Clubs will say goodbye from both the League Client and League+ mobile app in the near future.
Riot first introduced Clubs in League of Legends back in 2016 that would allow players to form persistent groups of like-minded players. The initial concept was great but as time went by it became less and less popular with full of bugs. League players however wanted change and were asking Riot Games to add more features to it.
But, in spite of adding anything new, today, on the latest dev post, Riot Games has announced that Clubs will sunset in the near future on the League Client and League+ mobile app.
Why Riot shutting down Clubs?
The main purpose of Clubs was to build a community in League of Legends so that players can play with their Club members and communicate with each other in the group chat. However, it was lacking a lot of modern features and players have been reporting bugs for years now.
Riot addressed the issue comparing it with Discord. “For companies like Discord, helping communities and friends talk is their primary focus, and when you compare the feature set of a product like Discord with that of Clubs, our version of a tool to help foster team communication and social inclusion, the disparity in the experience becomes extremely clear,” they stated.
Moreover, Riot did mention that they wanted to add more features to it but they don’t want to as it never going to beat out “the industry leaders.”
However, the main reason why they are shutting down Clubs is because of how it was originally built in the first place. The technology that was used to build the system was great at its initial phase. But as time goes by, the external components of it were no longer fully supported by its original developer, as a result, it started to “degrade”. Riot has been patching those bugs but at this point, they are “prolonging the inevitable”. Therefore, they are shutting it down entirely during preseason at the end of 2020.
“If we want Clubs to continue to be part of the League of Legends experience for the next ten years, it needs to be rebuilt,” Riot Games stated.
Players Reactions
A lot of players are saying that Clubs had problems since the day it was first introduced and Riot never bothered fixing them so they are happy that Clubs are shutting down completely.
However, many players are also saying that they only use Clubs because of club tags. And with Clubs being shut down, they are going to miss having club tags.
One Reddit user stated the issue as, “Things that work fine and do well at the start, then start getting bugs over time (on top of a complete lack of improvements), have their state worsen more and more without getting any attention from Riot, to finally get shut down because they surprisingly no longer serve their purpose after 4 years of them never doing anything positive with them.”
Meanwhile, Riot also said that they are partnering with Discord to “help ease the transition away from Clubs for players who want to keep their communities together.” And they will shut it down during preseason at the end of 2020.
