Raid: Shadow Legends is getting its own animated series after Arcane, Edgerunners success

Raid: Shadow Legends has released a trailer for a brand new animated series ‘Call of the Arbiter’, following in the footsteps of other successful video game adaptations. 

Despite its initial infamous marketing strategy of sponsoring disparate influencers to promote the title, Raid: Shadow Legends has grown to be one of the largest mobile games on the market today. 

Released first as a mobile game in 2018 by Plarium Games, the product was eventually made available to play on desktop, and has garnered a loyal fanbase ever since. 

Now, the freemium role-playing gacha game is getting the animated series treatment, with a 10-part animated series premiering on May 18, called Raid: Call of the Arbiter.

The trailer is light on details on what the show’s narrative will entail, but the series will be about a band of heroes and centers around the Arbiter in the lands of Teleria.

The animated show is produced by Eric Rollman, the former president of Marvel Television and Animation. And its showrunner, Jay Olivia, has a lengthy career as a director of several DC animated films, and storyboarded several MCU and DCU films. 

The main reasoning, Michael Lang, the CEO of Plarium’s parent company Pixel United, said to The Hollywood Reporter, is “there’s been a significant demand from the players who want to know more about the story, more about the characters, more about the experiences.”

He also said they were not directly inspired by other game companies’ successes of late with animating and adapting their IPs. Rather, the goal of the show is purely to extend the game’s storyline and fulfilling the wishes of fans, he claimed.

Despite that, it is undeniable how impactful recent adaptations of video games have been. As when Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Aracne came out, both Cyberpunk 2077 and League of Legends games saw a large increase in sales and player base respectively.

Similarly, the recent live-action adaptation of The Last of Us has generated a massive amount of interest in the Naughty Dog game as well.