In a blog post on the Riot website, Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street from Riot Creative Development and IP explained that due to the quarantine and COVID-19 pandemic, the entire production schedule was blown off course and the show won’t see the light of day for at least another year. Introduced during Riot’s 10 year anniversary strea, Arcane takes the champion and world of the MOBA and creates a narrative around it. The mechanical areas of Piltover and Zaun were featured in teaser footage, but there hasn’t been any word on the project until this update.
“We were really looking forward to bringing you the show this year, but we need to balance our excitement for the story with the safety and well-being of our teams and partners,” Street wrote. “I know this news is probably disappointing. We are disappointed. But Arcane is shaping up to be an amazing story and one we’ll share with you as soon as we can.”
The show is animated by French production company Fortiche that worked on past Riot projects like the K/DA music video that premiered at the World Championship in 2018. The blog post mentions problems stemming from not being able to see your coworkers IRL and “technical difficulties of production at the international scale” leading to the delay.
Riot Games has managed to accomplish more in 2020 than a lot of other studios. League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra and Teamfight Tactics all see regular updates and patches. Valorant, the first person shooter with a heroic twist, was launched in early June and only had a few server hiccups to deal with. The company tries to maintain a level of quality before releasing a project, it’s why we went a decade with the “s” in “Riot Games” being undeserved.
Word on the other projects that were revealed during the 10th anniversary stream like the fighting game Project L and the top-down beat’ em’ up Project F, still remain unknown.
It’s no surprise that the Arcane show has been delayed, but it is still disheartening. The world of Runeterra has really grown over the pat few years, with multiple cinematics and stories posted to Riot’s website and social media account. Having beautiful landscapes move in the distance while Heimerdinger shares his work or the gross world of Zaun brought to life will tide over the most hardcore of the fan base.
