If you play League of Legends: Wild Rift, you might need to start pinching pennies right about now.
Riot Games nearly incited online riots recently when they announced an upcoming price hike in League of Legends: Wild Rift. The announcement came on 29 October and quickly generated backlash, to the surprise of absolutely no one. This price increase will be in effect from 18 November onwards.
Basically, Riot is altering the pricing of Wild Cores, the in-game currency you pay for with real money, so you get less Wild Cores for the same amount. For example, paying S$6.98 currently gives you 500 Wild Cores. However, under this new exchange rate, paying that same real-world amount would only give you 440 Wild Cores. Since Wild Cores are used for the purchase of a variety of items like champions, skins, accessories and more, a price increase like this affects every player.
Many League players are outraged at this change, having already felt that Wild Cores were overpriced.
Riot’s alleged reason for this price increase is real-world inflation. This prompted discussion between gamers, as some expressed confusion while others (finance bros) jumped to offer explanations.
Anticipating the negative response, Riot included a statement in their announcement that from now until November 17, all bonus Wild Cores from purchases will be doubled. But don’t get fooled, they’re saying only the bonus Wild Cores will be doubled, which is still a small amount.
Heart Pain Thanks to Valve
Valve Corporation, the developer behind games like Dota 2, Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead, also announced a new system which severely increases prices in certain regions.
Valve recently enhanced their pricing tool on Steam to help creators with the sale of titles on the platform. This results in a large sudden price increase, especially in Southeast Asia.
Countries like the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia will have to take this into consideration. For example, a game that costs US$69.99 would previously cost Rp 299999, but now costs Rp 525999, up by 75 per cent. In Malaysia, the same game previously cost RM 115, but now costs RM 155, up by 35 per cent. Similarly, the Philippines would experience a 36 per cent increase. You can view a more comprehensive international breakdown below.
Valve explained that the price increase is due to many factors relating to each region, saying: “Rather than just pegging prices to foreign exchange rates, our process for price suggestions goes deeper into the nuts and bolts of what players pay for the goods and services in their lives.”
At the end of the day, each developer is free to reject this pricing suggestion and choose how much they want people to pay for their games. But who exactly is turning down a suggested higher price?
