For the tenth anniversary of its Chinese server, League of Legends is dressing up the Hangzhou Metro in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Subway cars, for example, have been done up to look like different LoL regions.
As League of Legends (via Twitter user lolweibo) announced through its official Weibo account, ten Hangzhou Metro stations have been made over, with each one marking one year of the anniversary. The account thanked players for the past decade.
The makeover isn’t just a few posters here or there, but a proper effort. Just check out the subway cars.
Back in 2008, Riot Games launched with an initial $7 million in capital. Tencent helped the company launch League of Legends in China, and by 2011, the West Los Angeles company was a subsidiary of the Chinese multinational technology conglomerate.
Over the past ten years, League of Legends has become wildly popular in China and abroad, with the game becoming a dominant esports force. The 2019 League of Legends World Championship became the world’s most popular esport event, garnering over 100 million viewers and peaking at 44 million concurrent ones.
That same year, Riot banned League of Legends players and commentators from speaking out about politics and human rights.
“We serve fans from many different countries and cultures, and we believe this opportunity comes with a responsibility to keep personal views on sensitive issues (political, religious, and otherwise) separate,” wrote Riot global head of esports John Needham at the time. “These topics are often incredibly nuanced, require deep understanding and a willingness to listen, and cannot be fairly represented in the forum our broadcast provides. Therefore, we have reminded our casters and pro players to refrain from discussing any of these topics on air.”
With the impact the game’s made in China and the way it’s become entrenched in the country, no doubt the Hangzhou Metro better ready itself for another big anniversary in another ten years.
Kids in China, though, might not be able to play as much LoL as they’d like.
