Riot Games says Project L will be free-to-play

Project L, the next fighting game to be published by Riot Games, was officially announced as a free-to-play game in a video posted by the project’s lead director and executive producer, Tom Cannon. While gamers speculated that Project L would likely be a free-to-play game, it has now been officially confirmed.

The upcoming 2D beacon-based fighter was first announced at Evo 2019. After the initial announcement, the project sat in the dark for a year before a major update video was released in November 2021. Since then, announcements were still infrequent, but updated videos and blog posts have gradually become more frequent.

In the latest update video posted by Tom Cannon, he officially confirmed that Project L will be a free-to-play game. However, she talks about making money and how she wants it to be “respectful of both your time and your wallet”. This monetization will likely take the form of unlocking champions and purchasing champion skins, both of which are monetization models used by League of Legends.

Free-to-play fighting games have received more attention recently with the release of the MultiVersus open beta, with over 100,000 concurrent players participating as a free-to-play game. MultiVersus allows players to spend real money on characters and skins, lending more credence to the idea that Project L will go in that direction.