Most of the awaiting fans did not take the delay of the League of Legends: Wild Rift release lightly. The devs recently opened up about the backlash.
2020 is not turning out as great as many have hoped. Due to the global pandemic, many events and releases were derailed. This did not exclude Riot’s League of Legends: Wild Rift.
Many were expecting the mobile release of the well-loved League of Legends game sometime this year. Most especially when it has been over a year since it was announced.
However, after the latest dev update—about the regional open beta, fans found out that the game is not coming any time this year. In fact, services for the beta testing will just start to unveil for the Americas in spring next year.
Is the hype dead?
As previously reported, Riot is yet to kick off its testing phase in Europe, Taiwan, Oceania, and Vietnam in December. With testing still part of the calendar for next year, many fans think the hype for Wild Rift might be dead.
League of Legends has a very strong player base community. Having the game on mobile is actually just a bonus and those that are willing to try out another MOBA game on their smartphones are very much welcome.
LoL has been around since 2009 and it has been the home of many eSports events and pro-players. It is still a rising classic, just like Dota 2 and Call of Duty.
Many are actually upset that the game has been delayed to 2021 and they are asking the devs to “respect” them.
Nonetheless, many others have defended Riot. One fan expresses that those that play for the “hype” are not League fans.
https://twitter.com/strifewildrift/status/1317294361030242304
This is actually the opposite reaction that 343 Industries received previously. When they officially announced that Halo Infinite is held back to 2021. Accordingly, fans believed that if delaying the game will be what’s best for the title in the long-run, then they’d accept it.
Of course, they still received quite the backlash as well. Most especially when it was supposed to frontline the release of Xbox Series X/S this November.
The devs’ reaction to the backlash
Meanwhile, the Wild Rift devs have recently expressed their side, while reading fans’ comments.
Design Director Brian Feeney, who goes by the pen name “Feral Pony,” explained the reason behind announcing the game’s delay just recently.
In a tweet reply, he said:
“We only warned now because we kept pushing to release it in 2020 everywhere but that proved in the end to not be possible. I get that it sucks. It sucks for us too. We announced 2020 in 2019 and 2020 has turned out to be an terrible year to ship a game, esp one of this scale. :(“
Comms lead, Brian Forbes, also expressed his feelings over the fans’ comments, saying he was hurt.
Been looking through the feedback and the comments, thinking how to respond and I'll be honest – I'm pretty hurt by some of them. It's one thing to be disappointed, but the hate behind some of them is really tough to read.
— Ben Forbes (@draggles) October 16, 2020
He further expressed in a subsequent tweet that:
Please do not assume we’re rolling the game out this way because we don’t care. I’ve spent 7 years of my life advocating for players at Riot, and I will continue to do so – even when some of you are calling for my firing.
Keeping up with the original schedule has been very difficult, if not impossible, for game devs this year. In fact, CD Projekt Red has implemented a crunch time just to assure the release of Cyberpunk 2077.
Nevertheless, delaying the game as highlighted by the Halo fans is a good sign. This just goes to show that the devs are taking extra effort to assure that the game will be as smooth as it can be when it releases.
Featured image courtesy of League of Legends: Wild Rift/Twitter