We’ve talked before about the type of work that goes into keeping rotating game modes functional: Things like new and updated champs, abilities, items, runes, and skins don’t always play nice with modes. Changes or refactors to the game’s underlying code—like how damage is recorded or how textures are loaded into game—can be even more problematic, as the rapid development cycle of RGMs often means we’re building them with duct tape and bubble gum. Back when we were releasing modes more frequently, this type of upkeep work took about half of the Modes team’s total time.

But what about customs? Wouldn’t it be okay for rotating game modes to be a bit buggy if there’s nothing on the line, and shouldn’t that make it easy for Riot to offer rotating game modes in customs?



The answer is no. We aren’t willing to offer a knowingly—basically intentionally—buggy experience for customs because we want your League experience to be high quality regardless of how you’re playing. Principled stances aside, some bugs are bad enough that they can crash entire game servers, meaning hundreds of matches would crash, not just the customs they occur in. So even if we were willing to let players opt into a buggy experience in custom games, it’d still lead to risks for the rest of League players as well.

That means it takes the same amount of work to bring a mode back for customs as it does to bring it back for queues, which takes us back to our previous discussions around why we’ve chosen to invest our time into developing new modes, rather than keeping older modes on rotation.