Riot Games may be looking to enter the gacha games market by expanding R&D in China

Riot Games, developer of League of Legends, Valorant and other popular titles, recently announced it would invest in its development studio in China to expand its research and development (R&D) capabilities. As such, the company plans to develop game titles that could reach decades into the future.

It’s not uncommon for Riot to expand its roster of titles, but considering this is China, there’s a growing sense that the company might try its hand at gacha games. The Chinese market is heavily dominated by popular titles that fall under the gacha games category, such as Genshin Impact and Tower of Fantasy.

Therefore, it wouldn’t be surprising if Riot Games decides to jump into this territory and spread its wings to reach more players and expand its scope. This expansion would make a lot of sense as it would help increase the company’s revenue by a lot.

Apart from that, the aforementioned gacha game titles are also extremely popular worldwide with Genshin Impact being a phenomenon. Therefore, even with these titles, Riot Games will have plenty of scope to go global should they see the need to do so.

Riot Games may want to develop titles that can directly compete with Genshin Impact

Riot Games itself started its Chinese expansion last year. Since then, several people have been involved in the development of the company’s current titles, namely Valorant, League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics.

However, the fact that it is expanding its R&D department in China has raised quite a few eyebrows. This is because the president of Riot Games clearly mentioned in the presentation that the company will be building new games.

He also explained that new titles are developed with long-term service in mind. These can either be MMORPGs like Final Fantasy and Black Desert Online, or gacha games like Genshin Impact and Tower of Fantasy.

As luck would have it, Riot Games is already developing an MMORPG overseen by none other than Greg Street, former World of Warcraft Lead Systems Designer. So gacha games are the only remaining option when it comes to new game titles that can span decades.

A new esports title won’t make sense either, considering both League of Legends and Valorant are pretty well established and the company doesn’t want to start a competition on an internal level. However, that’s not the only reason to believe that the company could dive into gacha games.

The Chinese market is primarily home to all forms of gacha games and the two big names in this genre are Genshin Impact and Tower of Fantasy.

Obviously, HoYoverse’s global phenomenon, Genshin Impact is arguably the most popular gacha game out there, with no major competitors. So when a popular company like Riot Games decides to dive into gacha games, it becomes a competitor for that title.

There’s also the possibility of a battle royale game not very dissimilar to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, popularly known as PUBG. Marc Merill, President of Riot Games, mentioned the development of multiple titles, which clearly leaves the doors wide open for a gacha game.