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Why Doesn't Riot Use Fan Skin Concepts More Often?

Ir Abelas·3/26/2019, 1:01:06 AM·4 votes·5,090 views

I mean really, these are skins created by fans for champions, the champion they made the skin for often being the one they play or simply like the most. It's like your sibling or friend or whatever literally bringing you to the store, and pointing at exactly what they want for their birthday. It just seems kind of foolish, and a huge missed opportunity for a lot of money, not to take up these concepts, most of which are made by dedicated artist with real skill.

I've tried to wrap my head around this question for so long, because I've seen hundreds of fan made concepts that were so perfectly crafted and thought out that they looked like official work, and yet Riot rarely takes these ideas up. So far, I've only been able to come up with three reasons as to why they wouldn't want to use these concepts.

  1. They might end up having to pair the artist for using their concept.

  2. They simply don't want to have to give credit to somebody that doesn't work at Riot.

  3. The combination of reasons 1 and 2.

4 Comments

4 Step Cadence3/26/2019, 1:04:22 AM3 votes

Dragon Trainer Heim, Pizza Delivery Sivir, Meowrick, probably a few more.

They tend to use the ones that have a lot of thought put into them, as well as popularity. Dragon Trainer Heim was one of the more thought out and popular ones I've seen. Another example would be Elderwood Kindred, which I think is the most upvoted skin concept of all time(Riot make this FFS).

Rathar Dashing3/26/2019, 1:24:27 AM3 votes
  1. They could be extremely difficult skins to pull off. Fans often have a lot of imagination and creativity, that might look great on a Deviantart page, but wouldn't work realistically in game.
  2. The more fan drawings there are for a specific champion skin, for example Star Guardian Sona, the more Riot has to work to differentiate their skin from the fan concepts. Otherwise, they might run into plagiarism territory.
  3. Lots of fan skins use copyrighted material. Mario & Yoshi Kled, for example. Riot can't make fan skins like that without some sort of go-ahead from the owners, and people who don't like the copyrighted source would be very upset.
  4. Even if the skin is great and original, there will always be fans of the champion and skin complaining that it could have been done better, or that it WAS done better by X artist, and they should have gone with that artist's design.
Sukishoo3/26/2019, 1:30:45 AM2 votes

Both of Yoricks recent skins are based around fan concepts. Pretty Kitty Rengar was as well.

They've done fan concepts for years, some are just not as well known. Dragon Trainer Heimer is probably one of the more popular ones that happened recently. Riot though, they like to do their own concepts as well as see what fans have come up with. Some fan concepts are rather hard to bring to life in the game though, like Bloodmoon Eve for example was based around a fanwork but the one in game is very less detailed than the fan version cause that would use a lot more resources than the game can even allow.

EthreainAmbusher3/26/2019, 1:28:07 AM1 votes

They wouldn't have to pay them due to riot and it's ToS, or at least i've heard something such as this.

They really don't.

Yes but actually no.