Riot Kills Mac Client, My Remaining Faith in Their Customer Service [RANT]
Note: This is the rant version of a post on communication I wrote earlier today. This is centered on Riot’s Mac Client shutdown. It is long. If you’d rather read suggestions for solving the problem, here’s the link to my earlier post.
I’ve been trying to give Riot the benefit of the doubt over the past 6 months. I got a bit cynical for a while there, but the bottom line was that I was enjoying their game, a game that experienced such explosive growth that very few companies could possibly have maintained, and if I wanted to play with new friends they could jump in the game for free. All of that is great stuff.
There were a few bumps along the way – we were promised things we never got. We were promised reparations for some customer services snafus and never got them. We’ve been promised new features for more than a year and they still aren’t here. But today a friend of mine sent me a thread that trumped it all and effectively killed any remaining faith I had in Riot as “the most player-focused game company in the world.” As of this past Tuesday, Riot officially killed the League of Legends Mac client.
I’m not here to bitch about the disintegration of the Mac client. It had been unsupported for months, and though it ran, some fairly serious problems would pop up from time to time for many of the users. I understand that maybe it was just more work than it could ever be worth, or that it just might never get to an acceptable state. I get that. What I don’t get is the method Riot used to communicate the change, the way rewards are being handled, and the message Riot is sending to a portion of its playerbase.
Forums have a couple problems, not the least of which is the amount of data they generate. Important posts get buried and can be incredibly difficult to find again, and that’s only for the forums you actually read. When a platform has been unsupported for months, chances are good that players stopped reading the Mac Client forum. Hell, who says they were even reading it in the first place? I know for a fact my brother didn’t read it, and the Mac client was the only way we were able to play LoL together since his PC died.
Then there’s the timing. The announcement was made on September 2nd. The shutoff date was September 6th. That’s four days. Four days. That has to be a joke. It’s not just that the notice window is so small, it’s also that the consolation prize for Mac testers can only be verified within that window. Here’s a quote from Tamat’s post:
Riot would like to give all active participants in the Mac beta a code that unlocks the Champions Pack, as a token of appreciation for the time they have dedicated to helping us evaluate the Mac client and our sincere apology for not being able to have the testing work out as originally planned. To qualify for the reward, you must have a majority of your logins come from the Mac client, and you must login to the Mac client and click on the Store button between Friday, September 2 and Tuesday, September 6.
So if you aren’t actively reading the Mac Testing forum (which is probably most people) and don’t log in for four days, you get nothing but a giant middle finger to stare at. This might not affect millions of customers. This might not affect even a thousand customers. It will affect some, though, and the message from Riot to those players is loud and clear: We don’t want you. Despite the time you spent testing the stillbirth that was our Mac client, we’re only going to offer a thank you once, and only for four days.
It’s pretty easy to imagine a situation in which players wouldn’t be able to log in for four days, or that they might choose not to. You know, like if they had been planning for the end of a season that was delayed without explanation. If they made the grind to Bronze or Silver or Gold status and then decided to check out other games while they waited for those rewards to come through. Gee, wasn’t that also a holiday weekend? You don’t think anyone may have been traveling or otherwise away from a computer that entire weekend, do you?
Well, we actually don’t know the answer to that because, as far as I can tell, Riot hasn’t been back to that announcement thread since Friday. I say “as far as I can tell” because that thread is now more than 100 pages long, and I’ve only been through about 30 of them. I would use Riot’s DevTracker, but it’s actually more polluted than the thread itself (more on that in today’s earlier post). I would use CL Gaming’s redtracker, but I can’t filter for the Mac Testing forum because, again, no one reads it or posts in it.
So I’m done. I’m done digging through thousands of forum posts for information that should be easy to find. I’m done assuming Riot knows best. Most of all, though, I’m done believing that somewhere Riot has a plan, that when the timing is right they’ll let us in on it, or that they’re actually in touch with their playerbase at all.
Come at me, most player-focused game company in the world. Prove me wrong.
riot needs to start reading this blog
you’re absolutly right!!
but if riot doesnt give a crap about mac users, why it would give a crap about u complaining about the forums?
dont get me wrong, im on your side but i like to point out a “paradox” when i see one
Sousa, they don’t care. I know that. The fact that I had material to write the two posts today shows me how little they care/how little they’re willing to do about it.
All the same, I like writing about this stuff. Flex my critical muscles. Offload a little frustration. Also, I want Riot to be a better company. Honestly. It would be great if they got this stuff right. They have parts of the community interaction right, but the stuff they have wrong they have dead wrong. And that’s a bummer, because they’ve made an excellent, wildly popular game.
We absolutely do read this blog, and while articles like this one aren’t what we like to see, they’re also a reminder that we need to constantly do better as a company so that we can better service our players.
Closing down the Mac beta wasn’t an easy thing to do. It ultimately came down to whether or not we would be able to operate a service for the Mac to the same quality bar that we do for the PC. The answer was ultimately ‘no’. I know the chief complaint here is that we didn’t give everyone enough time, and while that’s fair, we do have a plan to make this right long term.
I’d love to talk with you more about this Jeff. I sent you an email so that we can talk about it.
@Tamat
Could you please send somebody to the mac forum to answer questions? I don’t think this blog is the best place to assure us of your commitment to “making this right.”
Post in the mac forum explaining exactly how the refund/reward will work, for starters. Who is eligible, what needs to be done in order to receive it, etc. What exactly is the ‘champion pack’ ? Is it the Champion Bundle from the shop or something else? Will the refund destroy our account or just remove all RP purchases?
Looks like Tamat got here first
We generally have a positive community here devoted to a very very fun game. We have literally spent hours, upon days, upon weeks, upon months of our lives playing this game and it is because of this time spent we feel entitled to better communication. Some might see the time spent as sad, but I’m a successful married man who enjoys a game or two of LOL every day/night. While LOL isn’t my whole life, it is the lives of Rioters. They are human and they will make mistakes, but this is their job and we are paying for them to get things right. They will always do what makes sense for them as a company, and it makes business sense for them to keep their core base informed and happy. The part Jeff is stressing here is the informed part, and he has a valid point. Just as Rioters are putting there lives into this game, we are putting hours of our lives into it as well. Simply put we need each other, therefore we should find a better way of communicating.
@Tamat, how about you respond to THIS thread in GD?
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1206357
It outlines everything you did wrong with this shutdown really.
Tamat seems eager to take up the last line of Jeff’s editorial and “prove you wrong.” However, Jeff is but one person in the masses that play league of legends regularly. I’m calling on Tamat to make his e-mail an open letter or at the very least allow Jeff to publish it here. There are many macintosh and windows users who are upset about the handling of this situation and we want to be proven wrong as well.
I’m a skeptic by nature, and remember when I went on a rant – was frustrated with the responsiveness of Riot in making sure people could actually play the game they just spent $35.00 to support. I think Mark Merrill (Tryndamere) posted a reply, which we responded to in turn – and communication makes a HUGE difference. Seriously.
If you guys are reading this, I think you should know we LIKE READING THE RED POSTS. The thousands of threads of crap that Jeff is talking about? Yeah, you sift through them, and it’s great, I respect that, if I had to read through them I’d /facepalm myself into a concussion, and it’d happen often enough that I’d be brain damaged.
Think about integrating red posts into the forums – you guy got the idea from World of Warcraft forums, and those are a frakking mess, I think it’s time to branch off and make the red posts:
1. sexier. drop the WoW template. you’ve got plenty to work with.
2. more accessible. Gamers really DO tend to be a notoriously arrogant group, and I have too much self-respect to read the 40pages of crap just to find the color-coded non-crap tossed in there like a Cracker Jack trinket.
//rant off.
Also, I’m sure it’s something you’ve considered – it might be time to hire Jeff to blog on your site. It’s been what… two years? His independent opinions are good reading and would generate the quality of discussion that you’d enjoy, and others would enjoy. It’s thoughtful, measured, grass-roots, interesting, fun.. etc.
Don’t blame Riot for the fact that you didn’t buy a REAL computer.
Get the Boompje edition and keep on playing on a mac
Though right now the shyvana patch posted today has crashed the client. But he’s working on it