The Future of Xbox Game Pass with Riot Games

One of the biggest announcements during the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase back in June of this year was that Riot Games would be bringing their titles over to the Xbox Game Pass platform. After a long period without any updates, it was revealed earlier this month that members would have access soon! The access came on December 12th in fact! With most of the titles and benefits available right now and another round expected to come in January, I thought it would be great to break down the positives and what may come from the future of this partnership.

We’ll start off with what went up already. All five of Riot Games’ current works are coming to the service and four of them are available now. Players can connect their Riot account to unlock benefits for Valorant, League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra, and Teamfight Tactics. The benefits for the first two titles include access to all current and future playable characters and 20% XP boosts. Legends of Runeterra will have all cards in the Foundations Set unlocked and Teamfight Tactics will have 1-Star Rare Little Legends Tacticians and regular Arena Skins.

The other game that will have support added is League of Legends: Wild Rift. Benefits will roll out starting in January and are similar to what was offered with the first two games: all 80+ champions, day-one access to new champions, and a 20% XP boost. Linking your accounts before January 1st, 2023 will also net you a bonus reward for each game.

If you’re wondering about other games such as Ruined King: A League of Legends Story or Hextech Mayhem: A League of Legends Story, those aren’t included. Although they are related to the flagship game as their titles imply, these are works only published by the Riot Forge label. They’re not developed by a Riot Games team and therefore aren’t identified as such.

That’s not to say that they may not be made available in the future through Xbox Game Pass though. Many of the benefits of playing their titles through the service are for unlocking content. These third-party games are single-player experiences, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be offered as free for subscribers like any other game on the service.

A much more interesting idea does come up when considering their future titles. We know Riot Games has been working on a number of things based in the League of Legends universe, including an MMORPG, the action RPG Project F, and the fighting game Project L. One has to wonder if this current partnership could extend to those projects as well.

It’s not hard to imagine special rewards being offered for the MMORPG. Project L will be following in line with their previous works by being F2P and that could mean that a rotating free selection of fighters is available while a deluxe version has everyone. That theoretical version of the game that has the whole roster could be offered through Xbox Game Pass. Project F is a bit harder to imagine because of how little we know about it. Presuming it is F2P, there’s sure to be some content that could be offered for free instead of having to grind for it.

A common question being floated around is whether any of these will come to consoles or now more specifically the Xbox platform. League of Legends: Wild Rift is presumably still set to come to consoles and it would make a lot of sense for Project L to be on consoles as well since those platforms always attract more players than PC will.

It would make a lot of sense for any potential console versions of their games to be available through Xbox Game Pass. A much more extreme possibility could be this partnership leading to console exclusivity as well, although that does seem to clash with Riot Games’ seeming desire to build big communities that can all play with each other.

Taking Riot Games out of the equation, there is a lot to think about when considering other games. Teamfight Tactics and Legends of Runeterra are both available to play on PC or mobile devices. League of Legends: Wild Rift is purely only on mobile at the moment. Microsoft technically offers support for playing games on mobile devices through its Xbox Cloud Gaming service, but this is the first time that Xbox Game Pass will support strictly mobile games. This shows that they’re willing to provide benefits for games that can’t even be played on their own hardware or platforms.

What’s to say we wouldn’t see this same line of thinking being offered for other mobile games or anything that wouldn’t be available to their own client? I’ll admit this is an extreme example, but could you imagine if they offered something like Genshin Impact in this manner along with extra benefits? This could be the start of a new direction for Xbox Game Pass, expanding to other clients and connecting more large user bases in the future.