Marc Merrill Made the Case for Riot's MMO. On Lemonade Stand he agreed MMOs are insane, said Riot waited for a fan base of hundreds of millions, and talked free to play and Tencent.

What Happened

Riot's co-founder sat down with a business podcast for nearly two hours, and gave the MMO its own chapter.

• A business podcast. Lemonade Stand, a weekly business show hosted by the streamers Atrioc, Aiden McCaig and DougDoug, released its episode with Riot co-founder Marc Merrill on September 30.
• Who he is. Merrill co-founded Riot Games in 2006. League, short for League of Legends, is the team battle game that made it. He is now chief product officer and co-chair.
• Why it matters here. Merrill is the executive sponsor of Riot's unannounced MMO. He announced its 2024 reset and, at PAX West in September, said the team calls it the Grail.
• Nine labelled minutes. The episode's own chapter list gives the MMO a segment, "Philosophy Around MMO", from 42:11 to 51:11. The rest of the 1 hour 51 minute episode keeps circling the same questions.

Riot's co-founder spent an episode explaining how he thinks games should be built, priced and owned. Almost all of it reads as a brief for the MMO, so we follow the episode in order of what it tells us about that game.

The MMO Answer

Asked whether an MMO can start small and who it is for without WoW's nostalgia, Merrill shared many of the doubts and said Riot waited until it could afford one.

Can an MMO start small?

• The setup. Merrill had just said Riot's hits launch with reasonable teams and grow after. A host asked how that squares with an MMO.
• His answer. He doubted an MMO needs a huge team on day one, but said player expectations are so high the team has to be excellent.
• Shown when ready. He said the team has "a real shot" at adding value, and that he can't wait to show how it is thinking "when the time's right."

Who is it for without nostalgia?

A second host then made the case against a new MMO in today's market. Merrill's answer only makes sense against the concerns he was answering, so here they are in order.

• Flash-in-the-pan games. Players hop between short-lived hits: Roblox games, the indie market and "friend slop", cheap co-op games bought to play with friends.
• An attention economy. A new MMO competes with those trends and with TikTok and Instagram Reels for the same hours.
• No nostalgia hedge. WoW, the World of Warcraft MMO, is the one many players grew up on. WoW Forever, Blizzard's new take on it, can lean on that. A Riot MMO cannot.
• The MMO crowd aged. The players most primed for MMOs are now in their thirties, have less time, and already have WoW.
• Younger players differ. The younger generation is less primed for what an MMO asks of a player.

• Twenty years of world. His case was Runeterra, the world Riot has built for 20 years, and fans who already follow it through League, Riftbound, Riot's card game, and Arcane, its animated series.
• Waited on purpose. Riot did not want to attempt an MMO until it had hundreds of millions of fans, a big balance sheet, revenue streams and the technology.
• Not for everybody. He warned that trying to make something for everybody makes it for nobody, and compared the MMO to Arcane and esports, bets people inside Riot once doubted too.

Ruining Lives

Asked if a hit MMO would ruin lives, Merrill said yes, then said Riot does not run its games on engagement targets.

• The opposite question. A host said World of Warcraft hit his friend group "like crack" and asked if a successful Riot MMO would ruin lives. Merrill answered "Yes."
• A parent, too. He said his son is 13 and loves League and Valorant, Riot's tactical shooter, which is why parental controls matter.
• Nudges, not a nanny. He floated more reminders to "go touch grass" and small nudges for players, while saying Riot does not want to be an overly parental presence.
• No engagement target. Riot watches whether play hours climb too high for too many people, and does not chase ARPU, average revenue per user, or hours played as a goal.

Free to Play

Merrill said Riot has never been bound to free to play, is making games that are not, and called its player-first business model fragile.

• The question. A host said hits like these only need to pop at launch because they cost money up front, and asked whether free to play is harder for Riot now.
• Not a rule. Merrill said Riot has never had a strategic imperative to only make free-to-play games.
• Some games will cost. He said Riot is working on things that are not free to play, because the business model should fit the game. He did not say which projects.
• Free today. Every Riot game is free except Riftbound, which is physical cards, and most players never spend anything.
• A fragile cycle. Merrill called a business model that lines up Riot's interests with players' a "virtuous cycle", and called that cycle fragile.
• The $500 skin. Pressed on Riot's $500 Ahri skin, made for the player Faker, he defended pricing across a range: most pay nothing, some pay a lot for exclusives.

None of this names a model for the MMO, and Riot has never put one on the record. It does tell you the frame the MMO's model will be argued in: it has to fit the game and keep players' trust. Most Riot players pay nothing today; he did not say whether that holds for the MMO. We went deeper on the stakes in how Riot can keep its MMO clear of pay-to-win.

Launch Small

The chapter right before the MMO one is Riot's rulebook for any new game: launch with a reasonable team, keep players, then grow.

• Live games green. Merrill laid out the strategy he and CEO Dylan Jadeja set: every live game must be sustainable, which he defined as break even or better.
• Keep, not buy. League grew, he said, because Riot was good at not losing players, not at acquiring them. Marketing is pointless if players don't stay.
• The 2XKO lesson. 2XKO, the fighting game Riot shut down in August, would have needed high hundreds of thousands of players, or millions, at its cost.
• Scale after launch. Riot's hits launched with reasonable teams and grew after. Launch is the start, and the moment real players arrive "really is beta".

Tencent

Merrill told the story of how Tencent came to own Riot, and why he says it lets Riot ignore short-term pressure.

• The owner. Tencent, China's largest tech company, is Riot's majority owner. It found Riot in 2008 and signed a deal to publish League in China.
• Bought to protect. In 2011, when Riot's investors wanted to sell, Tencent bid for a majority to keep Riot from being bought by a Western publisher such as EA or Activision.
• Arm's length. Merrill said staying private under Tencent spared Riot the short-term pressure to do things that don't make sense for players.
• Honor of Kings. Riot turned down making a mobile game. Tencent greenlit nine mobile battle games, and the one that copied League became Honor of Kings, which Merrill called a derivative version of League.
• Then Wild Rift. Riot and Tencent agreed to make the two games diverge, and Riot built Wild Rift, its own mobile League with its real champions.
• Same game everywhere. Riot adapts accounts, payments and local rules by region but never the game, because players everywhere want the same things.

The Posts

The episode reached the MMO's fans fast, and an engineer on the MMO reacted in public.

• The show's post. The Lemonade Stand account posted the episode on September 30, "Featuring Marc Merrill, co-founder of Riot Games!"
• Merrill's share. Merrill shared it on October 1, saying they covered the early days of League, building Riot and the state of the industry.
• Ten minutes, by a fan. Necrit, a League lore YouTuber with 156,000 followers on X, posted "THE MMO WAS TALKED ABOUT FOR 10 MINUTES!" The labelled chapter runs nine.
• The smile. Orlando Salvatore, senior engineering manager on the MMO per his X bio, answered Necrit with a smiling emoji. He has called cancellation talk fake news.

Merrill closed the episode on WoW Forever: his level 20 druid has the set that turns him into a snake, the form he showed off in September, and he said he is glad Blizzard has momentum and will play it at launch.

What This Means for the Riot MMO

Merrill set out the rules the MMO is being built under, and kept its scope and price to himself.

• Scope is still unknown. Merrill gave no size, launch date or team count. "MMOs are insane", he said, and the scope stays unrevealed.
• Business model still open. Riot has not named a model for the MMO. Merrill said the model should fit the game and that some Riot projects won't be free. Aion 2's $15 subscription shows the line rivals draw.
• Retention over reach. Live games green, launch small and keep players: by Merrill's rules an MMO is judged on whether people stay, not on its launch spike.
• A defined audience. He ruled out making it for everybody, which points to an MMO for Runeterra fans and MMO players, not a mass-market hedge.
• Independence helps. A private Riot under an arm's-length owner can spend years on a game that doesn't pay back soon, which is what an MMO needs.

Our read. Merrill didn't reveal the MMO, but he explained the rules it is being built under, in order: wait until you can afford it, build it for the people who already love the world, launch with a team you can sustain, and make money in a way players trust. He never said what that means for the MMO's price. The open question is the one he kept dodging, which is how an MMO without WoW's nostalgia keeps new players. He says Riot has answers it hasn't shown.

Free or Paid?

Reported from Lemonade Stand and corroborating coverage. The MMO read is ours and clearly speculative. Analysis by RuneGrove.