"Riot chose to exploit our love for Faker for their own gain."
Renowned League of Legends esports player Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok is the inaugural inductee to Riot’s new Hall of Legends, its very own bespoke hall of fame. To commemorate the occasion, Riot is releasing limited-time League of Legends cosmetic bundles featuring new “Legend” skins for Ahri—the most expensive of which will cost you a whopping 59,260 RP. In other words, Faker has the unique title of being the first player Riot’s honored with a skin that can cost damn near $500 USD. Congratulations!
League players, unsurprisingly, aren’t thrilled. At time of writing, more than half of the threads on the front page of the League of Legends subreddit are filled with players venting their frustrations over the latest in what feels like the constant inflation of cosmetic costs. For comparison, Ultimate skins—some of League’s flashiest cosmetics—typically cost 3250 RP, or around $30 USD. Meanwhile, even the cheapest version of the new Ahri Faker skin bundles costs 5430 RP, somewhere around $50 USD. Of course, the bundles have other cosmetic nuggets like taunts, icons, and emotes. Whether that justifies the price is left as an exercise for the reader.
With the Hall of Legends event cosmetics, described on the Hall of Legends page as “some of our most generous bundles to date,” Riot seems to be dabbling in psychological tactics aimed at making the bundles more enticing. If you buy the cheaper skin bundle, the upgraded version sold right next to it might leave you feeling like you’ve been left with a lesser or compromised product—and you’ve only got so long to make the decision before the event expires. And if you’re only buying the event’s 1950 RP battle pass, any remaining cosmetic unlocks as the event clock ticks down might make the 100 pass levels in the $500 bundle harder to ignore. These aren’t new strategies, but the potential cost involved leaves me with a distinctly sickly feeling.
Often called the Michael Jordan of esports, Faker has a slate of achievements that keeps me from wanting to think too long about how much I’ve accomplished with my couple of additional years on the Earth. Among other accolades, Faker holds four World Championship titles, multiple League of Legends Champions Korea MVP awards, and LCK records for kills, assists, games played, and games won. And as an inductee into the ESL Esports Hall of Fame in 2019, this isn’t even his first time getting the Hall of Famer treatment.
Unsurprisingly, people like the guy—which adds an extra sting to the already-absurd $500 pricetag. As Reddit user SwiftRespite writes, “Almost every League player loves Faker,” but Riot “chose to exploit our love for Faker for their own gain.” It’s worth noting that, as mentioned by users in the Reddit threads linked above, Faker has rarely used skins himself, typically sticking to default champion appearances throughout his professional career. As redditor Arcuran puts it, “I already have Faker’s Ahri skin. It’s called the base skin.”
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