League of Legends: Wild Rift is the mobile adaptation of long-standing esports sensation League of Legends (LoL). Built from scratch for mobile devices, Wild Rift brings classic game modes to touch screen devices with a fresh approach and a streamlined design.
Yet despite the game being well-made, Wild Rift has failed to create a scalable impact in western markets. Traditionally, MOBAs (Massive Online Battle Arenas) have struggled to accumulate the same level of success in western markets as they have in the East, even though some titles have sizable IPs behind them.
For further validation, we can look towards Pokémon Unite, another recent attempt at the genre. The game, which boasts an incredible IP and solid gameplay, boasts over 50M downloads and nearly $22M in revenue according to Sensor Tower (almost definitely lower than the team wanted), but the contrasting performance between regions is stark. For example, the game has only accumulated 6.3M downloads and $6.5M in revenue in the US since launch, leading to a revenue per download (RPD) of $1.03. In Japan, for contrast, the game garnered 2.8M downloads and $4.8M in revenue, leading to a RPD of $1.72 — approximately 70% higher on a per player basis. And the game didn’t launch in China, a region where MOBAs have traditionally excelled. Without being in strong MOBA-accepting markets, we’ve seen downloads dwindle and revenue fall from $2M+ per week to only about $200k. If you look at a game like Arena of Valor, the stark contrast between Western market performance and, in its case, China’s performance is similarly night and day.
Since its release in October 2020, the western version of Wild Rift has amassed $90M in global revenue (approx. $3-4M/month), which may appear impressive, especially after comparing to Pokémon Unite. Still, it is pretty underwhelming for one of gaming’s most significant IPs. Comparatively, the China version of the game has almost quadrupled this amount with an impressive $345M and a 12-month handicap. According to Sensor Tower, China alone makes up 72% of Wild Rift’s lifetime revenue. On one hand this is unsurprising — LoL is popular in China, mobile gaming is more popular in China, there’s more people in China, and mobile MOBAs are more popular — but with aspirations to diversify its audience and provide new avenues of play (and income), Riot’s Wild Rift would need significant gains to sustain and scale in Western markets.
However, for a moment, let’s separate the business results from the quality of the game itself. Let’s explore the systematic changes Riot Games made in adapting its classic IP for mobile, and then we’ll close with a note on how other aspiring MOBA developers should think about attacking the market.
These significant changes can be split into two core pillars – accessibility and convenience.
Accessibility
The game will feel familiar to fans of the LoL IP. Riot has focused on retaining the skill level that its audience expects; rather than leaning heavily on mechanical dexterity, Wild Rift places choices and decision-making at the forefront of skilled play.
There are quite a few systematic quality-of-life changes between Summoners Rift and Wild Rift that encourage players, new and old, to adopt complex mechanics in an accessible way. For example, some abilities have been altered to give the player more agency, which is otherwise lost by the lack of controls. Just take a look at the champion Ashe, which has an ultimate that fires an arrow across the map, dealing damage and stunning opponents on impact. The arrow’s movement cannot usually be manipulated on a PC, but with the loss of camera control, players can now guide the needle, making it much more mobile-friendly. It’s not a significant change from a gameplay point of view, but it’s a meaningful one in terms of making the game feel native to mobile.
By retaining core mechanics yet simplifying their usability for touch screens, the game has broken into a new market of MOBA players graduating from mobile midcore titles such as Brawl Stars and now looking for their next challenge. The barrier to entry has lowered while the possibilities for skilled play have been retained.
Ranked Play
Ranked play has undergone some changes, too. It is similar to LoL in many aspects; however, progression has been simplified with the introduction of ranked marks and fortitude.
Ranked progression works very similar to that in Arena of Valor — players earn one ranked mark for winning a game and lose a mark for every loss. Ranked marks are in effect for all but the highest and lowest ranks, and you’ll need anywhere from one mark to five marks to get promoted.
While this seems like a complex system to climb for players with a win rate of 50% or lower, players earn fortitude, which can help prevent you from losing a mark even if you lose a game, regardless of the match result. Fortitude is rewarded to players behaving as desired, i.e., maintaining win streaks, persevering despite an absent teammate, or simply playing well.
Essentially, ranked marks and fortitude act as a safety blanket for failure, temporarily protecting players who perform poorly due to a lack of understanding, skill, or stable connection.
Controls
Adapting control schemes will always be a significant uptake when moving from PC to Mobile. With significantly fewer controls and player agency over game setup (i.e., camera control), changes to how core elements such as Champions and abilities function are plentiful.
For example, as a response to the lack of agency that a mouse provides, players can now lock onto an opponent, which targets them with every base attack and ability that the player possesses.
This mechanical redesign is advantageous for players with an unstable connection or strong handle over the controls, meaning they can still positively impact the game and engage in PVP as desired, without the distraction of other PVP or PVE elements.
Abilities
Several small but meaningful changes have been made to champion (player avatar) abilities to make them more approachable for the platform. One of them includes ultimates.
Ultimate abilities become available at level 5 rather than 6. You can get into the core of a character’s fighting power much faster than on PC and engage in big team fights much earlier in the game. Particular abilities have also had their cooldowns lowered, again, with a focus on getting players into the meat of the action and causing chaos as fast as possible.
Systematic ability changes have primarily focused on creating short, regular gratification loops. And while abilities have undergone mechanical changes, these lean more towards strengthening accessibility.
Convenience
A large portion of the changes in gameplay are geared towards increasing the pace and reducing player downtime as much as possible with several modifications, i.e., making teleport an item and giving boots an active, getting players into the action as fast as possible. Items and abilities are faster to obtain, structures are weaker, and fewer defenses are standing guard between a team and victory. All the core fundamentals of LoL can be seen in Wild Rift; it’s just condensed.
Wild Rift keeps the game exciting with a focus on short 15-minute sessions, 50-62.5% lower than that on Summoners Rift (which comes in between 30-40 minutes). Essentially, Wild Rift offers the same fight but quicker.
The Map
As mentioned earlier, one of the most crucial recognizable changes between LoL and Wild Rift is in the session time, and a substantial contributor to this is the map. Although visually similar, several changes have been made to the map to keep up with the game’s pace. Wild Rift’s map is significantly smaller than its PC equivalent, meaning that:
- Combat is a more common occurrence, reducing downtime.
- Sessions are shorter and snappier.
Defenses have been significantly lowered when it comes to the end of the match showdown, meaning that although winning is more straightforward, the chances of comeback are reduced for losing teams. While this may be seen as punishment, keeping sessions short and manageable increases the likelihood of multi-match sessions, thus increasing both games per session and session times per player. With increased engagement commonly correlating with monetary gains, this will likely create a positive impact on Wild Rift’s revenue.
Boots
Boots (an in-game item used to increase movement speed) have been reworked, so in addition to offering passive bonuses, they all come with an active sprint that gives players a boost in movement speed for a limited time. This exciting quality-of-life change rewards players for intelligent decision-making, such as getting into (or away from) the action quicker.
Additionally, players can upgrade boots with an active ability from an item that would usually be a separate purchase. Enchants cost 500 Gold (approximately eight minions, two kills, three assists, or three towers) and encourage players to interact simply with active items, educating them on the mechanics regularly used throughout the game and facilitating skilled play.
Wild Rift enables significant choices at a low cost, meaning they’ll happen regularly.
Gold Generation
Wild Rift is much more fast-paced than LoL because of systematic changes such as boots and map size. There are more kills and action due to the speed with which players can get into the lane and a lack of precision.
Riot wants players in action more than killing minions, and one way it’s shown this is in players earning Gold from minions (small AI creatures on the map). In Wild Rift, players are rewarded Gold for being near a killed minion, and if they get the final hit on it, they earn a bonus. Traditionally, players would have had to get the final blow on a minion to gain any reward.
This change provides a more accessible and playable approach for players with unstable connections while retaining a skill element to PVE. This presents a tradeoff — while items in Wild Rift will cost more than LoL players are used to, Gold is easier to acquire.
Key Takeaways
Wild Rift is a refined, polished example of a mobile-native LoL that has made exciting strides towards accessibility and hasn’t sacrificed skill. The focus on accessibility and convenience offers plenty of opportunities for new players to practice without punishment and adapt to the complex genre while still feeling like a homage to the core experience.
Unfortunately, it’s a fact that mobile MOBAs, even great ones, have a hard time in the West. The game’s total revenue is half that of its eastern counterpart, and RPD is only $1.58 in the West, despite being out for over two years. As we see with both Wild Rift and Pokémon Unite, the two most recent examples, having great gameplay and killer IP simply isn’t enough. If Riot can’t nail it at scale, other teams will surely struggle too. Therefore, if other Western teams want to build MOBAs, these examples should discourage them from taking the same more traditional approach.
Instead, if a studio hopes to create a MOBA in the West with a sizable revenue and a scalable long-tail, the team should look towards crafting a cross-genre approach rather than a traditional MOBA — thus capturing strengths from several areas of the market. Brawl Stars is probably the best example so far, which brings MOBA systems together in a casual, polished Supercell way. But there are other more casual influences that are worth exploring as well.
Al the criticism aside, Wild Rift is still successful enough — especially when counting China — to be worth reinvesting in for the long-run, and it’s a solid step for a team who’s primary skillset has been PC-oriented. Although the game remains far less lucrative than Honor of Kings (or Arena of Valor, as it’s known in the West), it’s still performing better than the likes of other contenders like Pokemon Go.
Riot Games will continue to push for audience and LTV expansion too — such as what we see with their new partnership with Xbox Gamepass. This is unlikely to impact Wild Rift much at all, but it’s clear that the team continues to think hard about audience expansion, improved economics, and is focused on the long-term success of their key franchises. We’re excited to see what’s next, both in terms of Wild Rift specifically and mobile MOBAs more generally. Can someone else crack the MOBA code in a new way? Only time will tell.
A big thanks to Becky Matthew for writing this essay. If Naavik can be of help as you build or fund games, please reach out.
