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Ex-Rioter Stellari on the Divide between Unpopular and Popular skin sales

ModCaptainMårvelous·9/15/2019, 1:15:46 AM·48 votes·21,995 views
Hi Stellari (Janelle J.) on Twitter

https://twitter.com/thejanellemj/status/1158423105481535489?s=20

For those who can't access twitter:

Not a scientific poll, but the results again show that people don't understand how insanely wide the gulf is between popular and unpopular. Let's put it this way, one time a great skin for an unpopular champ made less than my annual salary at the time GLOBALLY.

And I wasn't making 6 figures at the time.

Now, of course she can't say what skin it was nor what champion just that it was a great skin for an unpopular champion. Now, let's make the assumption that this was a 1350 skin (About ~12 dollars or so) and let's also make the leap that Stellari at the time made 99,999 USD annually because reasons.

With this, you can narrow down that out of a global audience, just short of nine thousand people bought this skin. Nine, thousand. Regardless of what you think League's playerbase is now, that's abyssal. Like bottom-of-the-ocean-tier-skin-sales. Of course I'm sure there are arguments people could make/question such as if that champion was strong, if they were old/new, if the skin really was well made, etc. No matter what, this is just kind of a morbid reminder about how utterly massive the gap is between a popular and unpopular champion.

121 Comments

KestrelGirl9/15/2019, 1:31:43 AM60 votes

That HAS to have been either Mecha Sol or Dunkmaster Ivern. There's just no other answer. Or a similarly flopped release a longer time ago.

Arakadia9/15/2019, 1:45:23 AM41 votes

That is indeed insane, but I doubt most unpopular skin sales are that bad. Stelari is most likely not lying when she says there is a huge difference between popular and unpopular skins, but this is not a good representation for that difference.

And I will continue to partially blame Riot for champions being very unpopular. Of course your going to barely make any money off a skin like Mecha Sol when the skin is poorly done, poorly picked, for a champion that is very hard to pick up, and also completely neglected by Riot.

Spooky Skeleton9/15/2019, 10:48:56 AM15 votes

Sounds like some of the papercraft skins. They are amazingly well made but unfortunately didn't sell well.

This just further damns anyone who likes unpopular champions though. You either go full weeb and buy your weekly lux/kai'sa skin or you wait patiently for 6 years for your Urgot skin.

kaijukitten9/15/2019, 4:00:56 AM13 votes

{quoted}

https://twitter.com/thejanellemj/status/1158423105481535489?s=20

For those who can't access twitter:

Now, of course she can't say what skin it was nor what champion just that it was a great skin for an unpopular champion. Now, let's make the assumption that this was a 1350 skin (About ~12 dollars or so) and let's also make the leap that Stellari at the time made 99,999 USD annually because reasons.

With this, you can narrow down that out of a global audience, just short of nine thousand people bought this skin. Nine, thousand. Regardless of what you think League's playerbase is now, that's abyssal. Like bottom-of-the-ocean-tier-skin-sales. Of course I'm sure there are arguments people could make/question such as if that champion was strong, if they were old/new, if the skin really was well made, etc. No matter what, this is just kind of a morbid reminder about how utterly massive the gap is between a popular and unpopular champion.

Yeah but she mean RIOT thinks it's a great skin, or players thought it was a great skin? Cuz there's a massive difference. Like what RIOT seems to think is great and what we want seems to generally be the opposite of such.

XJ999999999999999/15/2019, 1:54:04 AM13 votes

the ones that are buffed the most and most forgiving are the huge sales. ivern/sol are unpopular due to uniqueness in kit and being "boring", thus no one plays them. if they were overtuned people would play them thus making skin sales go up.

i dont believe rioters. ive seen them lie first hand plenty of times. just because they used to be a rioter doesnt mean they are some almighty trustworthy being

Predatorator9/15/2019, 11:55:26 AM12 votes

Conclusion? Is it right for me to wait potentially 5 years or more for a xerath skin? Because i hardly see xerath getting more popular than he is, unless changes around him will massively favour him, since i wouldn't count on him getting a rework/buffed prior to his skin

DalekZec9/15/2019, 8:31:33 PM8 votes

Which begs the question: do the players who play these unpopular champs they love even matter?

Yay money and shit. But this pisses me off so much.

Linna Excel9/15/2019, 3:40:49 PM7 votes

I'm curious as to which skin it was considering that despite millions of players it got under 9000 units sold. My first thought is that it has to be a low pick rate champ like ivern or skarner. My second thought is that it was something like challenger nidalee or one of the once a year event skins and riot picked the wrong champ.

If you figure that there are about 5 million active players (probably a little lower with alt accounts) that gives you a maximum possible baseline. So every 1% of the player base that regularly plays a champ is about 50,000 players per percentage point. So that means even for the most unpopular champs that rarely get skins, less than 20% of that champ's player base buys skins for that champ when new ones are available. Now if it was a champ with say a 5% pick rate as that means 4% of the player base or less buys skins.

Things get really depressing when you figure in how many people it takes to make a skin. You've got the concept artist. The modeler. Maybe someone who just does rigging. Skin texture people. VFX people. Animators and SFX people if the skin needs any of that. You need QA people. You also need a producer in charge of it all. I'm sure I've forgotten other people. Plus you can't forget that you've got overhead and taxes you have to pay on teammembers as well as taxes on the sales. Putting all that time and money into a skin only for it to sell poorly is a financial kick in the nuts.

No wonder ahri and lux get a new skin every year.