Riot Games has opened a one-off Hextech Expo storefront in London’s Oxford Street, as it goes big with its marketing for its animated Netflix series, Arcane.
The London building is on the corner of Oxford Street and Great Titchfield St. For now it seems this is not an actual shop you can enter – rather it’s part of some a marketing activity that may change after Arcane launches on Netflix in the UK from November 7th 2021.
(Update – the store has now been ‘vandalised’ as of November 10th):
London is one of six cities containing a Hextech Expo storefront, ‘bringing the technological advances of Arcane’s Piltover city into the real world’, with other cities including Paris (whose Hextech Expo store has been ‘vandalised’ as of November 8th), Madrid, Istanbul, Singapore and Los Angeles as part of a connected experience for fans.
Piltover is known as the City of Progress within Arcane and League of Legends, and ‘has harnessed the power of magic, through Hextech, to create a treasure trove of immensely powerful, barely believable, and intensely desired tech that would wreak chaos in the wrong hands’.
“I don’t want to jinx it. But we’re confident our new stores will shatter any preconceptions fans have about Hextech – we’re super, mega excited about what’s to come at the end of each location.”
Riot Games spokesperson
Ahead of opening night, visitors to each Hextech Expo location will be able to preview and interact with ‘amazing Hextech technology’ in the window displays.
Riot has also overtaken the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building in Dubai, plus it has apparently organised some Arcane activity in New York as well.
A Riot Games spokesperson said: “I don’t want to jinx it. But we’re confident our new stores will shatter any preconceptions fans have about Hextech – we’re super, mega excited about what’s to come at the end of each location.”
The quote of course implies that League of Legends character Jinx may make some kind of appearance or impact on the Hextech Expo stores. Super Mega Death Rocket is Jinx’s ultimate ability in League of Legends.
Jinx is also being added to PUBG Mobile and Fortnite.
They have a interactive game you can play pic.twitter.com/m7k901Z7Qn
— SkinSpotlights (@SkinSpotlights) November 6, 2021
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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.
