The League of Legends-inspired series Arcane may be the most high-priced animated series ever produced, and unfortunately, despite great reception, it failed to recoup most of the money it spent. But apparently Riot doesn’t care much about this part.
Bloomberg reported that the amounts Netflix and Tencent paid Riot are less than half of the $250 million it cost to create the series. Bloomberg also found that four people familiar with Arcane’s development said Riot had no plan to recover lost revenue.
Despite Riot laying off 11% of its staff earlier this year, Riot co-founder Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill says they think Arcane has been a huge success:
“People who look at the world through a short-term, transactional, cynical lens really have a difficult time understanding Riot. It’s true with various people trying to claim that high-quality free games wouldn’t work, that esports would never work, that our music was crazy, and now they’re saying that Arcane wasn’t great and wasn’t worth it.
“These people think we make things like Arcane to sell skins, when in fact we sell skins to make things like Arcane. Riot is a mission-driven company where Rioters are constantly striving to make things better for themselves. That’s why we’ve done it successfully over and over again in many games and now in many companies/media – games, sports, music and animation. Are we doing everything right? No, but we are not focused on short-term profit-taking – we have been focused on delivering exceptional long-term value to our audience, time and time again, to be clear, Arcane has crushed players, and therefore us.”
Riot is renowned for its incredibly high-priced skins. Earlier this year, it released the $500 Ahri skin and later fired the artist responsible for it, and also announced a modern skin tier list just days after even more layoffs, meaning players have to roll the dice to get nicer ones skins. Considering how much money Arcane costs, it’s not all that surprising that Riot uses its whale skins to fund imaginative projects like TV shows.
But Arcane couldn’t have been that huge of a car accident. Riot recently confirmed that it is considering creating more League of Legends-inspired shows that will explore three modern regions: Noxus, Ionia, and Demacia. I think we’ll probably see Noxus next after Swain’s teaser at the end of Arcane’s final episode, but honestly, after the excellent quality of Arcane’s second season, I’d be content with just about anything.
