League of Legends Economy Influenced by Brexit, RP Cost Going Up

Today we learned that video game economies do not exist within a vacuum. Riot just announced that, due to the declining value of the pound following the UK’s exit of the European Union, League of Legends players in the UK were paying comparably less for RP than players everywhere else in the world, particularly in the United States. Riot therefore has made the unpopular decision to raise the price of RP in the UK. Riot’s “Benshirro” just broke the news and offered up a few really critical explanations:

“Like a lot of companies who sell digital content, we monitored the situation closely over several months to see whether the pound would recover,” he said, “but it’s been over a year now and we feel we’ve reached the point where a price change is necessary to restore parity.

“In order to do that, we will be raising the price of RP by 20% on 25th July 2017 at 23:59 BST. This is a one-time change to restore balance in RP pricing around the world. None of your existing purchases will be affected.

“We’ll be keeping the old RP prices in store until July 25th, and any RP purchased now will be unaffected by the price change. The cost of champions, skins and other items will not change after the RP price adjustment, so any RP you buy now at the lower price will still unlock the same amount of content next month as it does today.”

What This Means for Different RP Bundle Values

This change in value messed up some RP bundles, and so Riot is doing away with the £2.50 RP bundle that almost no one bought anyway, and introduced a medium tier between the £10 and £20 bundles. This is to provide a convenient means of acquiring some quick RP when a player wants to purchase a legendary skin.

“For example, the Dawnbringer Riven and Nightbringer Yasuo legendary skins cost 1820 RP. Prior to the price adjustment, a player could acquire 2075 RP for £10, but after 25th July the only viable option would be to spend £20 for 4200 RP.

“With these things in mind, we are also retiring the £2.50 price point and adding a new £15 option that will give you 2525 RP. The new £15 option will be the best way to get RP if you have none already and decide you want to buy a legendary skin.”

The new values look like this:

At this point you’ve got questions, and Riot has answers. See their FAQ below.

Questions and Answers

Why are you adjusting RP prices in the UK?
The value of pound sterling fell dramatically following the EU referendum last June. We constantly review RP pricing globally so every player is spending roughly the same amount of money to get the same amount of RP. This change threw that out of whack, so we decided to make an adjustment.

Why do it now? Why not last year?
The value of currencies goes up and down, so we wanted to leave it for a while to make sure the change was sticking. At this point it’s been more than a year and recent fluctuations have been fairly minimal, so we think the time is right to make a change.

You talked about the comparison between the UK and the US, but what about Europe and other regions? Is anyone else affected?
We monitor currency movements across all regions in which Riot operates to try to keep global RP prices in harmony. There’s been modest inflation in some EU markets and we continue to monitor all currencies, but overall the gap between European currencies and the US dollar is minor.

When will the RP price change go into effect?
25th July 2017 at 23:59 BST.

What about IP or existing content?
You can still purchase content for the same amount of IP and RP as before.

What happens if the pound recovers tomorrow? Or what happens if the dollar suffers a massive fall? Will you change prices back?
We can’t predict what will happen going forward, but we will continue to gather data on currency changes globally. We would consider further adjustments if we felt there was a serious long-term imbalance and the markets themselves weren’t going to correct it.