Riot’s Co-Founder Defends Arcane‘s Massive Budget

With Arcane season two act two in the books, fans worldwide have put on their college lit major thinking caps to speculate how Netflix’s Emmy award-winning League of Legends series will conclude. Others, however, have taken on the role of armchair executives critiquing the vast amount of money Riot Games spent to get the show out the door. Now, Riot Games’ chief has come forward, calling the whole pocket-watching conversation “silly.”

In a recent Reddit AMA (first reported by IGN), Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill rebuffed discourse surrounding the animated show’s massive budget. A couple of weeks ago, Variety reported that Riot Games spent $250 million developing both seasons of Arcane, including an extensive marketing campaign. In short, Arcane‘s 18 episodes make it one of, if not the most expensive animated shows of all time. A crucial part of Variety’s reporting couched Arcane‘s immense budget as a sign of Riot Games’ inexperience in navigating the entertainment industry, by giving it a budget far exceeding the norm for an animated show not being distributed directly by the studio. Moreover, Variety argued that Riot Games is struggling to progress deeper into the entertainment industry because it spent big bucks getting Arcane out the door. Merril claims the opposite, stating that Riot Games’ high price tag for Arcane proves the studio is willing to pay its artists their worth to make a must-watch show.

“All of Arcane‘s budget goes to talent. Animators, concept artists, voice actors, sound designers, story boarders, composers. etc. The character animation alone makes up about 80% of the budget because we hand animate every frame to hit this type of quality,” Merrill wrote. “Anyone complaining about the development budget being high is actually complaining about us paying talent, and complaining about us putting art first. Arcane is a great thing for every person working in animation as it helps point towards the value of higher budgets.”

Merril also addressed the conjecture from Variety’s article claiming Arcane was initially billed as a five-season show. A tidbit of information that had fans scratching their heads when Netflix announced the show’s second season would be its last.

“Arcane was always written to be two seasons. The confusion is because internally there was a budget conversation about ‘approving 5 seasons’–which simply means we were setting aside a bunch of money for lots of development and is completely irrelevant to the Arcane creative. The creative and making something great is what the priority should always be for Riot and our teams,” Merril wrote. “We have also always envisioned telling more stories and continuing to expand the universe. That hasn’t ever changed–people just jump at rumors or misleading headlines and Riot didn’t correct them–but given those rumors gained momentum, happy to clarify.”

He continued: “Just because that is our intent, doesn’t mean it’s easy or that we can pump these things out like a factory–just like making games that are worthy of players’ time/love is really hard, so too is telling great stories and making incredible shows/films (especially when we are building it from scratch for the first time). That is always what Rioters are focused on (or should be focused on), no matter what 3rd party rumors say.”

As Merrill suggests, Arcane‘s final season does not mark the end of Riot Games’ collaboration with French animation studio Fortiche in creating League of Legends series. Co-creator Christian Linke has previously hinted at more to come beyond the conclusion of Arcane.

“Arcane is just the beginning of our larger storytelling journey and partnership with the wonderful animation studio that is Fortiche,” Linke said in the original video confirming Arcane‘s conclusion after aseason 2. “From the very beginning, since we started working on this project, we had a very specific ending in mind, which means the story of Arcane wraps up with this second season. But Arcane is just the first of many stories that we want to tell in Runeterra.”

The first two acts of Arcane Season 2 are streaming now on Netflix, and the third and final act will premiere on November 23.

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