From its initial conception last year until its release in China this August, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Riftbound, 🗹the trading card game, will have been in development for fewer than 20 months. That’s an absurdly ✨short timeline for any game, let alone a global TCG. What’s even more astounding is that Riot hadn’t even intended to create a physical card game at first.
According to Riftbound executive producer Chengran Chai, the company initially wanted to bring Legends of Runeterra to China, Riot’s first, digital-only League of Legends card game. It wasn’t able to accomplish that goal, but while exploring other options, discovered that there was an opportunity to create a physical card game that could🏅 be successful in China.

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Riot's League of Legends trading cౠard game is poised to shake up the TCG hobby 😼in a big way.
“The intention has always been global,” Chai explains during an interview at the Riftbound pre-release summit last week. “We wanted to go to China first because it’s a blue ocean. Really, it’s only just Pokemon there. Magic isn’t big in China, One Piece isn’t big, Lorcana just entered China. League IP is pretty big in China, though. We wanted to do a staggered approach, starting w♔ith China.”
That staggered approach evolved into a near-simultaneous worldwide release once Riot saw the reaction when they first got the game into players’ hands. “Once we realized how fun the game was and how resonant it was when we did playtests in LA and Shanghai, we decided to massively accelerate the rest of our timeline,” Chai says. Riftbound wꦚill launch globally in October, less than three months after🍒 it releases in China.
Chai’s video games career started ওa decade ago when he joined Twitch, before moving to Blizzard to help launch the Overwatch League. He has been at Riot for six years supporting the studio’s business in China and helping stand up the recently opened Chinese office, wheꦰre Riftbound has been a main focus.
How To Create A New TCG At Rammus Speed
How did Riftbound go from green light to launch in under two years? Chai gives a lot of credit to the design team. “They were literally running through six or seven prototypes per week,” he s🦩ays. “There is a little bit of luck in there when it comes to getting the right mechanics. I pushed [game director Dave Guskin] to 𒁃rethink the resource system.”
Guskin, an old-school TCG player, was initially set on Riftbound having its resources shuffled into the deck, similar to Magic’s lands. “I was like, ‘Dave, please don't put them in the deck, that’s a known pain point in every single game that has resources in the deck!” Chai says having a team that was aligned on values allo🦹wed them to iterate quickly and come up with some innovative new ideas.
Chai says having a well-established IP also gave them a leg up. “You know who the champions are, what they are, what they do, and what their kits feel like to play with,” he says. “It wasn’t like we were going from scratch.” Riot also saved a lot of development time by reusing art from Legends 🌼of Runeterra. Eventually, Riftbound will predominantly feature original art, but for the first few sets, Riot is bootstrapping the game by leveraging the assets it already has. “All of it was there,” Chai says. “We just needed a ♋game.”
Competing In A Crowded TCG Market
Riot will face significantly more competition with other TCGs outside of China with card game staples♕ like Pokemon and Magic, but also with the new generation of popular games released over the last few years, like Disney Lorcana, Star Wars Unlimited, and One Piece. Chai says seeing the success of so many TCGs in recent years has only m♐ade Riot more certain of Riftbound's potential.
“There’s lots of competition, but seeing these new titles come out and achieve the level of success that they have actually gave us confidence that we could do that too and hopefully do it even better,” Chai say𒐪s. “One Piece really took everyone by surprise just off of the gameplay, which is pretty amazing. We have a ton of card game design talent in-house and we have a great IP that fits naturally into a TCG.”

Everything We Learned About Rif꧑tbound At The Pre-Release Summit
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On top of that, Riot ✨has a specific expertise in hosting live competitive events, and having that infrastructure and experience gives it a huge leg up over many other games.
“Esports is in༒ Riot’s DNA,’ Chai explains. “We knew as players that competitive organized play is an incredibly important piece of the landscape. All of our games are very competitive and we don’t expect Riftbound to be any different.” Riot chose its global distribution partner, UVS, in part because UVS understands how important OP is to the success of a card game. “We wanted to find somebody who shared their values with us, and UVS definitely does,” he says. “They’re like, ‘Hey, we need OP Day One,’ and we’re like ‘Yes! Now you’re speaking our language.’”
Competitive play isn’t Riot’s only focus for Riftbound. In fact, the game was designed for multiplayer first before the 1v1 format was even established. “I think [multiplayer] is our opportunity to reach a much broader, much �🐓�different audience,” Chai says.
Riot k෴nows there’s a lot of people out there who want to engage with the League of Legends un🅰iverse who may not be hyper competitive players. “Things like Arcane, things like our books and comics, they showed us that there are fans of League beyond just the players of our games. We wanted to offer a way for folks to engage at their own pace.”
A Way To Reach Every Kind Of League Fan
Chai sees Riftbound as the physical expression of League of Legends, meant to be enjoyed by every kind of fan. Throughout our interview he emphasized tha🔯t while competitive play is going to be a big focus, that isn’t his only ambition for Riftbound. “This is just my personal philosophy, but games are supposed to be fun, and sometimes games can get so sweaty that it’s n🉐o longer fun,” he says. “I’m a very competitive player, but I also just enjoy having a good time sometimes, and sometimes it's okay to lose and have fun too.”
There are a few things that differentiate Riftbound from other TCGs. One of those features is what Chai describes as “focused action,” referring to the way players use their units to face off on battlefields in one big exciting brawl. “Battlefields concentrate the action in the middle,” he says. “You get to choose when you go there. You get to choose that moment, and that big moment is what you remember.” This was my experience playing Riftbound as well, especially in multiplayer. Because of the way units move to and from battlefields, conquering and retreati💮ng, there’s a🗹 sense of storytelling and drama that’s inherently baked into the game.
This is especially true of multiplayer, where politicking can serve a big role in how games play out. “We designed this from the ground up for multiplayer,” Chai says. “We want to reach that incredible audience of people who want to join in on the fu✨n.” Chai describes being at local game stores and seeing crowds of people crowded around a 1v1 game, and feeling the uncomfortable tension of not being able to be part of a game until it's over. “With Riftbound, you can,” he explains. “You can sit down next to them and turn a two-player game into a three-player ꦗgame, then the next one is a four-player game. That to me is super awesome.”
Chai admits he has thousands of hours on Teemo and plans to collect every Teemo card. “And I’m not 🌺ashamed of it!”
What really sets Riftbound apart, Chai says, is League of Legends and its fans. “The League universe has been 15 years in the making,” he says. “We have so many fans who are dying to express their fandom through mo♔re physical means, and we are providing for them.” He’s looking forward to giving Ahri mains, Yasuo mains, and every kind of League fan a way to express their love for these characters through Riftbound. “That’s what makes these cards special. Not the cardboard. Not the six or eight layers of foil. It’s you forever remembering real moments.”

- Franchise
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:League of Legends
- Original Release Date
- 2025
- Publisher
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Riot Games, UVS Games
- Designer(s)
- Dave Gusk꧅in (Game Director)
- Player Count
- 2+
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