My Condolences to The Board

I want to first start out by saying, Riot, I love your game. I wouldn't have been playing this long if I didn't. Even though there were some rough times through the seasons, I still had my fun. I enjoyed getting better, climbing, learning, experiencing new things, having fun...

But now it seems League of Legends has lost its soul once it sold its identity of being an small Indie company. The communication and collaboration it once had with its playerbase has deteriorated through the years-- and a lot of it was due to neglect to respond and react to the community's voice over the years. It has driven many long time veterans away from this game, and this saddens me because this game was the goto game for ALL of my friends whenever we wanted to relax, have fun, or even play a competitive game.

But here we are in Season 10, and Riot's relationship with it's own playerbase has reached the tipping point and it's all summed up with the recent post that Riot is closing down the forums.

The League of Legends forums, although it is more negative than positive(which may be more indicative of a problem external to the players complaining), is a place where players can voice their opinions on the game, the matchmaking, the state and balance of the champions, suggestions, and for the purpose of being heard by Riot or others in the community.

That's being taken away. It's clear now that Riot doesn't care for it's playerbase, the relationship is gone. So many games have gone down the gutter because of corporate greed and a stubborn neglect of its cash source, ie it's own customer base, and it is in large part because of a blatant refusal to listen, acknowledge customer complaints, and do their best to come up with some reply or solution.

Shutting down the forums when it's pretty clear that there is still a good amount of activity-- posts, comments, and each post receives atleast 2k views, so to say the forums are dead is a stretch to say the least.

All this is doing is further exacerbating the problem, which will definitely get worse since there is no attempt to stop the hemorrhaging, and is a clear sign their game is dying.

I believe none of us WANT that to happen, and those that are taking the time to post here, TRULY LOVE THIS GAME and want their complaints heard so changes can be made to make the game enjoyable again because clearly there is something wrong.

I still think League of Legends is the best game in the market. It lost a bit of its luster, but it's just such a great game that it can recover from it's mistakes and reach a higher pinnacle than before, but only if-- IF -- Riot can take its community seriously and collaborate with us and stop making top down decisions from its own microcosm of ideas and opinions.

Riot, I'm still rooting for you as a company because I believe in your game, your developers, your employees, but you need to BELIEVE IN YOUR COMMUNITY.

Best Regards, Some Salty Community Crustacean