How will 2025 changes affect League of Legends Playerbase?

2025 is a big year for League of Legends as Riot is introducing new lore driven Seasons, a new way of delivering content that puts players into thematic, story-driven gameplay. Seasons will impact champion releases, game modes, events and rewards and change the League of Legends experience. Here’s a rundown of what’s to come.

What are Seasons?

Seasons redefines their role in League of Legends by splitting the year into three seasons, each with two Acts. These storylines will explore a single region of Runeterra and its lore throughout the year. It will be the backdrop for the game’s content throughout the year. The Season theme will guide updates to gameplay, champion releases, skin releases and in-game activities.

For example, 2025 Season will pick up right where Arcane ended, with Noxus conflict spilling over to Piltover. Champions and skins will fit into this story, events will enhance the theme and players will be connected to the lore and the world. While standalone events like Lunar Revel and April Fools will still exist, most 2025 content will be tied to the Seasonal narrative.

Check when lol seasons start and end here.

Client Redesign

The League of Legends client will get a major facelift to match the Seasonal theme, with a cleaner and more streamlined interface.

Activity Center: The new homepage will be the central place to track Seasonal progress, participate in events and stay up to date on ongoing storylines. From Seasonal mini-games to ranked play, everything you need will be in one place.

Info Hub: News and patch notes will move to a separate section, so the main interface stays clean and you can easily find updates on champions, skins, esports and cinematics.

Battle Pass

The Event Pass is being replaced with a more streamlined Battle Pass. This new system will have clear and easy to understand rewards tied to Seasonal activities.

• Duration: The Battle Pass will span four patches to give more time to progress and less grind.
• Progression: Battle Pass Experience (BXP) is earned through play and missions, including daily, weekly and Act-specific objectives. This system is flexible and supports all playstyles.
• Rewards: Free players can earn two skins per Act—one Seasonal skin and one random 1350 RP skin. Paid passes get you three more skins, a Prestige skin and exclusive cosmetics like borders and emotes.

Simplifying Rewards and Systems

Riot is simplifying many in-game systems to make things clearer and more engaging:

• Skin Acquisition: Skin shards and crafting materials are being replaced with direct rewards in the Battle Pass. Hextech Chests will still exist for those who like random rewards but Masterwork Chests and Event Tokens are being removed.
• Honor System Revamp: High-Honor players will get more rewards, including more BXP and exclusive social features. The Honor Shop and Tokens will be sunset.
• Champion Mastery Integration: Champion Mastery rewards will now feed into Battle Pass progression so all game modes are equal.

A Seasonal Experience

Seasons aim to tie gameplay, visuals and story together into one journey. The thematic influence will extend from champion skins to client visuals to create a unified Runeterran experience. For example, a war-themed Season might have champion skins as soldiers or spies, events and game modes will put you on the battlefield.

How Will This Affect the League Player Base?

Riot Games is capitalizing on the momentum created by the success of Arcane, with a second show already in development. The question remains whether lore-driven events will resonate with players and sustain engagement.

Assessing the state of League’s player base is challenging due to Riot Games’ status as a privately-owned company. Transparency regarding player statistics has been limited. The most recent official update came in October 2021, when Riot announced 180 million logins across its titles.

However, this figure lacks clarity, as logging into multiple Riot games counted users multiple times, making the actual number of unique players ambiguous.

While concrete data is sparse, Riot’s API statistics provide some insight. These numbers, focused on ranked games and accounts, suggest a slight decline in activity—approximately 10% compared to the pandemic years, which saw inflated engagement.

Although this doesn’t paint a full picture of the player base, it offers a rough comparison to previous seasons. It remains to be seen if Riot’s renewed focus on lore and storytelling will reverse this trend or further redefine the League experience.

Controversy: Free-to-Play Reward Reduction

The new reward system has been met with backlash for limiting options for free players suggesting that 2025 may not be as sweet as Riot hopes.

In the old system players could earn skin shards through Hextech crafting and use Orange Essence to craft whatever skin they wanted. This gave players a sense of accomplishment.

The new system gives out raw skins instead of shards which removes the ability to choose. Many players are saying this reduces the value of free rewards as they are now limited to fewer options and have no control over which skins they get. And the removal of Mastery chest rewards further limits free players ability to earn cosmetics.

The lack of flexibility for free players has overshadowed the hype for Seasons. Players are upset about the loss of choice in skins, fewer free rewards and the removal of systems like crafting materials. Many feel this is monetization over player satisfaction and is alienating the free player base.

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Next Up

Seasons is Riot’s attempt to create a more cohesive and immersive LoL experience. While the narrative driven content and streamlined systems have potential the controversy over free player changes shows the divide in the player base.

Whatever your playstyle 2025 will change LoL. The first Season drops in January and players will get to start a new chapter in the Runeterra story. But will the community adjust and will Riot fix the free rewards?