Riot Games working on Legends of Runeterra, what could it be?

Riot Games is getting tired of only having one full game in its entire catalog. Sure, it may be one of the highest-grossing games in the entire world for several years now, but bear with me. The League of Legends developer has a new game in the works, and it is called Legends of Runeterra. They did mention that they wanted to put the ‘S' in Riot Games, and with Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street working in another game, this is no coincidence.

A series of trademarks were just discovered by one Reddit user called Zileanpredicts and they are beyond any doubts: it is a new product from Riot Games and it's titled Legends of Runeterra.

The trademarks cover a lot of ground, from toys to board games, merchandising (backpacks, bags, fanny packs…), to paper goods (posters, calendars and the like). One of the trademarks is clearly aiming at eSports, for “Arranging and conducting live competitions featuring video games; entertainment services, namely, providing online video games; entertainment services, namely, organizing live fan meetings and conferences with interactive gameplay between participants in the fields of gaming, video games and e-sports.”

The trademarks were registered in October, so this is still fresh news. We should start getting some actual info on it in the coming weeks.

Let's hope it's not a mobile game, eh?

Could this be the MMO that Riot Games was talking about a while ago? Well, it depends on your definition of MMO. I'm pretty sure that it isn't an MMORPG, and I have two very strong guesses. I want to share them with you all.

For one, Legends of Runeterra could be the mandatory card game. Riot Games has the characters, tons of artwork ready to be used and a strong IP. It would be easy to see it a potential rival to Blizzard's Hearthstone. For another, and this is what most people is forgetting about, it could be a League of Legends fighting game.

Why, I hear you ask? Let's investigate. In early 2016, Riot Games acquired Radiant Entertainment, a studio helmed by ex-Capcom's Seth Killian, who worked on Street Fighter IV. At the time he was developing Rising Thunder, a competitive free-to-play 2D fighter. Clearly in the spirit of Street Fighter, it had some serious eSports ambitions. While Rising Thunder was canceled – it ended up being released to the fans in a raw state -, Riot Games needed to have some serious interest in Radiant Entertainment to greenlight this purchase. Could they be thinking about… a League of Legends fighting game?

I have connected the dots and now it's a matter of waiting to see if I'm right or wrong. Worst case scenario, we could be getting a League of Legends: Immortal for mobile devices.