The Wild Rift Esports Team from Riot Games has announced that they will be removing the APAC region from the Wild Rift League (WRL).
In an announcement on their official website, the team expressed that they will be making changes to the esports scene for their League of Legends mobile game, Wild Rift, in the APAC region.
According to the team, they have been focusing on Wild Rift esports in China and APAC regions for the WRL in the past year, with other regions focused on third-party competitions.
While they have had great competition in the WRL, they have also found that their grassroots and community-focused events in other regions have been quite successful, and thus the esports team has decided to expand that approach to the APAC region as well.
“Our goal has always been to ensure Wild Rift players can participate in competition and foster a robust sense of community and belonging,” the announcement wrote. “We believe that pivoting to the model that relies on grassroots and community-led competition is the most sustainable and enabling path for APAC moving forward, giving players time and the space to grow and establish what role high-level competition will play in their community.”
With this newfound change, this would mean that the WRL will now only be focused on the China region, further scaling back its influence in the mobile esports scene.
While sudden, it is not exactly surprising to see Riot Games pulling support from the region, especially when the company has already pulled back support for tournaments outside of Asia back in 2022.