Riot Games Comments on Deleting 'League of Legends' Champions

Riot Games responded to an “Ask Riot” question about deleting or retiring League of Legends [...]

Riot Games responded to an "Ask Riot" question about deleting or retiring League of Legends champions and said it's not likely to ever do so.

League of Legends has an extensive list of champions to choose from with well over 100 different characters composing the game's roster, though it might not seem that way at times with the most competitively viable champions getting picked most often. When asked in an Ask Riot post whether Riot Games has ever considered retiring a champion, particularly before champion reworks became more common, Riot Games' Ryan "Reav3" Mireles, lead champion producer for League of Legends, responded to say that Riot Games has never and likely won't ever consider deleting champions entirely.

"Retiring a champion is not something we have ever considered, and likely we never would consider this," Riot Reav3 said. "We would much rather go back and update our older problematic champions with either small reworks or through big VGUs."

The Rioter expanded on his comment to say that deleting a champion would likely frustrate players who had spent lengthy amounts of time learning that character's intricacies. Entire sub-communities on Reddit and other forums are devoted to specific discussions with many more players outside of these communities considering themselves mains for different champions, and deleting a character would essentially undo all that work.

"Retiring a champion would set a weird precedence where players would always be worried that the things they invested in would be taken away from them at some point, which isn't something we want our players to worry about."

Champion updates have become increasingly more common in League of Legends that allow champions to become updated and better fit in with modern standards. Ezreal is the most recent example of that, the champion getting a Visual and Gameplay Update, his being a minor update compared to other full-scale VGUs. There are times though that those players devoted to certain champions feel that their favorites were essentially deleted during these updates anyway, Aatrox being one example of that. The Darkin's rework changed the champion entirely, and while he's still plenty viable in the competitive scene and is quite powerful in the right hands, some players lamented the changes that pivoted Aatrox into what some considered a different champion.

Riot Games' full Ask Riot post can be read here with other questions from players answered in full.

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