League of Legends & Teamfight Tactics Will Be Published by Riot Games in SEA in 2023
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After a 12-year partnership with Garena, Riot Games announced that it will begin self-publishing League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics (TFT) across Southeast Asia (SEA) starting in January 2023. League of Legends has been a favorite for players in Southeast Asia since its release and Riot Games vouched that, by self-publishing, it will make sure players in SEA have the same League of Legends and TFT experience as people who play them all around the world. Riot Games has already been self-publishing its other titles like Valorant, Legends of Runeterra, and League of Legends: Wild Rift in the region. Players will soon be able to use the official Riot Games multi-game client to access and play League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Valorant, and Legends of Runeterra.
SEA League of Legends & TFT will go back to the hands of Riot Games
Back when League of Legends was released in 2009, there was only one server that was located in California, USA, and players from Asia had to endure high pings (200-300) to play the game on the server. But soon after this, Garena, a Singapore-based game developer, and publisher, stepped in and took over the publishing of League of Legends in the region.
Riot Games stated that Garena has been instrumental in growing the League of Legends community in SEA and that it is thankful for the partnership. Riot has also since steadily expanded its capabilities with a new operating model that focuses on the fast-growing Asia Pacific (APAC) region, where the company has extended its publishing reach to include Japan and India. “Riot is in the midst of establishing local offices in key markets such as the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, to deepen its native presence and better provide hyper-localization to players in-market,” it said in a press release.
Riot Games’ Managing Director for APAC Alex Kraynov said, “As we further our focus on being the most player-focused game company in the world, we are excited to bring our players immersive and meaningful experiences, both in and out of [the] game. We are looking forward to seeing our players benefit from a unified Riot ecosystem and look forward to writing the next chapter with them.”
“We are honored to have worked together with Riot over the past decade to create the best possible experiences for players, and wish the team every success in this next chapter,” said Kevin Huang, regional producer of League of Legends, Garena.
What is changing?
With this move, the publishing relationship between Garena and Riot will officially conclude in January 2023. Once the publishing transition is complete, players can look forward to events and rewards, and access to regional Riot publishing services including localization, billing, and player support, alongside local marketing activities.
League of Legends and TFT will be published in Taiwan and Vietnam by Taiwan Mobile and VNGGames, respectively.
Notably, as part of the transition, Riot Games will continue to operate the esports league of Pacific Championship Series (PCS) and will regain ownership and operations of the Vietnam Championship Series (VCS).
