While most economic consequences of the United Kingdom breaking apart from the European Union remain purely theoretical at this point, League of Legends players in the UK have surprisingly become one of the first groups directly affected by the process, with developer Riot Games publicly stating that the devaluation of the value of the British Pound since the Brexit voting took place is making them increase the price of the Riot Points, the virtual currency used in the game, in order to protect the parity between players around the world.
From July 25th, British players who spend £5 in the game will receive 790RP, instead of the 975RP they would be getting eariler. Users who spend £50 will get 8,600RP instead of 10,700RP. This effectively means a price increase of 20%. The RP price tag of champions, skins, and other items will remain the same.
The pricing structure is also getting modified, with the £2.50 getting dropped, and a new £15 being added, as a way to let players buy legendary skins without having to buy the £20 bundle.
Publishing executive Riot Benshirro has explained the situation through a forum post, in which he says that Riot has been monitoring the decreasing value of the British currency for the last year, which in turn created a disparity in the value of the purchases of players around the world: “Last June, the UK voted to leave the European Union, triggering a drop in the value of the pound relative to other global currencies, particularly the US dollar. This change meant that while UK players were spending the same number of pounds on RP as before, players elsewhere in the world were paying a lot more in comparison.”
However, the current state of the GBP and the future prospects has made Riot take action: “(…) It’s been over a year now and we feel we’ve reached the point where a price change is necessary to restore parity.”
Riot Games has made clear that all purchases made before July 25th will not be affected by the price hike, so there will definitely be a lot of UK players of League of Legends who will want to purchase as many RP as they can before the new prices take effect.
