Riot Games Confirms It's Making a Fighting Game

Riot Games, makers of the popular MOBA game League of Legends, confirmed that the company is working on a fighting game.

The news comes straight from Tom Cannon, co-founder of the Evolution Championship Series (or EVO as it’s more widely known), which is currently in its first day of its 2019 event. Cannon is also a Riot Games employee, following Riot’s acquisition of Radiant Entertainment. Cannon joined a talk show hosted during the event, where he confirmed the fighting game’s existence.

Breaking: EVO founder and Riot employee Tom Cannon has confirmed the worst kept secret in gaming – Riot is officially working on a fighting game, the first game outside of League of Legends for Riot pic.twitter.com/P3BGaVs4u4

— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) August 2, 2019

“Back in 2016, when we joined forces with Riot, I said we were going to go in the hole for a while, right?” Cannon said. “I wanted to let people in on maybe the worst kept secret in the universe, which is that I can confirm we are working on a fighting game for Riot.”

In a statement to IGN, Riot Games corroborated Cannon’s statement and confirmed the new fighting game’s existence.

“We have experienced the profound impact this genre can have on players and want to bring the fighting game experience to more people,” Riot stated. “We’re working hard to create a game truly worthy of the vibrant fighting game community and are making progress, but still have a long way to go before we’re ready to share more details.”

Cannon remained mum after the initial confirmation and did not provide further details.

Riot also did not confirm if the fighting game would be set in the League of Legends universe.

Riot Games acquired developer Radiant Entertainment in early 2016. Radiant are known for making Rising Thunder, the 2.5D giant robot fighting game, as well as the city building game Stonehearth. Development on Rising Thunder was halted after the acquisition by Riot, but Radiant released the source code for players in 2017.

EVO 2019 is certainly the place to announce a new fighting game. The longstanding tournament dropped Super Smash Bros. Melee for Ultimate, and features standbys like Street Fighter V, as well as Soul Calibur VI, Tekken 7, DragonBall FighterZ, and more. Riot also recently released Teamfight Tactics, the new League of Legends mode that works similarly to DOTA’s original auto chess mod.Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN. Shiki soku ze ku with him on Twitter.