League of Legends developer Riot Games has confirmed it is working on a fighting game.
Riot spoke about the news after Tom Cannon, co-founder of the EVO fighting game esports event and game developer Radiant Entertainment (which was acquired by Riot back in 2016), revealed the info on stream.
“Back in 2016, when we joined forces with Riot, I said we were going to go in the hole for a while, right?” he said.
“I wanted to let people in on maybe the worst kept secret in the universe, which is that I can confirm we are working on a fighting game for Riot.”
Riot added in a statement sent to various news outlets: “Riot Games is excited to confirm that we’re developing a fighting game.
“We have experienced the profound impact this genre can have on players and want to bring the fighting game experience to more people.
“We’re working hard to create a game truly worthy of the vibrant fighting game community and are making progress, but still have a long way to go before we’re ready to share more details.”
“We’re working hard to create a game truly worthy of the vibrant fighting game community and are making progress, but still have a long way to go before we’re ready to share more details.”
Riot Games
The idea that fighting games can be brought to more people was also echoed by Tom, who said: “So, the reason why we did [now-canned free-to-play fighting game] Rising Thunder in the first place is that we felt that fighting games needed to be enjoyed by way more people. Like as big as things are, we think it has the potential to get bigger.”
Riot did not confirm whether or not the fighting game in development would be League of Legends-themed.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
