Riot Games confirm they're making a fighting game
It's a long way off
League Of Legends developer Riot Games have confirmed that they are working on a fighting game. The announcement came via EVO 2019, thanks to the event’s founder and Riot employee Tom Cannon. “I’m not here to say the game’s coming out any time soon,” he cautioned, “but I do feel like we’re making progress and I felt like it was only appropriate that we reset the conversation and let everybody know that what you think we’re working on, yeah, that’s actually what we’re working on.” You can see the moment clipped below.
“I wanna be able to let people in on maybe the worst kept secret in the universe,” says Cannon. “I can confirm that we are working on a fighting game for Riot.”
This framing (“we” are working on it “for” Riot) presumably refers to the latter’s 2016 acquisition of Radiant Entertainment. Radiant was founded by Cannon and his brother and put the fighting game Rising Thunder into open alpha before the game’s development was shuttered as part of the acquisition. No surprise then, that they’ve been working on a different game in the same genre since then.
“The reason we did Rising Thunder in the first place was because we felt like fighting games just deserved to be enjoyed by way more people,” Cannon continued. The game’s one-button combos lent it approachability, and he suggested that this remains one of their aims for Riot’s as-yet untitled work in progress.
“It’s far away,” he insisted. “No trailer, no name, and a lot of hard work.”
We don’t even know yet if it’s linked to the world of League Of Legends, but Riot have recently stretched the MOBA into an auto battler via Teamfight Tactics, so it’s possible they’re open to expanding it into other genres, too.