Riot avoided angering their fans with a mobile game announcement by explaining that they were going to “take care of them”

Mobile games aren’t all bad when you examine them, but the general consensus is that for every good game released there happen to be roughly three trillion freemium-loaded cash-grabs just waiting to gobble up the bank account of the nearest whale. Give or take. The last couple of years have seen some progress however, with the likes of 2018’s Florence proving that mobile devices can weave incredible stories while Apple Arcade has been a robust collection of solid games.

The stigma around mobile games won’t be dispelled with just that handful of examples though, a point made abundantly clear back when BlizzCon 2018 kicked off with the announcement of Diablo Immortal and saw the harshest of fan backlash thrown right back at the legendary developer. It’s a moment of infamy, and one that rival company Riot Games were terrified of repeating when they announced their own slate of games last year that just so happened to include a mobile project of their own.

“Early last year, there was some fear/concern at Riot about our plans to announce a number of mobile games and a card game. All the announcements ended up going really well,” communications lead on League of Legends Ryan Rigney tweeted, detailing the strategy that Riot used to not royally piss off their fans at last year’s tenth-anniversary event that saw the company reveal plenty of new projects.

STRAT 1: OWN YOUR BULLSHIT

So the first game we announced was Teamfight Tactics AKA @TFT. At the time, there was only one other game in the genre: the OG Dota Auto Chess mod. Frankly, we didn't want the reaction to our announcement to be "lol nice DAC clone." pic.twitter.com/MQUOVRwCjt

— Ryan Rigney (@RKRigney) January 4, 2020

The solution here was to be honest and talk about TFT with players the same way we were talking about it internally.

Instead of trying to dance around DAC, @Riot_Beernana called it out by name in our announcement.

Players liked that we didn't try to bullshit anybody about it. pic.twitter.com/8uLB9YUHpz

— Ryan Rigney (@RKRigney) January 4, 2020

Tangent: It was important to introduce a name for the genre. The existence of the concept "autobattler" gave us and others permission to play in the space.

I believe using "autobattler" in our post and our press releases led directly to the term's widespread adoption. Example: pic.twitter.com/PwiRXM2s2Q

— Ryan Rigney (@RKRigney) January 4, 2020

There’s a whole lot more in that Twitter thread, but it makes for some surprisingly cunning reading. Riot’s main message was that of “we get you fam”, as they focused more on the gamer who would play their products rather than a cash cow waiting to be milked.

Anyway.. STRAT 3: SHOW THE LOVE IN THE PRODUCT

TFT Mobile wasn't the only mobile game we announced. The bigger news was @Wildrift, aka "proper" League of Legends on mobile. That team did many things right w/ this announce, but I wanna point out one particularly powerful segment.

— Ryan Rigney (@RKRigney) January 4, 2020

“Your core audience NEEDS to know you’re gonna take care of them,” Rigney tweeted.

So when you make something that’ll appeal to only one segment, consider bundling it with something that’ll delight the rest. That’s why we did all of these game announces alongside the League 10 year celebration.

The future looks good for Riot, as they’ve got a line-up of games that stretch across multiple genres and mediums, adding a few more ponies to a stable that housed only one lucrative horse for the last decade.

Last Updated: January 6, 2020