Riot, the developer behind the free-to-play MOBA League of Legends has announced that it will be raising the price of its in-game microtransaction currency – Riot Points (RP) – for players in the UK by 20%. The RP currency is used to purchase skins, champions, and other in-game items.
In its announcement, Riot described the reasoning behind this adjustment:
The value of pound sterling fell dramatically following the EU referendum last June. We constantly review RP pricing globally so every player is spending roughly the same amount of money to get the same amount of RP. This change threw that out of whack, so we decided to make an adjustment.
This change comes into effect on July 25 at 11:59pm BST; Riot has also reassured players that the cost of champions, skins, and other in-game items will not be gouged after the RP price is adjusted, meaning that items will cost the same amount of RP that they did before the change. Therefore, it may be a sound idea to purchase RP now, at a cheaper price, at least for active players.
In addition, Riot is also getting rid of the £2.50 tier altogether, claiming that too few players were interested in buying it. Instead, there is now a £15 tier which the developer says is “the best way to get RP if you have none already and decide you want to buy a legendary skin.”
Here’s the list of old and new prices:
| Price Tier | Old | New |
|---|---|---|
| £5 | 975 | 790 |
| £10 | 2075 | 1650 |
| £15 | - | 2525 |
| £20 | 4200 | 3350 |
| £35 | 7450 | 5950 |
| £50 | 10700 | 8600 |
With the new prices, Riot says that "whenever a player in the UK buys RP from 25th July onwards, they will receive roughly the same amount that they would get if they exchanged their money into dollars and bought RP in North America."
It"s clear that the UK"s initiation of exiting the European Union has introduced uncertainty, but Riot says that it will continue to monitor the currency fluctuations globally, and will revise its prices accordingly. As for why the developer waited this long to implement this adjustment, the answer is quite simple – it hoped that the markets would recover:
The value of currencies goes up and down, so we wanted to leave it for a while to make sure the change was sticking. At this point it"s been more than a year and recent fluctuations have been fairly minimal, so we think the time is right to make a change.
In March, Blizzard hiked the price of several World of Warcraft services by 15-25% in the UK and EU due to "regional market conditions." HTC had to raise the price for its Vive VR headset by 10% last year as well.
Source: League of Legends Announcements Board via Rock Paper Shotgun