Remember all the thinkpieces years back about the rise of the MOBA? The industry’s been through several bubbles since then, between survival sandboxes and battle royales. That’s gotta hurt those companies that staked their everything on the MOBA genre. It certainly seemed to take the wind out of League of Legends’ sails, as it’s maneuvered through several months in the last year when it was no longer the richest PC game in the world, at one point even being beaten by the likes of World of Warcraft (although it perked back up in April, according to SuperData). 2018 was a particular rough year as LoL’s incomes dropped a whole third from 2017.
Anyway, it looks Riot and Tencent are finally trying to do something about it, and no, it’s not a League of Legends MMO that the co-founder cruelly teased, debunked, teased again, and debunked again last summer right before the sexism scandal blew up. It does appear to be a League of Legends for mobile devices, however.
“One of the sources said Tencent and Riot have been working on a mobile version of League of Legends for more than a year, although a separate source said it was unlikely to be launched in 2019,” Reuters reported this morning, referring to the three sources it used to confirm and break the story about the existence of the game. The publication speculates that it’s likely to be more desirable in Asia than in the west, and we’re hard pressed to disagree.
