Hardly something certain, but considering Riot Games just acquired Radiant Entertainment, a dedicated fighting game development studio, this is one of the very few conclusions we can draw out of the event. Riot Games is the producer of the infamous MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game League of Legends – currently one of the most popular of its kind, scoring a player base of 67 million players every month and 27 million every day.
Riot Games has so far only made itself known thanks to League of Legends and nothing else. Which one would think isn’t a problem given that the company managed to earn an estimated revenue of $1.6 billion in 2015 based on League (LoL for short) alone. However, recent news show that the game developing company may be thinking of expanding into a whole new direction – fighting games.
The acquisition of Radiant Entertainment surely has nothing to do with the already highly popular title. Unless they’re revamping the entire thing to be like the next Mortal Kombat with League of Legends characters instead.
Regardless, if Riot Games is indeed developing a fighting game, they could very well apply the expertise they gained in terms of e-sports, organizing tournaments such as the League of Legends World Championship and already using the well-established name that they have built for themselves starting 2009.
But while some may rise from this acquisition, other must fall in the process. The free to play fighting game Risig Thunder that the company had released previously will no longer be available starting March 18th. At all. This will probably come as a huge disappointment for the already growing fan base that the game has gathered thanks to its whole robots doing battle charm.
But on the bright side, the same people who have made Rising Thunder are now busy at work with what we expect to be Riot’s fighting game. If that is the case, this may very well be a very fortunate liaison: Radiant Entertainment has got what it takes to develop exceptionally well-designed free to play games, and Riot has all the finance any game developer could wish for or need in order to make something worth mentioning.
Meanwhile, Radiant Entertainment doesn’t seem to be prone to give up on its first title, ‘Stonehearth’. While to some extent, it feels like it’s a play on words regarding the popular Blizzard game Hearthstone, the former is nothing more than a town-building simulation game that you can play alongside your friends.
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