With Riot Games’ venture into the Indian sub continent a few months back, players from the country have been making speculations as what would be the implication of the same.
It was a common speculation that the company would like to set up servers in or around the country for its global hit League of Legends. The game currently has no designated client for the region and the players can play on the South East Asian region through Garena.
Speaking to AnimationXpress Riot Games country manager for India Anurag Khurana said that the team is still in the budding process and that they should be up and running in around two months. The company plans to make purchase easier for the Indian consumers.
Recently Valve alongside NovaPlay has made it easier for players to purchase items from the Steam store with cash on delivery or net banking options and even the currency has been changed to INR to ease it for the Indian buyers and Riot Games plans to do something similar.
Khurana said that Riot Games has been eyeing India as a potential market for a couple of years now and finally decided to set foot this year. The company will focus on ping issues for the Indian players who experience high latency in the European and North American servers as well as focus on the South East Asian server. As the company’s apparent policy, they do not conduct or promote tournaments of League of Legends where they are yet to set office, so with this we might be seeing Riot Games pushing through the esports front somewhere by 2019, according to Khurana.
The company is not sure about entering the licensing and merchandising business in the country as of now. Khurana however stayed clear of divulging any operational details as he said they are still in the process of solidifying them.
