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Update: Refer-a-Friend now retired

Riot·9/4/2015, 1:15:09 AM·7 votes·107,774 views

UPDATE: The Refer-a-Friend program is now shut down. We will be unable to provide support for issues with redeeming RAF rewards after October 5 2015, so please make sure to send in any support tickets before then. Thanks for participating over the years, and stay tuned for more ways to connect with your friends!

Refer-a-Friend, a system built to make it easy and rewarding to bring your friends into League originally launched in 2010. It was an old dog, so we updated Refer-a-Friend a few times over the years to make prize tiers more achievable and reduce botting. Since relaunching RAF we’ve been tracking how new and referring players play with the feature and the results show it’s not helping players find new people to game with. In fact, we experimented with turning RAF off in some regions, and there was no discernible change in social behaviors. League’s social systems should make it easier and more rewarding to hit the Rift with friends, but RAF just doesn’t meet that bar anymore. Because of that, we’re retiring the program in thirty days.

Recent features like Party IP, friend discovery and last month’s Team Up and Pool Party helped players play with friends and unlock cool rewards while doing it. We plan on forging ahead, concepting, building, and supporting social systems and features that do all the above.

In the meantime, RAF remains fully operational, so you can still earn up to 5000 IP, as well as Grey Warwick and Medieval Twitch by referring five friends before August 20. Once the program wraps, the two skins become limited edition, but may return as rewards for another social system somewhere down the line. High-volume referrers from legacy versions of RAF remain on our radar as well. We’re actively working with each individual to fulfill their rewards and won’t consider RAF genuinely wrapped until that work is complete.

RAF closes down on September 5. We’ll hang around the comments to clear anything up!

374 Comments

9Lives9/5/2015, 5:44:55 PM135 votes

Instead of closing it down because "no one used it" or because the other social events were more effective.. why not just give the system more exposure?

Those other social events are plastered everywhere on the launcher/news page etc. so of course people will know about it. The R.A.F system? It's just been collecting dust obviously because no one even bothers mentioning it. But you expect people, new or old, to use something that you don't even mention.

And well, I don't know about everyone else but I don't bring new people to the game because there's Party IP lol. It does it's job by getting people to play with their friends, but I think that's existing friends (Or maybe new friends because you both want the extra IP) and not actual new players.

Zimmerman699/5/2015, 5:24:07 PM59 votes

Refer what friends?Amumu

Rew7119/5/2015, 5:19:01 PM42 votes

Ya know, its kind of sad its being closed down today. . . because today is my birthday of all things...

Tentacle Love9/5/2015, 6:17:35 PM23 votes

I referred plenty of friends, but getting them to level ten was obnoxious. Leveling your summoner account is miserably slow.

If you want more people to play the game, don't make the initial experience so shitty.

UdyrOnWheels9/5/2015, 5:34:38 PM16 votes

Rest in Pepperonis 'Refer-a-Friend' You will be missed. Just as much as the skins that no one got. May you rest knowing that Not many knew exactly what you did.item 3070

BloodLord Kitty9/5/2015, 5:20:40 PM8 votes

Can you pls make both skins (grey Warwick and Medievel Twitch) unavailable at all time? I feel like they are special and i dont want to see new players playing using them "because they were in the shop and we like them". All of us who managed to get both by either creating new accounts in other region (i got one account level 10 in South american while i was taking spanish class) or by simply showing someone the game. Thank you if you do.

SurelyThisCantBe9/5/2015, 5:34:22 PM3 votes

ITS ONLY BEEN 29 days ffs me and my friends got 4 accounts up but the 5th is at level 9 dammit :/ , usually when they say it ends on September 5th it will end at midnight on september 5th not in the morning weird way to run it

Saltiest Yordle9/5/2015, 7:18:37 PM2 votes

RIP Refer A Friend