“Unexpectedly. The mega-popular series Arcane became a financial failure for Riot Games December 27, 01:05 Share: Arcane cost 250 million US dollars (Photo: Screenshot from the Netflix video) Author: Anastasiya Pechenyuk Riot Games independently created a series based on its own game League of Legends, spending a quarter of a billion dollars. Despite the wild success, the project turned out to be deeply unprofitable. Many video game companies license to Hollywood”, — write on: ua.news
Arcane cost $250 million (Photo: Screenshot from Netflix video)
Riot Games independently created a series based on its own game League of Legends, spending a quarter of a billion dollars on it. Despite the wild success, the project turned out to be deeply unprofitable.
Many companies in the field of video games grant licenses to Hollywood studios, but Riot Games took a different route when adapting League of Legends. The company completely independently developed and financed the animated series with 18 episodes in two seasons. Although the project was wildly successful, Riot Games reported wild losses because of it. Production and marketing costs were so high that Arcane’s broadcast managed to earn only half of its cost. In addition, the animated series also failed to attract many new players and force existing players to spend more money on League of Legends, writes Bloomberg with reference to representatives and employees of Riot Games.
According to the publication, Arkane significantly exceeded the initial budget. In addition to production costs, the company has invested tens of millions of dollars in marketing. In total, Riot spent about $250 million over the two seasons of the series, League of Legends executive producer Paul Bellezza said. Netflix paid Riot about $3 million to stream one episode. Tencent Holdings Ltd., the Chinese tech giant that owns Riot, paid an additional $3 million for the rights to show in China. All these payments accounted for less than half of the total cost of the project.
The show’s first season was a critical success, won four Emmy Awards in 2022, and topped Netflix’s most watched movies in dozens of countries. However, he did not help promote the game. In particular, because the designers were not given enough time to create new game items or add new characters from the series to the game.
“We were very surprised by the success of the first season. We probably missed the opportunity to do some in-game activations around that,” admits Paul Bellezza.
Between seasons one and two, Tencent began asking Riot how the project helped the company’s core business, sources told Bloomberg. Already, with the release of the second and final season of Arcane in November, the company has stepped up its efforts to attract more fans of the series to the game. For this, new thematic digital items appeared in the free game, which took two years to develop. Eight new costumes have been released since November. One skin for the main character of the Jinx series can cost up to 250 dollars. A Riot spokesperson says that while the show itself wasn’t profitable, the company benefited significantly from it, and the second season “on track to at least break even financially.”