Riot's League Of Legends MMO Going Dark For "Several Years" After Leadership And Direction Changes

For a while now, everyone’s been wondering about the status of Riot Games’ League of Legends MMORPG project. The whole thing’s been hush-hush and Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street left the project to pursue his own game. After that, we were left to speculate amongst ourselves. The good news is, the project is still alive. The bad news is it will likely be years (literally) before we get any more updates as the project is "going dark", likely for "several years."

In a series of tweets today, Riot Games’ CPO Marc Merrill discussed the state of the project. According to those tweets, there was a great deal of discussion internally about the direction of the game and some time ago, they decided to reset things.

The main factor in this decision was the fact that the original vision for the project was too much of the same. As he puts it, they didn’t believe we’d want “an MMO that [we’ve] played before with a Runeterra coat of paint”. Rather they wanted “something that truly feels like a significant evolution of the genre”.

(Magicman seems to think that a familiar-feeling, "Runeterra painted MMO" done well was EXACTLY want most of us wanted, but he digresses).

This change in direction isn’t a new thing that’s just happening. They started working on it over the past year, and they’ve already built the game’s foundation. This was done under the oversight of Vijay Thakkar, who will be the Technical Director going forward.

In addition, Merrill announces in the thread that Fabrice Condominas, who worked on projects at Riot as well as Bioware and EA, will become the game’s Executive Producer, filling Greg Street’s former role.

Excited and humbled to join this incredibly talented team and take on the huge responsibility of leading a game with such high expectations.
Developing an MMO is a monumental undertaking, and while I am eager to dive into the work, I am also mindful of the patience and… https://t.co/FKJhg7lPSR

— Fabrice Condominas (@Faburisu) March 20, 2024

Condominas and Street both shared statements of their own on Twitter. Condominas shared a short post stating his excitement to be working on the League of Legends MMO and with the team. Street shared tweets wishing the project well and explaining his own reasoning for no longer being part of the project.

Excited and humbled to join this incredibly talented team and take on the huge responsibility of leading a game with such high expectations.
Developing an MMO is a monumental undertaking, and while I am eager to dive into the work, I am also mindful of the patience and… https://t.co/FKJhg7lPSR

— Fabrice Condominas (@Faburisu) March 20, 2024

I wish the Riot MMO well. They have a great world to explore and the team is truly top notch. I will definitely play the crap out of it.

— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) March 20, 2024