Riot co-founder Marc Merrill says the company understands the reasons not to make a massively multiplayer online game: the scale is daunting, expectations are high, and the genre can be difficult to distinguish in a crowded market. His case for going ahead is that Riot has spent 20 years building Runeterra, has a large global fanbase and believes it has the people and technical capacity to tackle the challenge. Those are reasons for the bet—not evidence that the unannounced MMO will succeed.
What Merrill said about the risk
In an interview published September 30, 2026, the Lemonade Stand host asked why Riot believed an MMO entering the market could be successful. Merrill did not dismiss the concerns behind the question. “I don’t disagree with a bunch of your concerns, right? There’s all sorts of smart reasons as to why we shouldn’t do what we’re doing. But there’s a lot of stuff that we’re doing that nobody knows also,” he said, as reported by GamesRadar+ on October 2.
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Merrill described the genre as “insane” because of its scale, player expectations and challenges, as well as the argument that MMOs are niche. That is an unusually direct acknowledgment of the obstacles, but it does not reveal how Riot plans to address them: Merrill did not publicly detail the MMO’s gameplay or design in the coverage of the interview.
Why Riot thinks its position is different
A world built over time
Merrill’s central argument is that Riot is not starting with a blank setting. “One thing is that we’ve been building this world of Runeterra for 20 years, and pouring our hearts and soul into it,” he said. Riot already has stories and characters that players know through League of Legends and other expressions of the setting. Merrill’s point is that an MMO could give fans a way to spend time inside that world; the interview does not establish how the game would make that experience work.
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An existing audience and company capacity
Merrill said Riot waited to take on the genre until it had “a global fanbase of hundreds of millions of people.” That is his account of the scale of audience Riot wanted before attempting the project, not an independently verified player count or an estimate of how many people will play the MMO. He also cited strong revenue streams, a capable team and technical capacity as reasons the company believes it can take on a difficult project.
Those advantages may give Riot more room to attempt a large game than a smaller studio would have. They do not settle whether existing fans want an MMO, whether the game can attract players beyond them, or whether it can hold an audience once it launches.
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Riot says it is not trying to make a game for everyone
Merrill argued that trying to appeal to everybody can produce something too diluted to satisfy anyone: “It’s a mistake to try and make something for everybody because you often end up making something for nobody by trying to make it too watered down.” That signals a preference for a more focused product, but Merrill has not publicly identified the MMO’s intended audience, preferred play style or design priorities.
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Runeterra fandom also appears in forms beyond video games. Merrill mentioned Riftbound, a physical card game, as one expression of interest in the world. It is adjacent to that fandom, not evidence of what the MMO will be or a substitute for details about it.
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What is—and is not—known about the MMO
The interview coverage gives readers a rationale for Riot’s decision, not a product announcement. It does not establish the MMO’s gameplay, release date, platforms or business model. Riot’s approach in other games cannot fill those gaps; without confirmed details, claims about what players will do or when they will be able to play would be speculation.
The unresolved question is whether Riot’s claimed advantages—an established setting, a large fandom, company resources and technical capability—can overcome the barriers Merrill himself recognizes. His confidence explains why Riot is willing to try. It is not a forecast, and the available remarks do not yet show how the company intends to make the game stand out.
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