The real truth behind runes

So I see threads practically every single day going on about runes prices. Why are runes so expensive? I'm not sure if people legitimately don't know or if they're playing dumb. Either way, I'm going to give you the exact truth of why runes cost as much as they do.

Let's start out with the obvious. League of Legends is a free to play (FTP) game. There is no box cost. No subscription fee. No DLC bundles to buy. All the content in the game that isn't purely aesthetic (skins) can be obtained with no actual currency purchases. Assuming you put in the time of course.

Alright, why is this important?

You see, Riot games is not a charity. It's a business. Being a business means it's actual goal is profit. If a company is not turning a profit, they don't stick around for very long. Now how do you turn a profit when you supply your product free of charge? You don't. There needs to be some sort of incentive to spend money on the game. This is where runes come in. They make you choose between getting a new champion or getting a new set of runes. This ends up persuading people to spend real life cash on RP to buy champions and save their IP for the runes.

This is a critical element of all free to play games. Sure, you could grind all the content the hard way. OR you could do it quicker by spending some money. This isn't unique to League of Legends. It is absolutely critical for the survival of the FTP structure. If we want LoL to continue existing as a FTP game, it needs to exist.

Another critical element to the FTP structure is that there needs to be some feeling of progression. I'm not sure about you, but when I first started playing finishing out and acquiring new pages felt like I was accomplishing something. They became goals and milestones. This type of feeling is necessary for keeping people interested in your game. This is also why you gain masteries and summoners as you level up. It's not some archaic dinosaur from the past. It's intentional.

So yes, Riot knows damn well the cost of runes and it's not an accident. They're not set at what they are for no reason. They're not deaf to the complaints.

However, this is where we as a community need to step up a bit. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If we want LoL to remain FTP, we need to suck it up and deal with it. Yes, it takes a very long time to grind for runes. Yes, that feeling of progression is gone when you're leveling a smurf. I have never heard soeone offer a fair alternative though. Whens the last time you heard someone say "Hey Riot, I would be willing to pay a subscription fee to be able to access all the runes" or "I would be willing to pay $50 for a copy of LoL if I had immediate access to more content"?

Riot does give some of it back to us indirectly as well. Let me use an example to illustrate my point. Lets take a look at Pulsefire Ezreal. This skin is an Ultimate skin and about 4 and a half years old now. However if held to today's standards it would be on par with a 1350 RP skin. 1820 RP at best. Do you think the price to produce higher quality skins magically got cut in half? No. You do still need good graphic designers and programmers to make these happen. Those cost money. This is just one example.

We need to be fair here because if Riot is not turning a profit, we have no game to play