League of Legends fans have been left baffled after a recent datamine of upcoming PBE changes uncovered a surprising name change for one of Gragas’s abilities. The Rabble Rouser’s W, which sees the character drink from his beer barrel to become stronger, has had its name changed from “Drunken Rage” to “Raucous Rage” instead.
The tooltip for the ability has also been updated. While segments of it previously read: “Gragas guzzles down brew from his cask… after finishing his drink, becomes drunkenly empowered,” it now reads a bit classier, stating: “Gragas samples his brew… after finishing, becomes boisterous and belligerent.”
Put your pitchforks down and Sean Dyche memes away. While this might sound like “utter woke nonsense” and another version of the Graves cigar incident, it’s actually a very understandable case of Riot Games adhering to age rating guidelines.
Head of League Studio and Riot Games Senior Vice President, Riot Meddler took to BlueSky to explain: “For anyone wondering – We’ve made some updates to Gragas’ ability names to remove “Drunken” in order to stay compliant with age ratings across various regions. Feel free to pour one out for him, but don’t worry, he still enjoys his brews even if he’s being very slightly more discreet about it.”
Meddler then went onto Reddit to give additional context: “We’re not looking to change anything about Gragas as a character (who he is, how he acts, what he does etc). The use of the word “drunken” specifically has been flagged though. This is a European compliance thing, so affects a lot of languages which makes things more complicated. We’re also looking at exactly what does and doesn’t need to change in more detail and whether changes on PBE might be more than necessary.”
LoL’s age rating has always been important to Riot Games, it’s why the sex scene between Vi and Caitlyn in Arcane Season 2 was controversially cut down which led to over 46,000 fans signing a petition begging for the extended cut to be released.
In other news from the small PBE update, Ignite is getting buffed by scaling better from level 6 onwards though it will now also be weaker for the first few levels to balance things out.
In my seven years of esports writing, I’ve introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I’m most proud of the latter.
