump to overcome, but Riot needs to surmount it: LoL is still one of the biggest and most successful videogames on the planet (the 2025 Worlds had a base prize pool of $5 million) but the existing player base is getting older and there aren’t a lot of newbies jumping in.The continued success of League is vital to Riot, because it’s struggled on other fronts: In early 2024 it laid off 530 employees and closed Riot Forge, the initiative it launched in 2019 to make singleplayer League of Legends games in partnership with external studios. The games that emerged from that program, including Ruined King, Mageseeker, Bandle Tale, Song of Nunu, and Convergence, were generally well received but failed to attract significant audiences.Another round of layoffs at Riot followed in October, as Riot co-founder Marc Merrill indicated that the studio was…
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