LoL’s new Arena mode is great, but it may have cost us more champions this year

League of Legends’ Arena mode was finally added to the game in Patch 13.14, and players absolutely love it. But the mode may have delayed champion releases, among other things.

In an interview with PCGamesN on July 20, Eduardo “Cadmus” Cortejoso, the product lead on Arena, admitted creating the mode led to the team “divert[ing] resources from other projects.” Those projects include champions.

This year, only two new champions have made their way to Summoner’s Rift—Naafiri and Milio. In contrast, last year, the game saw five new additions, with Zeri joining the roster in January, and K’Sante closing out the year in November.

Looking at how it’s July already, it seems Riot has already slowed down with champion releases, and part of the reason is likely Arena. When compared to last year, at this point, players had already been introduced to four new champions.

But it’s worth mentioning Riot has been reworking champions this year, with Yuumi, Neeko, Rell, Aurelion Sol, Jax, and Ivern receiving gameplay updates. In 2022, only seven champs got this treatment.

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Still, it’s not like Riot fully withdrew from creating new champions. The next one in line should be Briar, but we don’t know much about them yet. From what we’ve seen so far, we believe they could be a mage of some sort, who leeches power from their enemies, similar to Vladimir.