Riot “very open” to releasing Wild Rift champions that aren’t in League of Legends

Wild Rift is currently host to over 50 League of Legends champions. Riot’s mobile MOBA clone of their hit PC title is slowly filling out its catalogue with old favorites, but exclusive champions to Wild Rift itself could be on the way with the developers being “very open” to the idea.

League of Legends: Wild Rift has hit it off in the mobile market in South East Asia, Europe, and beyond.

While it hasn’t hit American shores yet, the game has already peaked at number one on both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store, with over 10 million downloads on the latter alone. The U.S. and Latin America release, penned for later in 2021, could see it spike again.

It’s basically just League of Legends on mobile for now ⁠— with a limited selection of champions and different gameplay mechanics to make it friendly for new players. However, there’s a chance that Wild Rift could deviate drastically from its predecessor.

Much like how Legends of Runeterra has deviated from the set of 153 champions currently in League of Legends, as well as Valorant being spawned in an entirely different universe, Riot are making sure Wild Rift can stand alone ⁠— not in the shadow of League of Legends.

• Read More: Wild Rift patch 2.0 notes

One way of doing that is with exclusive champion releases and events. They’ve already fulfilled the latter through in-game promotions like Noxian Brotherhood. However, they’re working on the former, bringing unique experiences to Wild Rift.

“We’re very open to releasing new exclusive Wild Rift champions. It is something that has always been on the table,” lead developer Brian ‘FeralPony’ Feeney said in an interview with Areajugones.

“There’s a lot to the world of Runeterra, it’s not just the champions you see on PC. There are different places, stories to tell, there are many characters almost anywhere that the [League of Legends] universe could expand with.”

However, there’s a catch. Riot want to release more of the old favorites before they look towards developing entirely new champions exclusive to Wild Rift.

“The little trick here is that we know we don’t have enough League of Legends champions right now so our first priority is to make sure we offer a lot of champions that we think are missing ⁠— in particular those that cover certain styles of play,” he added.

• Read More: How to play Wild Rift’s open beta

They’re not slacking through the 100-odd backlog either. Riot have just dropped five new champions in patch 2.0, and are looking at keeping them coming throughout the beta. There’s a sense of urgency, but not a rush to try and fill out the roster.

“It’s not going to be as fast as a champion per week because that would be crazy. It’s not going to be the cadence of a champion every few months either. We are a bit in the middle there.

“Our plan is to release champions for years and years and years so in a sense we want to release more champions but on the other hand we have a lot of time.”