League of Legends remains one of the biggest games on the planet, with an estimated 115 million players worldwide. And it could be about to get even bigger as it expands its reach to mobile.
Tencent and Riot Games have reportedly been working on the port for over a year. But you probably won’t get your hands on it in 2019.
League of Legends isn’t quite the behemoth it once was. It managed to pull in an estimated $1.4 billion in revenue last year, which, despite being an incredibly impressive sum, was a decline of 21% year-over-year.
Developer Riot Games has been looking at new ways to boost its player base and its revenues. One of those, according to Reuters, is a mobile version.
League of Legends in your pocket?
Right now League of Legends is only available on PC, but Tencent has released a number of similar “MOBAs” (multiplayer online battle arenas) that have been a success on mobile. The biggest in the West is Arena of Valor.
Those games reportedly created tensions with Riot due to their similarities with League of Legends. It is believed Riot actually rejected a Tencent proposal years ago to develop a mobile version of the game.
Since then, however, Tencent has acquired a majority stake in Riot. Sources say the two have been working on a League of Legends mobile port for over a year, “although a separate source said it was unlikely to be launched in 2019.”
Tencent and Riot are yet to confirm the report.
League of Legends would be a hit on mobile
It’s somewhat surprising that League of Legends isn’t already available on mobile 10 years after its initial release — particularly after the success of recent PC ports like Fortnite and PUBG Mobile.
It would likely be a huge success given the reach of Android and iOS. MOBA is an incredibly popular genre, but only a small portion of the world’s gaming population owns a beefy gaming PC.
