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Riot Games issued an apology after the League of Legends 2023 Season Start cinematic “missed its mark.” It's safe to say nobody was happy about the release, even the developer-publisher.
League of Legends 2023 Season Start – The Brink of Infinity
The League of Legends Season 2023 “Cinematic,” titled The Brink of Infinity, dropped yesterday. It followed a butterfly flying through an impressively high quality render of Summoner's Rift, as a poem is being read in the background. The poem is creatively composed of different champion quotes, each line either a straight copy or a reference to a voiceline. Since its release, it has garnered over 1 million views but only 23 thousand upvotes.
Despite being referred to as a cinematic in the YouTube video, on Twitter it's officially called a “brand anthem” which is a more fitting name.
Fans were quick to reference the previous Season Start cinematics, especially last year's “The Call.”
It's not a good look, as some specific Rioters weren't too happy with the result. Senior VFX Artist Kevin “Sirhaian” Leroy tweeted out some less-than-happy tweets and images.
me rn https://t.co/R634XCCSR2
— Sirhaian (@Sirhaian) January 10, 2023
Sirhaian finished off with a message: “Just a reminder that all the individual Rioters I know always do everything that is humanly possible to serve players as best as possible, as often as possible.”
League of Legends Creative Director Chesney “Moose” Lattuga also chipped in, saying “every Rioter I work with tries their best to make sure that players are at the forefront of every single thing that we do.”
Riot Games Apology
Riot Games was certainly not happy with the backlash that they received and issued an apology via their official social media.
“A message from Riot about Season 2023:
We've launched a cinematic as a part of Season Start every year since 2018, and make no mistake: everyone on League knows how much you love them. So do we!
This year, there were some unprecedented circumstances that had us choose an alternate approach to the Season 2023 video. However, we believed it could still embody League's broad universe and competitive spirit while celebrating the start of a new season.
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But we’ve heard your feedback, and we want to acknowledge Brink of Infinity missed the mark for the action-packed, champion-led trailer you expected and has led to further speculation about our investment in League.
Honestly, we should have been more communicative, which might have helped with some of that feeling and speculation. We do believe that League has a bright future and we are investing in that, but we can do a better job of sharing those plans with you.
We are committed to giving you more details about what that investment looks like in the next couple of days.
We really appreciate your passion and feedback, and League's success wouldn't be possible without your dedication. Thank you.”
It seems all the community can do is to wait for when Riot decides to reveal what they have been working on behind the scenes. This isn't the first of Riot Games' mishaps on League of Legends, as they recently changed the LoL Esports schedule to make way for VALORANT.
Is League in Maintenance Mode?
This follows after the community has already been theorizing that less manpower is being allocated to League of Legends. In 2022, League received new game modes and had subpar events.
Riot Games Product Manager Ryan “Reav3” Mireles took to Reddit for his input. “The game modes team recently moved from PIE back to the gameplay initiative. We were re thinking the teams goals and mission back when [the most recent LoL pls videos] were recorded so didn’t want to discuss anything at that moment. We have since done that and should have an update on modes sometime early this year.”
He added another comment about the “rising sentiment” that League of Legends is being transitioned into Maintenance Mode, which is a term used for when live service games are being updated less and less.
“I mean I can understand why people would draw that conclusion, though I can assure you that we are not [placing LoL into Maintenance Mode]. Me saying it isn't going to convince anyone of that though. Like many companies we lost a lot of talent during Covid, where many people took the WFH situation as a opportunity to look for different paths in life. It was rough all around the industry and Riot was no different. It wasn't because Riot intentionally cut budget or scope for LoL. To put it more eloquently, shit happens.
Also we have been investing into so bigger things that won't ship for quite some time. But words won't change how people feel, and certainly this random reddit response won't either. The only thing that will change peoples opinion is when we ship content.”
