It’s no secret that Riot’s League of Legends monetization model has come into question in the past couple of years. Starting with Dark Cosmic Erasure Jhin, followed by a slew of battle pass changes and, of course, that Ahri skin, players claim that the MOBA is slowly but surely turning into a “gacha game.” Despite Riot claiming that it was “keeping luxury goods low” in 2024, two new $200 Mythic chromas are now set to drop on the same patch.
Mythic variants are only obtainable by purchasing League of Legends‘ special event capsules. You’ll need to pick up 30 to get the chroma (it drops randomly, but to guarantee it you’ll need 30), which eventually works out at $200 / £200. While they do look pretty slick, they don’t change the MOBA‘s gameplay – they’re just a snazzier color change with added graphical flair.
As aforementioned, this began with Dark Cosmic Erasure Jhin last year, and we’ve shad everal chromas release since – the latest being Battle Admiral Miss Fortune when Swarm launched. Now slated for patch 14.7 are two $200 chromas for God-King Darius and God-King Garen, which is the first time we’ve seen two Mythic chromas drop at the one time.
The chromas effectively reverse the two skins, with Darius clad in gold and white and Garen sporting Darius’ signature black and purple. There are dragons, thrones, and flashy visuals, but no video of Darius’ iconic Brazil dog dance emote, which, I won’t lie, left me a little disappointed.
Riot hasn’t announced any pricing changes for the skins, meaning they’re currently set to cost $200 each. Alternatively, we may get them both in the thirtieth capsule, meaning they’d each be $100 each.
While a new Mythic chroma (or two) isn’t anything new, in Riot’s rundown of League’s business model in 2023, it stated that its plan was to “keep the number of luxury goods low” coming into 2024. In the wake of the $430 Ahri skin controversy, game director Pu ‘PuPuLasers’ Liu told me that the backlash to the skins was “kind of justified” as players are “used to everything living under a certain price point.” Despite this, three Mythic chromas will have launched since Immortalized Legend Ahri.
He did explain that “the majority of our revenue comes from a small, single digit percentage of players; it’s just the reality that the hobbyist deep spenders are a disproportionate amount of business viability,” but players have been quick to criticize yet another round of expensive cosmetics – especially given how many there’s been recently.
“Also, weren’t the Mythic Variant skins supposed to come out every now and then with a larger gap between them? And now we got ones for Miss Fortune, Darius and Garen within one month?” reads one comment on the new variants’ PBE video post. “We’re bumping it up to $400 a patch folks!” says another.
Accompanying Divine God-King Darius and Fallen God-King Garen are Battle Queen skins for Annie, Fiora, Gwen, and Miss Fortune – and man, I really need that MF one.
Speaking of skins, we have a list of all the League of Legends skins that are on sale. Alternatively, if you like to grind for the finer things in life, we have a rundown of the current LoL Mythic shop, too.
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