Riot Games Vice President of IP and Entertainment, Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street, has confirmed via Twitter that a League of Legends MMO is in the works.
Yesterday, Ghostcrawler tweeted that a “big (some might say massive) game” is in the works and that Riot Games is hiring for this new project. The former Blizzard Entertainment employee later confirmed that the project is an MMO linked to the League of Legends universe.
No other info was given beyond the tweet itself which didn’t come with anything like a teaser trailer, concept art, or even a press release. Various publications including PCGamesN reached out to Riot Games, who confirmed that the MMO is indeed on its way.
Ghostcrawler was formerly employed at Blizzard as a Lead Systems Designer on World of Warcraft, with this experience almost certainly going to inform the direction the League MMO heads in.
For years, fans have called for the world of Runeterra to be expanded upon, especially with various rewrites of League of Legends lore resulting in a generally confusing mess of text from various sources beyond the game itself. An MMO seemed like the perfect way to do so, with the calls finally being answered now.
It had been a running meme for years that it seemed weird for Riot Games to call itself as such when it had only made League of Legends. But with auto battler Teamfight Tactics, card game Legends of Runeterra, mobile-based League of Legends: Wild Rift, and non-Runeterra shooter VALORANT now part of the company’s portfolio, it is finally living up to its own name.
I have news!
My recent job at Riot has been to help develop the League universe, which we’re going to need!
Because it is time. My new job is to kick off a big (some might say massive) game that many of you, and many Rioters, have been asking us to create.
PS We’re hiring
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 18, 2020
It is an MMO
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 18, 2020
With the MMO just being announced, it is most likely several years before it comes out. Riot Games has several other projects in production. Ruined King: A League of Legends Story, a turn-based RPG, will release sometime early 2021 while Project L and Project F are in the works. The latter two are a fighting game and a hack-and-slash RPG respectively.
An animated TV series will also release next year. Titled Arcane, the series was intended to be released this year, but was delayed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, Riot Games could also just become a record label, having just released an EP featuring Kim Petras and TWICE.
