League of Legends client adds a ton of Asian languages; what does it mean?

Well, here’s something interesting. Reddit user HeinaBaumstamm spotted (and Games in Asia has confirmed) that the most recent update of Riot’s League of Legends client has added a boatload of Asian languages, at least in the client’s file system. All in all, Riot seems to have added Indonesian, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, and special versions of English for the Philippines and Singapore.

“Wait,” you’re probably saying, “can’t you already play League of Legends in those languages?” In most of them, yes. But what’s interesting is that with the exception of Japan (which doesn’t have a League server at the moment), all of those languages are spoken in countries where a third party (Garena in Southeast Asia, Tencent in China) operates the game client. So why would Riot need to bother updating its own client to add these languages? Is the company simply looking to maintain consistency with the Garena and Tencent versions of the game? Or is Riot planning to launch its own LoL servers in Asia?

Although Riot will likely be adding a server of its own in Japan soon, it seems unlikely that it would be setting up rival servers in other Asian countries where its partners are already operating the game. And, as I pointed out in an infographic yesterday, if Riot were to offer the game in these countries it would cause some serious friction because the game’s pricing structures are different on Garena and Tencent servers.

Still, it’ll be interesting to see if Riot has something special in store for any of these languages, given that they’re now part of Riot’s game client.

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