Riot Games Will Remove Summoner Names and Use Riot IDs

Riot Games has decided to remove Summoner Names from League of Legends so players will only be able to use their Riot IDs as their universal IGN for all Riot Games titles. This has caused a lot of drama in the League of Legends community despite it seeming like a minor issue for outsiders. How has this minor change affected the enjoyment of the entire LoL community and what people think about the issue as a whole?

Riot Games to Remove Summoner Names

Riot Games has officially announced that they will remove Summoner Names from League of Legends and will instead be going strictly with Riot IDs as the primary IGN for all players. This new system will take effect on November 20, 2023, which gives players a few weeks to decide what name they want to use. Luckily, Riot Games allows players to change their IDs once per day so there really isn’t any repercussion to the player using this system.

Once this announcement went live, the community went wild as they blasted Riot Games with their opinions. The vast majority of players in the community didn’t care about this change but there are a large number of players who absolutely hated this new system in place. The hardcore League of Legends community and major personalities expressed why this new system will be problematic for the game as a whole.

Why Would it Be Bad to Use Riot IDs?

Let’s make one thing clear, Riot Games uses Riot IDs in a lot of their existing games already. However, this is a major change in League of Legends because the concept of Summoner Names has been around longer than Riot IDs. There are some players who kept their original Summoner Name when they first played the game but there are way more people who have spent either Blue Essence, which they spent countless hours to farm, or Riot Points, which they bought with their own money, to change their names.

People who have spent a lot of Blue Essence or RP to change their names feel bad that their investment is getting completely disregarded. However, Riot Games still allows players to keep their current Summoner Name to be used as their Riot Games ID. The problem is that Riot IDs aren’t as unique as Summoner Names which can’t be taken by another player. That means everybody can use the IGN “Faker” as long as they choose a different Riot ID code to pair with it.

The issue is that popular streamers and personalities can be copied by other players. For example, everybody can now use the name Tyler1 as their Riot ID because there is an almost infinite number of ways to combine the Username + Riot ID code to create a different variant of Tyler1 that hasn’t been used by other players. Since players are allowed to change their Riot ID once per day, it’s easy for the community to begin this trend.

The biggest issue is that players can now change their Riot IDs as often as they want and it will reflect in the game. Since it is free to change your Riot IDs, what is stopping the toxic and immature part of the community from abusing this system without investing anything at all to “make a joke” that’s only funny to them but harmful to others? Maybe Riot Games didn’t consider what would happen if they remove Summoner Names from League of Legends.

Why Will Riot Games Remove Summoner Names?

The main reason why Riot Games will remove Summoner Names has to do with their upcoming plan to introduce a unified lore. If you were an original League of Legends player, you might not know that Riot Games decided that the concept of “summoners” has been removed from the lore. There is no longer such a thing as summoners summoning champions to the rift. Instead, it is the champions themselves who voluntarily fight in the arena.

With Summoners no longer being relevant to the lore, there was no need to have the concept of Summoner Names. This might seem like it makes the slightest bit of sense but to be honest, it shouldn’t have been the first action to be taken. If Summoner Names were no longer needed in the game, it should have just been renamed or rebranded into League ID or something similar so people can remain being unique and creative in their name choice.

Should Riot Games Revert this Change?

Riot Games might not revert this change and it’ll be a permanent fixture in the League of Legends system. It doesn’t really impact the larger League of Legends community so there really isn’t any reason for the company to roll back on their decision. The important thing is that they are able to integrate it in a way that people can’t abuse the obvious weaknesses of having this new change in the system being implemented to the global community.

There are some toxic LoL regions that will abuse this system in a way that will ruin the experience for some players. Obviously, there will be heavy penalties for players who try to spread hate and misinformation using the Riot ID system in League of Legends. However, Riot Games isn’t exactly known for being a company that’s able to moderate all the issues in the community fairly and accurately. There will be a lot of memes floating around once the system is in place.