Now with Arcane, Ruined King, and more planned League of Legends spin-offs on the way, Riot is building up an empire around its capital city. While Riot likes to say that it's mostly interested in doing its own thing in each of these genres, it's still competing against Blizzard and Valve, the most established names in PC gaming, and dethroning a game as popular as Hearthstone or CS:GO would be a seismic shift. Runeterra is also a blatant Hearthstone competitor. Legends of Runeterra expands LoL's lore while tapping into the popularity of free-to-play card games.Valorant tinkers with Counter-Strike's FPS purity.Teamfight Tactics has already outlived the flash-in-the-pan success of DOTA Autochess.In two-and-a-half years Riot has released Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, and Valorant, each laser targeted at a popular corner of PC gaming: That finally changed in 2019, and it changed dramatically. Meanwhile, it began to seem like Riot was never going to release a second game. In this moment, the trajectories of two of gaming's biggest companies have never been in greater contrast: Riot is crushing it, while Blizzard, one of the pillars of PC gaming since the mid '90s, seems to be falling apart.Īs Riot grew, Blizzard had some of its strongest years, releasing StarCraft 2, popular WoW expansions, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, and then Overwatch, a smash success that proved Blizzard could apply the polish and accessibility it was known for to a first-person shooter. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |