Riot Games will keep spending

The head of North American esports operations for Riot Games has a message for concerned League of Legends fans: “We’re not cutting budget.”

Chris Hopper told The Associated Press on Friday night the company has no plans to pull back on spending, insisting the North American League of Legends Championship Series will continue to spend what’s necessary to meet fan expectations. The league is set to crown its sixth summer champion today at Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.

Fans of League of Legends, a multiplayer online battle arena video game, have become concerned over Riot’s investment in the esport after the company struggled to secure a venue for its world championship and held other recent major events at smaller venues than normal. Some are worried about the game’s sagging popularity amid the rise of battle royale games such as Fortnite, though League of Legends still has a large and loyal following.

Those fears weren’t entirely assuaged when Derrick Asiedu, Head of Global Events for Riot, released a statement on Reddit defending the company’s annual budget “way over” $100 million while noting that “if revenue does not pick up enough [in three years], our budget will need to decrease by some amount.” Asiedu said Riot is “experimenting with cutting back costs in some places to see how fans feel about it.”

“Some of the language in that Reddit post was sort of overblown in relation to the message Derrick was trying to get across,” said Hopper, the Head of North American Esports at Riot.