League of Legends developer Riot Games appears to have pulled an AI-generated anniversary video offline after backlash from fans.
The video, which was created to celebrate mobile port Wild Rift's third anniversary in China, was shared on social media last night. Featuring a mish-mash of mascot-tier champions - Jinx from Arcane, as well as Yasuo, Ezreal, K/DA's Seraphine, and recent arrival Aurora - the trailer sees the group take on a handful of shadowy monsters before taking to an arena stage.
Putting aside the fact that the trailer makes little sense - League of Legends already has several in-universe music groups, and the combat abilities its characters use seem to have little relevance to their in-game skills - it's also pretty ugly. Much of its runtime is given over to generic crowd shots, but the few close-ups of its champions are off-puttingly shiny, settling firmly in the uncanny valley.
The backlash from the community appears to have been swift, as the video has since been pulled from Weibo, where it was originally posted. The original post on Twitter described it as "diabolical," acknowledging not only how weird its characters seem, but also that "this is a slap in the face for every artist who has worked to bring the world of Runeterra to life through their art for the past 15 years."
Elsewhere, players asked how a video that looked so bad could make it through Riot's internal approval processes, or simply expressed their disbelief at its very existence. One genre of responses, however, cut to a problem that has plagued Riot for much of this year, asking "how can I even expect 'champion/skin quality' when the company just allows this?"
In the wake of massive backlash to changes to its free reward system at the start of the year, Riot has struggled with the response to some of its more expensive cosmetics in recent years. Players have proved deeply sceptical of both the spiralling prices of these add-ons, as well as their quality, noting in a few cases that animations and particle effects have been borrowed from other skins, even for some of Riot's most expensive offerings.
Elsewhere, the company has struggled to maintain interest in an esports scene that is really beginning to buckle in the West. 2025 has also been the year that Riot cancelled Hytale - the long-awaited Minecraft-style survival game that it was fulfilling publishing duties for. And that all comes off the back of multiple rounds of layoffs in 2024.
While League of Legends seems to be doing fine in general, the ecosystem around it does seem to be forcing Riot to look for easier wins that will generate more revenue from its biggest spenders. Perhaps this video was an attempt at that, but it's one that appears to have almost immediately backfired.
