League of Legends developer Riot Games takes a jab at Blizzard Entertainment in a new livestream. Riot Games made the diss as it announced several major new games: a new card game Legends of Runeterra, a League of Legends fighting game, a hero shooter game, and more.
While announcing the mobile version of Teamfight Tactics, the Riot employee joked that "it turns out, you guys do actually have phones." For those out of the loop, it may seem like Riot is just making a joke about how most of its fans are hardcore PC gamers; however, this is also a jab at Blizzard for the Diablo Immortal announcement the company made last year.
Blizzard faced huge criticism for announcing a Diablo game for mobile when fans were looking for a PC game announcement. In a Q&A session after the Diablo announcement, a Blizzard developer seemed surprised that fans began booing and joked "do you guys not have phones?" The Riot livestream is the League of Legends developer having some fun at Blizzard's expense.
The Twitch clip of the Riot Blizzard jab has been viewed more than 200,000 times on Twitch. A look at the Twitch chat from when the jab was delivered live shows many users posting "LUL" and various versions of it, very amused that Riot found time for shade in such an important livestream.
However, some users on Reddit have suggested that companies in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Riot Games is "100% owned by tencent and are probably glad the e-rage is directed at blizz" wrote one user. The Diablo Immortal controversy happened nearly a year ago, but this month, people have been upset at Blizzard for handing out punishments to esports players who have expressed support for Hong Kong. Riot's owners, Tencent, are Chinese and so adding to the Blizzard pile on can only help the League of Legends developer.
Riot also has something to gain from long-term backlash against Blizzard. Many of the games that Riot Games announced this week are in the same genre as Blizzard's most popular titles. Legends of Runeterra is Riot's answer to Blizzard's card game Hearthstone and Riot's Project A is its answer to Blizzard's popular hero shooter, Overwatch. The League of Legends developer isseemingly going right after Blizzard's revenue, with its games and now through its jabs in livestreams too.