Image elements: Riot Games
Riot claims they made the move to sustain League of Legends' "long-term health."
League of Legends (LoL) developer Riot Games has been under fire since the beginning of Season 2025, and it looks like trouble won’t be leaving soon. Player dissatisfaction looks to be at an all-time high in the LoL community, especially since the removal of Hextech Chests.
A recent dev blog by Andrei 'Meddler' van Roon, Head of League Studio and a Senior Vice President, as well as LoL executive producer Paul 'Pabro' Bellezza addressed some changes to improve on the reward system to make things lighter for the players. However, bringing back the Hextech Chests wasn’t one of them.
Why are they removing the Hextech Chests?
“When we initially added them, we wanted to offer an additional reward for time spent using something we knew many of you really cared about earning: skins. And for a while, we think that worked well for both players and the business side of League,” Meddler explained.
“Over time, though, free chests unintentionally became the primary way to unlock skins, and an increasing number of players ended up with substantial skin collections for free,” Meddler added.
According to him, adding the Hextech Chests made purchasing skins directly to “not make sense anymore,” because players were just happy with what they got.
“That did lead to a great player experience, but it was not sustainable for League in the long term.”
Pabro and Meddler also emphasised that this move was made to make everything about LoL’s “long-term health” and sustainability. They ended the statement on the Hextech chests by ensuring that LoL remains to be a fully free-to-play game.
“We believe a change like this, while unpopular, is the right call and allows us to deliver not just on our plans today but also our plans for League in the future.
What changes to the Battle Pass and rewards are coming?
Meddler and Pabro also discussed what changes they’re making to the reward system, including the Battle Pass. Riot Games is updating the League of Legends Battle Pass with better skins, mission tweaks, and easier champion unlocks.
"We've heard feedback that Battle Pass skins aren't good enough," said Pabro. "We're adding more distinct visual effects and model changes." Future skins will also move away from strict season themes to avoid repetitive designs.
These changes won’t be immediate. "Because skins take time to adjust, these updates won’t appear in the Act 2 Battle Pass, but they’ll be in Season 2 starting in May," said Meddler.
Unlocking a Battle Pass skin will now also unlock the champion if you don’t own them. "Pass skins won’t affect when a champion gets their next regular skin," Pabro clarified. "If Alistar is in Act 2’s Battle Pass, he can still get another skin this year."
Missions are also getting fixes. "We're removing unpopular missions that require playing with purchased skins," Pabro said. Meddler added, "Hard missions like ‘Destroy 5 Turret Plates in a Single Game’ will be reworked."
‘Riot will learn the hard way’
The dev update did not go very well with players. In fact, it seemed like with Riot doubling down on the removal of Hextech chests discouraged and turned away plenty of players.
The comments on social media platforms have been filled with messages of players asking the devs to bring back the Hextech Chests.
Even popular LoL content creators were discouraged, like content creator jayden, who said, “You can still bring back Hextech Chests,” with a modified photo of Jayce holding a Hextech Chest.
Popular YouTuber and streamer Dumbs also had a similar sentiment, saying “Why not just nerf them if they were a huge problem?”
Another content creator, CyberAceVT pointed out on X (formerly Twitter) that “the chances of getting a skin from a free hextech chest is low as it is, most of the time I get champ shards or essence.”
One of the more controversial and viral reactions was on Reddit, where Redditor Maklia claims that “Riot is making (almost) the same mistake” as another AAA gaming company.
“"League is dead/will die" is a term commonly thrown around whenever someone quits the game, but for the first time league seem to be in actual danger of just losing too many players to keep up,” the post said, and making another important point.
“We all know whales are the ones paying the big bucks, but we also know that whales need the common players to actually play the game.”
The thread got over 13,000 upvotes and around 2,000 comments.
“When you lose your goodwill with players, it’s tough to get them back. Riot will learn the hard way,” warned Redditor CardboardVendor in the comments section.
“Taking away aspects of the player experience such as rewards for playing, just feels bad,” another Redditor thySilhouettes said in the comments, sharing how they’ve stopped playing the game even if they were “diehard League player.”
Others like Redditor Ayenitt, shared that they thought the Hextech chests weren’t the problem, but that the quality of the skins have dropped. Plenty others replied to her comment, reminiscing the clever skins Riot dropped over the past years like Papercraft Anivia, Papercraft Nunu, Dunkmaster Draven, and more.
“Companies get so greedy they forget that their money comes from... players. Once the players loose trust and turn against you, its over,” Redditor LiaThePetLover said in response to the Reddit post.
With many players still disgruntled and Riot not making adjustments, it remains to be seen how the situation will unfold. While Riot Games is pushing forward with its vision for the game's long-term sustainability, the backlash from players suggests that the removal of Hextech Chests has left a lasting impact.
Whether the upcoming reward system changes will be enough to regain player trust is uncertain, but for now, the frustration within the community continues to grow.
