Riot revealed their thoughts behind their 2023 monetization strategy, but fans are not happy with it.
Riot recently released a blog post talking about their monetization models. There they outlined the strategies they've applied throughout the year, touching upon their philosophy of creating paid content and free content, but they didn't outright mention their gacha system for mythic variants.
Riot Pupulasers and Just a capybara spoke about the League of Legends business model in the final Dev Vlog of 2023 as well. There they tried to give reasons for the specific content once again. However, fans are stating that the price tag isn't the issue with some of these "skins", but rather the monetization model behind them.
LoL: Fans Not Happy With Gambling Model In League of Legends
I think the community would... "respect" the Mythic Scam skins a little more if they just had a $200 price instead of a gacha system by u/Macaulyn in leagueoflegends
Now, I have to say that I am an avid Genshin Impact player, so I know the gacha sysem all too well and probably have no right to say anything about predatory monetization models in games... but I digress.
League of Legends is a free to play game and will always remain that, but we have to be aware that Riot Games is a business so they have to make their money somehow, which comes from cosmetics in the game. In the Dev Vlog, Pupulasers and Just a capybara stated that there are some things players can earn in the game, while others can only be bought.
This probably refers to things like mastery level, which are earned simply by playing, while prestige skins have to be bought – or can be earned if you're patient enough with free chests to scrape up enough mythic essence.
That's why Riot has created even more "luxury" goods which will cost more, like the mythic variants. Now, fans were not exactly thrilled when these skins were introduced, but it really wasn't just because of the hefty price tag. Instead, it's because of the way these skins are earned.
Instead of just adding them to the mythic shop and slapping a $200 price tag on them, players are enticed to pull on a gacha system, where they have a small chance of receiving the skin early. This is the part that has most fans enraged.
Add in the fact that Riot even admitted that a skin with such a price tag can also never be 10x better than a $20 skin.
[...] there's no way that a $200 skin in League can be fully 10x better than a $20 skin... mostly because we can’t add 10x the features of a Legendary without utterly destroying gameplay clarity.
Of course, there are always going to be whales who will pay any and every price for such a skin, but the system behind it just doesn't feel right, and it seems awkward to introduce it to League of Legends – and TFT – after so many years.