Last month, the French animation studio Fortiche, as well as Riot Games and Netflix finally offered us the long-awaited second season d’Arcanethe series inspired by the universe of League of Legends. Three years later an already incredible first seasonwe were treated to new episodes that were even more impressive in terms of animation and visuals, although the series had a little more difficulty convincing the narrative part. The result still remains very positive. But with an envelope of 250 million dollarsit seems that the series is not at all profitable for Riot Games, quite the contrary.
Arcane makes you lose money
It is in a recent report from Bloomberg that we have just learned that Riot Games would be the big loser of this Arcane experience. A few weeks ago, we learned that the studio had paid not far from 250 million dollars to produce the two seasons of the series (including marketing). Today, Bloomberg confirms that Netflix would have paid 3 million dollars per episode for broadcast on its streaming platform. For its part, Tencent (the owners of Riot Games) would have paid the studio 3 million morein episodes, to broadcast the series in China.
In total, Riot Games would have recovered only $108 millionor less than half of the investment. Of course, it was already expected that the studio would not recover its entire investment thanks to Netflix and Tencent, however, there were high hopes for the sale of goodies and other derivative products as well as a surge of hype allowing a big wave of new and old players about the game League of Legends who could also have fallen for in-game purchases.
Alas, and unlike series like The Last Of Us, Fallout, CyberPunk or even The Witcherthe critical success will not have made it possible to revive interest around the game, undoubtedly much more complex to understand than the other titles. So, the release of this season 02 has indeed helped to create a little enthusiasm and many former players have returned to League of Legends. On the other hand, Bloomberg confirms that a large majority of new accounts have already stopped being regular.
The other concern is that Tencent hardly capitalized on the 01 season. Unlike this second season, there were no events, derivative products and almost no promotions. It was after the success of the first episodes that Tencent wanted to ride the hype for season 02.
For Riot Games, Arcane is still a success
Despite these disappointing figuresRiot Games confirme the real success of the series. On Reddit, Marc Merill, the co-founder of Riot Games responded to the Bloomberg article to give the studio’s point of view and reassure fans:
“People who look at everything from a cynical, transactional, short-term perspective have a really hard time understanding Riot. This has already been true with those who claimed that very high quality free games could not work, that eSports would never work, etc. And now they’re saying Arcane wasn’t great and wasn’t worth it. These people think we do things like Arcane to sell cosmetics, when we actually sell cosmetics to do things like Arcane. iot is a company driven by one mission: to constantly strive to improve the lives of gamers. This is why we have managed to do this again and again in many games and now in multiple businesses/media – gaming, sports, music and animation. Are we getting everything right? No not at all. But we’re not focused on extracting short-term profits – we’re focused on delivering exceptional value to our audiences over the long term, over and over and over again. To be clear, Arcane is a success for the players and is therefore a success for us”.
The man, who seems slightly annoyed by these unfounded and quite off-topic criticismstherefore confirms that the studio is satisfied with the experience ofArcane. He also explains that for Riot Games, the main project is the MOBA League of Legends and that all experiments and side projects are tests and trials. Like the new game modes which are often temporary or the different collaborations. And it is certain that not all the tests are conclusive, but in any case, the studio’s objective is not to aim for profitability in the short term.
So, should fans be afraid for what comes next? Concretely, no. We already know that the project Arcane was supposed to last five seasons before being reduced to just two. A few days after the series ended, Riot Games confirmed that three new series are expected to arrive soon. If it is not a direct sequel toArcanethese series should still take place in the same universe and provide some references.
Of course, and let’s be realistic, the question of profitability could well become a brake on the creative process if the next projects do not work. But it is certain that neither Riot Games nor Tencent will make the same mistake with upcoming projects and that events, derivative products and other things will be put in place to capitalize as much as possible on the series, as was the case for season 2 ofArcane. As Marc Merill has already indicated, upcoming series and projects similar to Arcane have very strong and significant potential. To be continued!
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