Blogs
on December 4, 2025
However, no canned corporate apology can take the place of common sense, and I'd hazard to guess most rational people can see through Riot's denial. The writing is on the wall, and in the court of public opinion, it spells out a pretty grim message. It's hard to read through Stephanie's account and walk away with anything other than disgust at how stressful and dehumanizing this experience has been for her. A real flesh and blood person has been distilled down into a hollow facsimile, then sold for more profit than most of us will ever seen in our lives. It's nauseating on every possible le
** Max Grossman: ** It was very much a gameplay-first situation, and the fantasy of Killjoy being this young, hotshot German engineer came after the fact. Many of our characters went that same way. We tend to start with gameplay mechanics first, especially since the game was in development for a very long time. Killjoy is one of the oldest characters in the whole roster, and she went through quite a few different iterations before we got to the final one. We test a toolkit first and experiment with varying ideas of gameplay. Or at least what we think is going to work. Then, during that initial prototyping, we try to figure out what "theme" appeals to that gameplay fant
Similarly, the gameplay updates modernized both champions without alienating the fans who grew to love them over the years. Fiddlesticks still has an AOE Crowstorm and targeted fear, yet causes even greater chaos by chain CCing then draining the life from multiple enemies during a teamfight. Volibear no longer flips his foes, but truly lives up to the fantasy of a savage bear god mauling foes with thunderous strength. Either one plays just like before, only with new tricks and skill expression that let them stand up the current ros
This pales, of course, in comparison to these new allegations. The amount of detail that has gone into this meticulous recreation of Stephanie's photos, faces, hair, hobbies, and personality is frankly sick. It's the kind of behavior movies like Chasing Amy show as an irrevocably creepy and bad thing to do to somebody, only with millions of more dollars at stake. What Riot has essentially done here is been complicit in the strange, obsessive behavior of a woman's ex so they could profit directly from
Second, this isn't the first time Seraphine has been allegedly inspired by a real person. Jeevun Sidhu, a senior designer at Riot, tweeted out that the character is actually based on his partner - something that Stephanie has acknowledged . When that story went around, though, Riot didn't issue some weak tea statement about the character not being based on anybody. It was only when they were called out by very compelling evidence that they said literally anything about it, likely in fear over another Edgar Davids situati
Garen is Lux's older brother, and he also happens to be one of the best beginner-friendly champions because of how simple his kit is. Thanks to his passive, Garen can regain health as long as he is out of com
Moving forward, new champion releases shouldn't clash so closely with one another. Yone's debut heavily eclipsed Lillia's earlier arrival despite players knowing both would come out during the summer event. Furthermore, Seraphine's social media may have been planned months in advance, but this greatly took away from Samira who seemed like an afterthought. However, this year's schedule can largely be attributed to the shift cause by COVID-19, and it shouldn't be a sign that 2021 will continue an erratically slow or fast p
Kayle is one of the strongest late-game champions in League of Legends with a win rate of 53% and a ban rate of 8%, omnipresent due to her incredible late game scaling and solo carry potential. It's no surprise that she seems to have another nerf coming her way, as reported in the version 10.25 patch no
All feedback is meaningful, though. We rarely look at someone's critique and go, "that's not useful at all" — all opinions and feelings people have about Valorant are important. Whether or not we act upon those concerns is a complicated process, though. When Raze came out, for example, we tested her for bwipo so long with this power budgets and thought, "she's strong, but nothing crazy" — then the community got a hold of her and it turned out we were wr
** TheGamer: ** Some thought Killjoy's bright yellow jacket might make her stand out on the map more so than other Agents, painting a big target on her. How important is color palette in terms of combat readability when you're designing Age