Generally, we’d advise you to take anything Riot’s Marc Merrill says about the Riot MMO with a grain of salt, as Merrill has a bit of a reputation for tweaking the nose of MMO players specifically about this title. But he did spend some time at DICE talking it up, according to fresh reporting.
Game File’s Stephen Totilo writes that Merrill told him that Riot is indeed still pursuing the MMO: “[I]t’s probably the project I personally spend the most time on as well,” Merrill says.
“I can go through all the laundry list of why it’s hard, but, you know, I think Riot’s exactly the type of company that should go after those types of opportunities, if we’re trying to make it better for the player. […] And with the League IP, we’ve been investing so much for so long, over time, sort of growing this world and adding dimensions. People want to run around the world of Runeterra. And so we want to help them do that, in ways that are worth it and meaningful to them.”
Apparently, he also joked about getting the game out before humans land on Mars. Yeah, a bit more nose-tweaking there.
As readers know, we’ve been keeping tabs on the so-called Riot MMO drama since 2018, though it wasn’t confirmed until 2020. Since then it’s lost multiple top devs, including Greg Street in 2023, compounded by company-wide layoffs in 2024 and new-new leadership that announced a reset of direction while taking the project “dark.” Just last week, another top director exited the project. In other words, there’s a reason we’re still skeptical and reporters are still asking questions like this of Merrill.
