Riot Games just announced a huge partnership with Xbox Game Pass. During the Xbox Bethesda Gaming Showcase that took place on June 12th, Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill revealed that his company would be making its titles available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers. This will unlock a slew of new benefits and opportunities for Game Pass subscribers in Riot games.
Xbox Game Pass subscription holders will now be able to play League of Legends on PCs while being given access to all 160 Champions. The same type of access will be given for the mobile game, League of Legends: Wild Rift, which features 80 different champions. On top of that, all Game Pass subscribers will be given first-day access to any future Champions released by Riot for either game.
This announcement will also have an impact on the global VALORANT scene. Now, Game Pass subscribers will be allowed to access all 18 VALORANT agents. Moreover, subscribers will be some of the first people in the world to be given access to future VALORANT agents once they are released.
Game Pass users will also be given a complimentary set of foundation cards for Legends of Runeterra. And, subscription holders will be given access to Tier One Little Legend avatars for the PC and mobile versions of Teamfight Tactics.
These are just some of the benefits that will be coming to Xbox Game Pass subscribers right now. Riot Games has plans to unveil more benefits for game pass subscribers over the coming weeks and months.
The Profit‘s Take:
This is a massive amount of content coming to Game Pass. I didn’t even know we were up to 160 Champions in League of Legends. Everything included in this bundle has a value of $1,500. If you already own half the champions in League, is it worth it to purchase Game Pass to fill out the rest of your roster? The math will be different for each person depending on how much of the game they have completed. My tinfoil hat theory: if we can assume Microsoft is not taking a loss on this in some way, AND they’re paying a relatively small amount to Riot, then this tells us that Riot’s per user monetization isn’t maybe as strong as they’d like it to be. Yes, it costs $1,500 to buy all these Champions. But, it’s possible that the average spend of a League player is pretty low. Therefore, the amount of money that Riot gets from Microsoft is likely greater than the average amount of money spent on Champions by League players. In that case, this seems like a monetization bailout for a large number of Riot gamers. This is a win-win on all sides, but it’s still interesting to find out who the real “winners” are in deals like this.
(All information was provided by Engadget and Game Informer)
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