The Man Who Made League of Legends | Ep. 082 Lemonade Stand 🍋

23:53Right. It is sort of the, the orientation of what happened there. Um, you know, and so, but again, to the point around like yield being deferred, the, these things, these, these games or whatever, like they take a lot of time, right. There's a lot lot of complexity and um you know just like the r &d pipeline like we always have to operate sort of many years ahead of sort of where you know and what players are experiencing at any given moment in any particular game um you know so it's it's it's really not reflective i think you know of sort of where we're going and the different things that are happening uh you know or will happen in

24:30Atrioc:the future in that long trajectory of that game's development what do you like if you could go back and change a couple things? What would be like the key points that you think that sent it in the wrong direction? Was it a broader company culture or were there a few things with how you guys approached that specifically that just ended up going down? Or was it Street Fighter 6 just banging? No, it was, I think if we came out like, you know, an idea like we should have sort of years before Street Fighter, I think we would have really made a really significant impact, you know, on the community. But step one is we have to be aligned on the product strategy.

25:01Who's the player? What are we doing? What are the critical choices? And then are we actually building that thing, right? to sort of really be clear. And then are all the different aspects of the company aligned is what we're doing is why. Right. And then let's support the team and help them to accomplish, you know, what we're trying to accomplish.

25:15Atrioc:But that wasn't happening. And that's part of that fragmentation. Exactly. It was sort of very inconsistently. Right. Because acquisitions are difficult also because there's, you know, there's expectation management and alignment. And, you know, when it's when something is more homegrown, it's it's sort of easier from a cultural alignment standpoint. People, the expectations are aligned. Whereas in an acquisition like Riot hasn't been very good at acquisitions. You know, we could talk about Hytale, right, and whatnot. And so, and again, a lot of this is like the, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could, you know, manifest these incredible player dreams, right, and even making it better to be sort of a Minecraft-style player, et cetera.

25:50But execution is the thing. And so, you know, it's not like we have any shortage of ideas. We have a throughput problem. and the whole company's focus needs to be around creating excellence because the world doesn't need more mediocre shit, right? Like to your point, there's 20 plus thousand games launched on Steam every year. There's a bajillion streaming services. There's YouTube. There's all these sports. There's incredible amounts of music. There's Netflix, et cetera. Podcasts. There's podcasts. Riveting podcasts. But the point is, it's like it is a very competitive media environment, right?

26:28And we need to make something so compelling, so cool, right? That like millions of people need to spend tons of time and often like associate their identity with loving this thing, right? Being like, I'm a League of Legends player. I'm a Valorant player. It becomes a meaningful part of their life. That is an incredibly high bar, right? You have to deliver real value. And that's what Riot needs to be tuned and optimized and focused on doing, right? So we're going to take big swings. We are taking big swings. but that also doesn't mean taking forever which is a whole other thing so that's why execution matters which is why the strategy, the structure, the systems, the people and how we operate really, really matters and that's why cleaning up a lot of how we've been operating is so important as we continue to evolve I want to drill into that sort of to go off of what Aiden said and your answer to the question which is that I think there's this perception about 2XKO that you guys would simply not be happy if it was a single rather than a home run.

27:27Like if it really delivered, but it was for a small amount of players, that that would not, and is that, you're saying that's not the case, but it's - Not true, yeah. So as an example, right? So, but I understand why people perceive that because that was some of the messages that the team was getting at various points in time, right? And so the, you know, one of the things that Dylan and I did when we sort of revised the strategy of the company is we made it three things, right? First of all, we changed the mission to again, get back to the simple thing around, we're here to make it better to be a player, not about us, about them.

27:55Then we created what we call the evergreen strategy. It's three things. And Riot should only do these three things. One, live games green. It's simple. It means every game, League, Valve, TFT, Legends of Runeterra, Riftbound, etc. needs to be effective and healthy and meeting the needs of its players. And that means effective team. It means serving players. That doesn't mean infinitely profitable. It means sustainable. Because the whole point is keep serving players. That's it. Which means break even or better. We'd like it to be better. but the point is is keep serving players because when you take the long-term perspective just like with league league didn't it wasn't pokemon go you know like it was incrementally bigger in month two than month one and then incrementally better in month three right we grew not because we're great at acquiring players we're great at not losing them right it was so much value and players believed wow we're adding content and these champions are cool and i'm having fun and i want to go bring in my friends and oh my god they're doing esports and these events are crazy and the April Fool's thing and blah, blah, blah.

28:53And they were having fun and pulling people in. That's what we need to do. Because once we are stable and can serve players, we can then do lots of things. And the universe opens up for the team. Whereas if your team's massive and we're way underwater and we have no chance to get to green, what are we doing? And so a lot of people will be like, oh, you need to market. Marketing is irrelevant if you don't retain players. People have too many other options. you know and this is a really important thing for everybody to understand just from sort of a you know business product perspective etc is you know like there's a reason we don't go do super bowl ads or whatnot for league or for valorant whatnot because those games are not for everybody these are hardcore games right and if we like spend a bunch of money to go get all these random people to come try and download the game because we have some sick trailer makes it cool they'll just bounce because you know you got to want to grind ranked and you got to want to understand these things and you want to want to master these champions.

29:46But if you love mastery and you love competition and you love sort of MMO style PVP that sort of boiled down into a 30 minute session, it's the best game in the world for that. And it needs to be, right? But like, that's the orientation for every product. We have to be incredible at exactly what we're trying to do, but we shouldn't try to make something for everybody. And so anyway, these are the types of things that we had to go make true within the company again, because we weren't always operating consistently with these types of principles, right? And these things are becoming more true again.

30:15Aiden:So I believe you, this idea of like just making a game that is sustainable, but with the amount of investment that went into 2XKO specifically, I'm wondering what is like, like if we could pick a number, like what would have been the number that like keeps that game alive? Well, at their cost structure, it would have been in, you know, in the high hundreds of thousands, like it was, or if not millions, like it was, it was, you know, it was too expensive. Too expensive, too big a team. Yeah. And so, um, and there's a bunch of reasons as to how to make, you know, compelling things for less. Right.

30:50And like, there's a whole craft and competency around that. And it's one of the reasons that there's a lot of, uh, churn in the industry, right. In a lot of ways, like a lot of these teams are too big, you know, and taking too big swings for too long with too much money. And that is a problematic challenge. Right. And so a lot of the, as a lot of these big, uh, efforts fail, like companies are of course retooling and being like, all right, like what else, what do we do from here? um anyway you can get in all that but like that uh the but demand is still growing you know and so like on a lot of the demand is often be captured by other great experiences four dogs right it comes out right or all the other games in the indie scene or whatnot like there's you know or some of the big live service titles that are incredible and you know have a large gravitational pull such as league and val and you know insert you know you know wow forever i'm playing the share that again right now.

31:43You know, and anyway, all these types of things. Well, I want to dive into, I think that's a really, I would love to hear your take on this, given your position. State of the industry right now is a tumultuous time of rapid change. Many, many layoffs across the industry, things moving countries, live service changing, the business model changing. Yep. Give us your thousand foot view of the games industry right now and what you think is happening? What is the tectonic plates that are moving? Yeah. So I think a lot of companies, uh, really over-invested and really took some big bets and just weren't that effective, right?

32:17Like they, I think oftentimes lost sight of sort of, you know, who the core player is or built things, you know, they have an example in mind, or do you want to say, you know, like a lot of the big high profile, you know, uh, sort of challenges, you know, that sort of maybe sort of come out and go to the audience or just don't, even though they cost a lot, right? Like the, like, you know, Those types of things are what happens when you take big swings and you're just totally wrong, right? And you miss. And so that's happening all over the place, right? Which is then, of course, causing companies to pull back and to re-evaluate.

32:48And then also, of course, the VC capital, which was funding a lot of the boom in and around startups, such as like a lot of the ex-Riot Studios and whatnot, a lot of that capital has dried up, right? They moved on to AI and different things like this. and so therefore you know unfortunately for a lot of really talented devs right that have been pouring their hearts and souls into creating awesome things or really believing what they're doing right like there's a lot of jobs being lost right and a lot of sort of retooling but you know i think the the sort of positive silver lining right is again demand is still high and but it's just the bar is going up for what it takes to actually deliver something that'll break through There's a lot of great games that get made and shipped and that just can't find an audience to become sustainable or to justify the continued existence of studios.

33:37And so making a great game or a very good game is necessary but insufficient. You have to have mechanisms to sort of have enough of an audience or to keep bringing people back. And so, again, the silver lining on that is competition is good for the end user, for players. Right. And so companies are forced to innovate, to force to think about how do we get better? And, you know, it's it's like it's going to be solved. The demand is going to be met by the indie scene or some of the big companies that can figure it out. Right. Or competition from international markets. You know, there's a lot of great capabilities coming out of Asia, as an example, and a lot of great games.

34:14And so that's just what's happening. It's this changing dynamic to sort of better fit the sort of supply side with the demand side. How do you think about that from a really big company, though? Because you mentioned the indie scene. It feels like it's a, well, it's still obviously challenging for each individual developer. On the whole, indie has taken up a larger and larger share of people's playtime. And that's going to continue. And you see games like Peak or these small teams or solo dev teams that are coming out and getting millions overnight through word of mouth. How, you know, you're a bigger ship that's harder to steer.

34:45How do you think about this competition coming from all these angles? Yeah, I'm way more concerned about the sort of competition coming from the indie scene than I am from, you know, the big incumbents, you know, and like, you're going to have your big GTA 6s that are going to crush and suck the light out of the universe for a while because it's going to be awesome. You know, and or the wow forevers, you know, and I'm thrilled that they're, you know, having a resurgence and, you know, stuff like this too. And so those types of things can and will happen, you know, but I think a lot of the new growth and a lot of the innovation oftentimes is going to be driven by the smaller players.

35:13and one of the things that's happening right is smaller teams can punch above their weight and do a lot more than ever before because of the increase in improvements and tools and capabilities and so and i think that's awesome as a developer right like that small elite teams can go do it but right again that just also means increased noise and so there's a lot more games a lot more expectations that'll keep going up and it's hard to get noticed and so how do you break out right and that is a that's just a really difficult thing that many companies are also going to try to really struggle, which will likely lead to new innovations in distribution, right?

35:46Or some new publishing mechanisms or interesting labels that are like, there's gonna be all sorts of interesting innovation. Or, you know, again, if you build something that's so incredibly cool, that it just sort of, you know, lights the internet on fire, because of how connected the world is, you know, how quickly like things can move incredibly fast, right? Like, JGPT was launched with a tweet, you know, or an x post, you know, just like, out it goes, right? And then it was, you know, one of the fastest growing products in the history of the world. And that's because it was mind blowing, right?

36:13Because nobody had seen anything like that before. And it's obviously hard to hit something of that caliber, you know, but the point is, is if you build something truly great that really resonates, it can move fast. Right. And you're seeing that with our graders that popped or, you know, war dogs or those types of things, but it's very hard to sustain, you know, over the long run also. And so a lot of those games also will pop, but then, you know, sort of fail to sustain over time.

36:36Aiden:So with those games, I think they, in a way, they only need to pop at the beginning a lot of the time because they're not free to play games. Totally. And it seems like the core thesis for you guys for a long time was free to play model, cosmetic items. That is what will sustain us. It seems way harder to do that now. Yep. Is that something you guys are considering changing for other projects? So we've never had a strategic imperative to only make free to play games. Okay. So, you know, a lot of times, like even when we're just a League of Legends company and we used to say that the S in games for Riot Games was aspirational, we jokingly called ourselves Riot Game, you know, we would have these presentations internally, right, where we'd say like many companies or many other, you know, the media or whatever, they want to like brand us as, oh, it's a MOBA company, right?

37:24Or, oh, we're a strategy game company or we're a PC game company or a free-to-play company. And we're like, no, we're not any of those things. We're not defined by genre, you know, or platform or business model. we're defined by one thing the audience that we're trying to serve right people who love games who are like us right who want to make who believe games are a meaningful life pursuit that want to go to these like awesome esport events that want to go deep that are the most educated on the market and we'll do any game any genre any business any business model to serve them well that's why we built our cane that's why we built esports that's why we do music that's why we're doing different genres right like it's all because of that aspiration and so and we are working on things that are not free to play.

38:05And, you know, because the business model should fit the game. And it's the type of lazy thinking that can also happen, right, at an organization that isn't, you know, incredibly tuned to the nuances of what actually matters, where, you know, that can become a meme internally. Oh, like we have to make everything free to play. Or we have to go do X, Y, Z. It's like, no, we don't, right? And that's where the sort of trying to build the mechanism to really empower our teams to have great player empathy, to do the thing that is great and feels great for players, that is why that matters so much. That's why I go to Dnub every week, you know, and talk to every new rider and all that.

38:45But that is also not a scalable system. Like I do those things for all these reasons that like to meet riders, but we need to help build these systems and structures and train lots of leaders to help make great decisions throughout this now 4 ,500 person company. You know, there's 20 offices around the world with a lot of different games. Like, and that is just, that's a challenge that uh you know we're still working on 20 years later more for this show comes from shopify black friday is approaching yeah and you know what

39:11Aiden:we're doing over at mogul moves we're launching an unnamed anime ip collection that i can't say right now but it will be launching on black friday through the rest of the holiday season and that will be powered by shopify because it's an easy place to put all the inventory in and sell it all uh honestly it's i mean it's a it's the checkout platform makes everything super simple for the customer that's what we're doing don't promote your crap in our shopify ads i'm just saying shopify is what powers it all and i'm being honest about my personal experience your own business not aiden's pushing business that you want to push uh before black friday you can launch it uh and take advantage of the extra online traffic and shopify can help they have pre-built website themes and an AI site builder that makes it easy to launch professional looking websites and feel free to reach out if you want to sell like the products that we've made maybe just disperse them across more places because I mean we could add that to your Shopify back end as well

40:05Atrioc:that's right Aiden so if you're ready to launch that business before Black Friday go to shopify.com slash lemonade to start your free trial that's shopify.com slash lemonade go to shopify.com slash lemonade today to hear your first this episode is brought to you by Gusto I use Gusto for all of my staff and employees, and it is fantastic. Gusto is a payroll and benefits software built for small businesses, and that means it's really easy to get people paid. You can actually have people on board, including for - Do you pay your employees? I do, actually. It's a new thing I'm trying out this year.

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40:38Atrioc:I'm still waiting to see. We need to check the data. Because it's not working for me to not pay them. Oh, yeah, yeah.

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41:56Atrioc:How are you thinking about game development like team size? Both with the indie competition but then also what you're saying about 2XKO how ultimately just with the size of the team it needed however many more times players. Is there now a sense of shifting how you develop games? Of keeping the teams smaller or maybe smaller for a longer period and then you churn you open a money funnel and pour it at them like how do you do this and compete against indies because presumably you're not just going to break the company into a hundred five person teams totally a lot all of our successful games have had like reasonable team sizes at launch and then scaled into the growth where you're trying to like hold on to the rocket ship so to speak right and or that's a way better approach than you know sort of over investing in advance before you really validate that the thing can sort of work and sustain because then the recalibration is terrible right and really painful and so but that of course is a challenge for teams too right because launch is the start not the end right and that's oftentimes after a multi-year challenge of like painstaking tons of work thousands upon thousands of decisions and all these people pouring their hearts and so on and making the thing but you got to have a lot of gas in the tank you know as a team to be like all right like the second we go live with players right which really is beta it's go time right and so the the the muscle also of deploying internally and getting play tests and constantly patching and validation and like your feature development velocity goes to near zero the second you have real players because bugs show up right it's like running through the pipes you know water through the pipes the first time and shit starts to break everywhere you know and everybody's got to respond all this and so so i think it's really important that teams are thoughtful about what does it actually take to build something that is truly great that adds a lot of value to players that will make it better to be a player in a particular genre but don't get too over their skis where it becomes like this impossibly high hurdle uh you know before you can really sort of lean into hitting green hitting sustainability and then continuing to avest and grow and evolve like all of our games are like the biggest they've been like after year five right They keep growing and growing and growing.

44:09That's why the whole point is if you do a good job of retention, that's what really makes the business work in a live service business model. And if we had a box model, as an example, it's totally okay, again, to sort of have a big spike like Baldur's Gate 3 or whatever. You sort of play the story several times and whatnot, and then you're done. But that's just a very different sort of content type, very different development challenge, and, of course, can make incredible products. And I think one of the things you're seeing as the market is also kind of retooling on the supply side is there's going to be fewer games that are trying to take those incredibly huge swings on the live service side.

44:46And I think that's good. How do you justify an MMO then?

44:53Atrioc:I know you can't talk too much about an MMO, but there's no way to launch an MMO with a small team and then that's the starting line, right? I don't know if that's true. Okay. And so, you know, but yes, player expectations are incredibly high. And so it's why we have to be excellent. And that's a hard problem, but we gotta be really smart and really thoughtful and really effective. And fortunately, I think we have an incredible team that is building something that I think has a real shot of adding real value to the community. But all these things that I'm saying need to be true for that team also.

45:32So, uh, and so, you know, I, I can't wait to show and share how we're thinking about this and what everybody's cooking on, uh, you know, when the time's right. Right here on the show. I do. The time in about 40 minutes from now.

45:43Aiden:I do unfortunately have a follow-up question about the MMO, not about the game itself. You don't need to like reveal anything more about the philosophy behind an MMO itself. Uh, cause I, I, this is something I've been thinking about a lot, uh, over this year. Cause we've talked about Roblox a lot. Yeah. And I've been learning a lot about the Roblox ecosystem this year and how dev teams work within it, how trends pop up within that community, the scale of the user base, the way everything is monetized. He's been grinding Roblox games. There's a kind of like... Impress to impress everything. Yeah.

46:18Hitting people with bats jumping around. Yes, sir. Up the hour. There you go.

46:23Aiden:But this general idea of these flash-in-the-pan games, which kind of aligns with the broader indie market in a way too. Yeah. Or this trend of friend slop, if you want to call it. And in this kind of like attention deficit economy where you're competing with trendy games like that and TikTok and Instagram reels, the idea of launching an MMO that isn't hedged by nostalgia like WoW is. Totally. Because I think part of the reason, I would say maybe all of the reason Wow Forever can really be successful is how many people are hopping on Wow Forever that never played Wow growing up. Shut your fucking mouth.

47:08Aiden:It's a great game. I think a fair amount, actually. But the lion's share for sure is, you know, people that are in their mid-30s. Yeah. And I think like. Get in there. That's us. I think the argument I'm trying to make is like the, the crowd that seems particularly primed for the MMO experience is older now and inherently has less time to spend on these things and already has. Wow. So, and then for the younger, newer generation, they are less primed for the inherent game experience of what an MMO is. So when you consider the fact that you're launching an MMO into that market, why do you believe it will be successful?

47:56Aiden:Because you obviously do. Totally. So, you know, the good answer to this question, I can't get into, right? Because, you know, in terms of all the details, you know, but I don't disagree with a bunch of your concerns, right? There's all sorts of smart reasons as to why we shouldn't do what we're doing. But there's a lot of stuff that we're doing that nobody knows also that I think, you know, when we're able to share, you know, I think has some good answers to what you're talking about. But other things that I think are important, too, is, and to your point, like MMOs are insane, right? Like the scope, the expectations, the challenge, right?

48:32Like the argument that they're niche, all these different types of things, et cetera. But there's lots of decisions you can make, you know, to, you know, in terms of how to approach it. And so one thing, right, is we've been building this world of Runeterra for 20 years, right? And sort of pouring our hearts and soul into it. And there's an awful lot of players around the world that have developed deep affinity and love for these characters, for this world, for our factions. And that fandom is expressed in so many ways through League and through Riftbound and through all these other things that we're doing, all of our great games.

49:07Arcane. Arcane. and people want to live in that world. And we want to deliver the ability for people to do that. But there's more.

49:21It's like we didn't want to even try to go take on this sort of insane space until we had a global fan base of hundreds of millions of people and a big balance sheet and great revenue streams and an incredible team and great technical capabilities and, and, and, and, and. whatever. And so the challenge is around, can we do justice? Right. And if so, how, right. And it's a mistake to try to make absolutely something for everybody, right. Because like we just talked about, you often end up making something for nobody by trying to sort of make it too watered down. Right. And so there's some really hard problems, but, uh, you know, but again, I'm, I'm, that's the type of stuff that is worth getting out of bed every day and sort of, you know going and trying to tackle these really hard problems and in every single situation building league building riot building val building tft building these sports building arcane they all felt crazy and stupid in a bunch of ways like people internally were like why what are we doing trying to go make a fucking animated show right like why are we trying to go hollywood we're like we don't we're not trying to go what are you talking about like it'll be awesome for league players right like you know and but it has to be great right the bar is incredibly high Cause we're not just competing with, you know, our own stuff, right.

50:37Or our trailers that we make, right. Or other gaming adaptations and whatnot. We're competing with the best shows in the world. Right. So we have to do something that's really compelling. Like, but we did, you know, and you know, if we want to sort of unpack like what it takes to do that, it's the type of things that have to be true for us to do it again in this different way, you know? And then same thing with e-sports, right. Where people internally were like, this is a distraction. Why are we doing all this stuff? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but we're like, but it elevates the game. We thought about esports as a feature.

51:08It's like it makes it so much better to be a league player. There's always stuff to talk about. There's an aspirational path. You can go pro. There's organized play as an ecosystem. There's stuff happening at the collegiate level. Like, of course, this is awesome, right? But anytime you do something new, anytime you do something risky, lots of really smart people can point out all sorts of reasons as to why the thing doesn't make sense or shouldn't happen. And oftentimes they're correct about their critiques and criticisms. But then that's part of the fun and the challenge, right? Which is like, cool.

51:37How do we figure it out and win anyway? You know, and like we need people who are, who want to go do that, right? And that's what the team is made of. And that's what rioters have in their DNA and need to have in their DNA. I have the opposite question about the MMO, which is that we're both in our 30s, right? Or mid-30s and we grew up with... Did you play WoW class? Yeah, I played WoW class. I can't wait for WoW. So here's my opposite question is that WoW hit our group like crack or Are you worried you're going to ruin lives if this is successful? Yes. Actually, my son is 13. Yeah. And he loves League and he loves Val and he loves her IP.

52:13And like my wife, my wife is like, you know, like, yeah, it is, you know, appropriately, right? And, you know, it's like, you know, it's why parental controls matter. And it's why we've got to empower people. You know, it's like, and it can go through all sorts of things, right? Like, and it's why making a better player, it also means respecting players. and respecting players, right? And like, you know, what else can we do? Do we need more reminders to be like, hey, time to go touch grass, right? Or different things like, you know, we don't want to be, you know, this sort of overly parental person trying to tell players how to do, you know, but when you're not 18 or whatever, right?

52:50Like, you know, some mechanisms to help make good decisions or even when you're above 18, right? Little minors or nuds is maybe important, right? And so we don't, like, we're not a social media company, right? that like optimizes every single component of what their company is to engagement right that's like if that number doesn't go up we are failing right there's no god metric right we're like well how many hours in a month is optimal right for a league player or valper to play right if it goes up is that good maybe right it's like here's what the baseline is right and we can sort of look at over time but we got to look at all sorts of stuff right and it's like if it starts to be too high for too many people when there's obviously a bell curve or distribution it's like is there something we can do is there a problem right that could be happening and then what's our role right in engaging in that but like it's very important that we ask ourselves those questions and we're not always trying to extract and like drive our poo up which is average revenue per user or whatever or drive you know you know game hours up right it's got to be like hey like let's be long term we want a long term relationship with players right like most of our players never spend a dime remember like all of our games we have now except ripbound which is physical cards are completely free right so nobody has to spend a dime ever to get all this insane value that we deliver all these patches all this content always incredible games all these incredible servers you know all this stuff all these people to play with your and all this but if you happen to like our stuff maybe you'll like this different outfit you know for a character or maybe you'll like this gun skin or whatever.

54:19And like, but if we, if you don't, that's cool. Maybe you'll like this other one. Right. Or if you can't afford it too, like this, you know, I spoke at UCLA one time and this student came up to me after, and she, she's like, you know, it was very excited to talk to me and just said, Hey, I'm a poor college student. I've been playing league for five years. This is, you know, back in like 2013 or 2014. And she's like, I never spent a dime in your games. And I love them. And I met all my friends at UCLA here because of league and all this other stuff. And so I made this Ash and Trindamere doll just to say, thank you for you.

54:46it because you know i'm gotta go by trindamere my wife is sort of known as ash and uh you know and it's like that's what we're doing right and like people who do spend you know thank you high five right like glad we're meeting your needs we want to keep making a better replay we want to keep doing stuff like arcane we want to find ways to sort of you know take this trust you're having an investment to do all these other cool things right and it's just really hard but like that's also the sort of virtuous cycle that can happen when you have a great company full of great people that are mission-driven, that want to make a better player, that want to go through the pain.

55:19If we do a great job with a business model that aligns our interests with that of our players, it can create this really positive virtuous cycle. But that thing is fragile. And so as a founder, yeah, when there's entropy and it starts to fray, it's like, goddammit, guys, we got to fix this because it's too cool.

55:34Aiden:Juxtaposing League against other large games, take Counter-Strike's monetization, take Gacha Game monetization. I believe that sentiment, but I'll take the, the hater tweet response I can envision in my head. He's like, you, you fucking sold a$500 Ari skin. Yeah. So how is that, you know, within the structure that you just laid out, how is something like that justified? Yeah. So the philosophy right on that is there's price discrimination, right? Which essentially means it's just the basic economic concept, which means that there's value all across the pricing curve. So most of our players will never spend a dime.

56:10Awesome. High five. There's all this value, right? You can unlock stuff, you get skins, all these other things, you know, but then some players, right, actually want to spend a bunch of money and some stuff, you know, that can be quite exclusive, you know, like we'll have higher price points and whatnot. And if that's, if like the reason people are pissed on the same is because one, some people were like, Hey, that precedent is a problem. And I just want to be opposed to it philosophically. Right. Which we totally understand. Other people are like, I think it's super cool. And I want that. And like, that's crazy.

56:35I can't afford it. Totally. We get that, but it's totally optional, right? It's like, you don't need to go buy the like Louis Vuitton purse, you know, or bag or shoes or whatever, like all this stuff's optional.

56:46Aiden:If I don't have the$500 Faker Ari skin, I'll get bullied at school. I will lose midday. People will talk trash in lane, right? You know, but like, you know, some people may be funny when you have the skin, right? I have the skin, you know, and you know, uh, some people have been like, you know, yeah, but also people, you know, some people jock it and whatever, but Like, it's just... And you know, not everybody needs to love everything. It's just a really important concept, both from a game perspective or from a content perspective, right? And so it's just like on League, right? We want to make a champion that like resonates with, like every champion should resonate with somebody, right?

57:20But not every champion will resonate with everybody. Some people love to play Riven, right? Some people love to play Alistar, right? for example. Yeah, exactly. We could go through this.

57:28Aiden:Maybe some really fucked up guys you'd never hang out with play singed. Totally. Play singed. Yeah, don't chase. And maybe we should hardware ban them. Yes, that's the appropriate response. Yeah. I think maybe get me in there. Get me in there. Yeah. Get that anti-cheat on the root level to brick their PC. Yeah, we'll go into Freak's basement. We'll tell them to, you know. Okay, great. I, okay, this is a big, this is a big topic. I kind of, I wanted to get to kind of your guys' relationship with Tencent and mobile games. I want to start with Wild Rift. And I would say the streets, the narrative that I have been told is that a long time ago, Tencent, who is this giant Chinese gaming company that is a majority owner of Riot Games.

58:21Aiden:Yes. um right they uh they ask you guys to make a mobile game a long time ago and you guys said no like we didn't want to focus or work on that so they're like all right and then they green light honor kings and now for people who don't know especially if you i mean if you don't live in china honor of kings is gigantic i think like by yearly revenue it's like the largest game in the world now in the world totally uh and i think also known as arena valor yep yeah it's got two it's kind of weird it's so so now seeing that that game got so big and then you guys try to take on wild rift years later are there any like regrets or i think it's worth saying for the audience that honor of kings is essentially league of legend like right it look you from a from a site perspective you couldn't tell the difference yeah yeah well and it's like it's our exact same mechanics like all the design innovation and the exact same lane spacing and like we can go under the map it's the exact same right like so so they basically but it sort of changed a little bit over time because you know some stuff i can get into but yeah they green light a mobile game that they also own well they asked us they they for permission to make it because when we said no when they said because just to jump into that you know yes they said hey there's this whole trend in china right where like these successful pc games you know sort of this mobile market is exploding We think it's important to try to find a way to go do this.

59:43And, you know, like, will you guys do it? And we're like, we suck at mobile. We don't know anything about it, right? And, you know, so totally understand the sort of opportunity in the trend line. But, like, that's not us, right? We will not do a good job at solving that problem, right? And they're like, we respect that. It makes sense. You know, and by the way, we had tons of cool stuff in the pipe, like Val and all these other things. You know, and so, you know, and again, like, there's only so much capacity that we can go take on. And again, you know, like Riot doesn't make decisions about what to go work on based on like some chart or trend.

1:00:12You know, it needs to be like we actually think we have a deep understanding of a player need and whatnot. And so it needs to be a little more organic. But anyway, so we say all that, right? And they're like totally respected. And they're like, can we go build some mobile MOBAs, right? And we're like, yes. And so then they grin that nine of them and all of them failed. And then one, as it was already live and sort of said, well, let's just let's just copy League. And so they released a patch on a live one that was that. And that was Otter Kings. And then that started to be like the word on the street.

1:00:44Oh my God, like League is out. And so that was like, wait, what's happening? So anyway, that became a whole thing.

1:00:54Aiden:Yeah, what does the whole thing look like? Can I keep it 100 with you? Because from my perspective, it's like you're in this weird spot were the gigantic, I cannot express to people how large this company is. The gigantic. Right. They're the largest tech company in China. Yeah. And so they're the majority owner of Riot. And so the quick background and context on how we got in touch with Tenson in the first place, right, was they found us when we were a startup in 2008. Right. So when I was talking about how Brandon and I were idiots and running around and making every mistake and didn't know anything, all of a sudden out of the blue comes this massive Chinese company.

1:01:29At the time, they're like 50 billion, which is still huge. Now they're like 700 billion or 600 billion or something insane, you know? And, um, they're like, Hey, uh, you know, like we heard about you guys. We're like, how, you know, cause you know, we were sort of the ear to the street. Yeah, they really were. They were scouring the world, looking for titles to license to try to bring to the Chinese market. Right. And most of the content that was developed in the West, right. Wasn't built as a live service for online play, free to play, et cetera. The reason free to play took off in Asia was because piracy was so efficient, right like you couldn't have a box product right and so uh all the box games but all the content from the west was built as a box right for console and for pc and sold at retail and whatnot and so that's also why they were interested in us they're like well it's just like very cheap to acquire the rights to publish this in china so if it becomes a thing like yay and uh but that was great for us because we're like wow momentum hey hey board look china thinks we're going to be successful right and so we're like you know and they gave us a little advance on future revenues and that was very helpful, right?

1:02:30Because every little bit of momentum sort of helps you survive and fight another day. And that was the original relationship, right? A publishing deal in China. Then fast forward to 2011, right? We're venture majority controlled at the time. Brandon and I first had much burners, you know, had to sell a majority of equity in the company in order to raise enough funds to try to get the product to market. And we had to raise a second round because we also had to be our own publisher because we talked about in terms of couldn't give our keys to the kingdom to publishers. And so we had to build our own platform.

1:02:57We did that, took it market, right? League is growing and doing really well. And VCs go, well, I think it's time to sell the company. Right. And we're like, well, we think we're just getting started, you know, but VCs are measured on investor rate of return. Right. The denominator in that equation of IRR, right, is years since the investment. Right. That's very sensitive. So the faster they make a good return, the better the IRR looks. Right. And so, you know, so the VCs were like, this is great. Who knows what this thing's going to happen? but this is pre-korea pre-china pre-esports pre all sorts of stuff right and um but brandon and i always had the philosophy too that like if there are other people that are better than us to do anything we're you know that we're here to do awesome right like because it's we're it's fiduciary we're shareholders we got to do the right thing for players and you know we always assume that like there's got to be people better than us because we don't know what the hell we're talking we're doing you know from day one and um so anyway so but tencent at the time like we go to the this roadshow they're like they actually got a board observer seat um in our second institutional round where they invested alongside our vcs because our vcs actually you know had done some work with tencent before and dug them they had a relationship and then they're like wait what are you guys doing trying to sell this company like we think you're just getting started and so tencent actually bid to try to acquire a majority of riot to prevent us from being acquired by an ea and Activision, a Western media company, et cetera, to be like, they're going to screw you up.

1:04:26And we want to keep you guys independent at arm's length and keep a board structure in place and not have you come report to VP of such and such. Right. And we were always like, but that's super unusual. Like nobody does that. Right. And fast forward, like why our founder's still here, you know, et cetera, 15 years post transaction, because that's been true. And so it's been this really interesting sort of hands off like arm's length relationship for a long period of time. And that has enabled us to also remain private, to not have all these incredibly short term pressures to do things that don't make sense for players, et cetera.

1:04:59And that has helped Riot really evolve the way that it has. But to the point around Honor King, et cetera, like any sort of long term relationship, right, there's challenges that can emerge from time to time. And, you know, when challenges emerge in any important relationship, right, you have lots of different options in terms of how you react to that dynamic right and it was a an opportunity for us to kind of realign on uh all sorts of things you know and uh you know so but yeah that's um and and so now it you know even though it's sort of strange that there's this derivative version of league that is you know super massive on mobile and all that um in aggregate right for riot and for tencent and all that it's of course growing the pie in a great way they did a better job of course of actually meeting players needs than we would have because we weren't doing anything so long-winded way to say so why wildrift right because one of the things we also did as part of this whole uh negotiation discussion alignment about how do we where do we go from here and whatnot was we need to really diverge the products over time right and so um so we wanted to deliver to players a more authentic league of legends type experience on mobile which is what wildrift was right um we could actually use our champions we could actually use our ip we could uh make kits that were more specific and so vain felt like vain and you know all these other things and so

1:06:21Aiden:uh so that's where wild drift came from i because it's not lost to me that you're you know you're using some very polite language to describe the situation and i'm not saying that these aren't the right decisions of the right call or something like that i think what do you have any thoughts on this dynamic of Chinese gaming companies seemingly being able to get away with an aspect of like copyright infringement that let's let's step away from Riot and Tencent entirely let's go to a game like Crossfire Crossfire for those people who don't know is an incredibly popular game in China that's basically Counter-Strike it's very it's very similar the same style style game and there There is like there's a map in Crossfire that's just re-skinned Dust 2.

1:07:08Aiden:And, you know, Valve doesn't strike me as the company, the type of company that's going to spend a bunch of time trying to like take legal action. But particularly against like an American company taking legal action against a Chinese company is very unlikely to be successful in the first place. Well, one thing on that, just as a quick aside, and then, you know, I definitely keep going to the question. But and also interesting enough, like you have to get approval as a non-Chinese company. Right. And you need to partner with a Chinese company to even launch your game in China. which is a whole thing, right?

1:07:35And so like, it's a quite very protectionist system, except Steam somehow circumvents this entire process. And so, you know, Valve is sort of benefiting from this interesting little weird thing too, where like players install Steam all over China and all these games that are sort of launched on Steam, they can sort of go to China and get a bunch of Chinese players and circumvent this whole process in a really interesting way. So yeah, so there's sort of this interesting dynamic where yes, there's that, but there's also this. They might not want to upset that. That's right.

1:08:08Aiden:That carve out. Interesting. Okay. I see. I guess it's funny because a small tangent of my own is like, I got really curious about the way you publish league in different regions when I was a kid. And I made accounts on like the Garena SEA servers. Cool. And I made, I like faked a Chinese passport to make a Chinese league account. Like when I was like 13. Legit. because I wanted to see what the player experience was like on these other places. I'm like, see, that's entrepreneur type stuff, right? Like, you can't, you can't help. Seriously. But I mean, like when you have high, thank you. And you can't help yourself, but be like, ah, like, cause you're curious about it.

1:08:47I think that's cool.

1:08:49Aiden:I think what, what, what made me so curious is like, it's not lost to me as a league player is like, Oh, millions and millions of people play this game in these other countries that I don't see listed on the region list. in my client? How do they play the game? Right. And how big is league? Yeah. And by the way, the greenest out of the day thing, that's a whole other story. Yeah, I've heard it's crazy. Yeah. But this is also just the craziness of being an entrepreneur in the first place, right? Like Brandon and I were just trying to make a small game company to build games, right? And then next thing you know, problem after problem after opportunity after like every new success or hurdle or challenge we go creates, it's like we crest the hill and then there's 10 more, right?

1:09:25And it's every single time over and over and over. And like we never imagined we'd be sitting in these seats doing this different type of stuff too, right? Like, you know, and like building Arcane, you know, having players mad at us for, you know, all sorts of different types of stuff, like becoming the NCAA, we're at the sanctioned teams all around the world. We're like, we're going to figure out how to build sports. Anyway, but like, yeah, there's all just craziness on that front. But even the green thing or South Asia or all this complexity internationally, right? It's like, we had to figure out how to go deliver this, these products and this value to players.

1:09:54And there's lots of different decision-making frameworks that different leadership teams in different parts of the world have. Right.

1:10:00Aiden:And I think what's crazy for those people that don't understand is like there for these other regions, there was basically different clients for their version of League of Legends. And in the China one, I thought it was so crazy. One, when you boot it up, it's not like the other ones where you, oh, you connect to the North American server and you're just in on the China one. You pick from 30 different Chinese servers to connect to. Right. And then what I thought was crazy at the time that I didn't understand was, oh, so many of the characters have different artwork to like meet different Chinese laws and publishing standards.

1:10:31Aiden:And I thought that was so crazy. So like Karthus has gloves, right? And the collar pulled up and his face is really dark, right? You know, because Karthus is a lich, right? And skeletons are one of like the banned content types by the Ministry of Culture in China, right? So, yeah, there's all sorts of localization requirements and challenges, whether it's language, you know, and, you know, there's just a lot of complexity that oftentimes, to your point, is sort of very hidden from, you know, how players experience the game that, of course, can increase cost and complexity and sort of reduce market footprint size, which is also where as there's more connected systems and it's sort of easier to do broader distribution, you know, and like different companies solve different parts of the value chain, like, a good payment system or different metalware or awesome engines where it reduces complexity for the developers, which makes it easier to build higher quality content and do more things, deliver more for players.

1:11:25And that's where like that trend is just continuing. Like it's way easier to build and put stuff online now than it was when we were starting the company. And we had to like write our own services on hardware that we ran our own, like we had our own data centers that we'd rent, you know, space in and we had like, we had our own ops team as management because pre cloud, you know? And so anyway,

1:11:44Aiden:I guess to close the loop on my question from earlier is like, how do you feel about this seeming environment to me where these giant, like giant Chinese games can, it's more than just like, like Valorant is attack shooter that is heavily inspired by counter strike. I wouldn't say it's copying counter strike, but there are a lot of Chinese games that I've seen that like, Oh, that's league. That's, that's Valorant. That's counter strike. And it's like one to one. I want to add on that because it's not just China now. It's like Roblox games will come out. Yeah. Or there'll be an indie version or we're going to, because the tools are so cheap that anything innovative can get copied instantly.

1:12:24And it's like power world, right? Whatever. They're like, Oh, thanks Pokemon. You know, like, let's just go like launch a game. Yeah. But I mean like blizzard did this at games workshop, right? Like, you know, it's like, you know, anyway, it's, uh, right. And games workshop was like, thanks Tolkien. You know, like, so, you know, it's, there's just, and again i don't actually want to equate the games workshop to tolkien or blizzard 2 games workshop to china to sort of one-to-one copies because there's there's a range of inspired by and sort of building a product which is different you know but starcraft is pretty inspired by 40k right and tyrannids and whatever and like but it's to your point sufficiently differentiated right like copyright law you know has sort of two main tests right it's like a substantially similar, you know, test and, you know, uh, you know, and then there's like audience confusion.

1:13:12There's, there's a couple of different tests that are sort of relevant on that. And so by those measures, of course, yeah, there are a bunch of products in particular markets that really would fail those tests, but it's expensive to go litigate. And well, what's the core system? And are you actually going to be able to do anything about it? Right. And, you know, in certain markets that's difficult, right. Or in certain platforms, right. Like, what are you going to go after the 14 year old? That's like building the Roblox thing. That's like, right. You know, and like, yeah, yeah. Like, well, you know, and so take one down a hundred pop up anyway.

1:13:39That's right. And or like, there's a bajillion, like you go to Etsy, right. And or all these different, you know, stores are red bubble, right. And there's 20 ,000 like legal legends vendors that are selling stuff. My fish shirts. I'm making a lot of money on those. So, and you know, on the one hand, it's like, look, you know, we also want to empower our community, right. And creators. And so we, we create all this, like a creator safe music for people to be able to make content on and, or, you know, try to empower the community to go. we're like, look, we're not, we don't care if you make some fucking bracelets or different things or go sell an event.

1:14:06Like, in fact, we have halls, you know, filled with like player vendors at our e-sports events or whatever too, you know, but we'll also have, you know, some official stuff. Like you go to a Dodger game, you want to get the Dodger hat. You know, we want to provide that stuff too. But like, again, that's kind of like this whole range of, of different experiences, sort of like price discrimination, right? Where, and Riot thinks about what's our role in the community, right? We don't own the community. We're part of it. And we have a different role to play to help nurture it and to help create these opportunities for different creators and members to be part of it, to help enrich it in a way that hopefully the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

1:14:38And that's how we add value, you know, and that's how the community can add value to each other. And, you know, but like how that manifests may be different per game, you know, but that's anyway, um, you know, there, there's just a lot of complexity across all these things, you know, but we don't want to be the music industry, right. Going crazy and DMCA take downs and blah, blah, blah. But we do need to enforce our IP because we don't, right? We can actually lose our rights, you know, in different jurisdictions and things. And so like, there's this, it's just another example of like all of this complexity we got to figure out and navigate and make, you know, make good decisions on.

1:15:12But the thing that really matters is making great games and great experiences for players, right? And that philosophy of trying to make it better to be a player, right? And then it's how to build all these different capabilities all across organization again which is why that like structure and system stuff i talked about like the good decisions are relative to who the player is right and whatever their context is like the league player in korea has a bit of a different experience than in china or in la or in europe because in korea there's 25 000 pc bongs just in seoul you know and so people like half the game hours are played you know at some pc bong and different machines and whatnot and so we have to navigate all that stuff to to actually create a global title that resonates all around the world and crosses cultures.

1:15:55But when we do, it's freaking awesome because it brings everybody together, right? And you can wear a Timo hat and go to Shanghai or go to Seoul or New York and whatever. And people be like, yo, and like, and you got this instant bond, like that woman, you know, who I met at UCLA said, right? And so that's like when people go back to the, oh, we're this evil company trying to extract from my perspective, right? Again, not to say we've made every perfect decision or whatever, but like nothing could be further from the truth from what rioters are trying to do every day. you know like it is a service oriented we're here to do awesome stuff and yes if we do awesome stuff with a smart business model hopefully players will reward us with money but like people don't get out of bed you know to go try to tackle like say this mmo problem or all these different types of things if they're not incredibly passionate about trying to solve those really hard problems right or if they do they don't last right you guys have probably heard the expression around like missionaries outlast mercenaries absolutely true right and when somebody's like coming to riot it because it's good for the resume, you know, it's often not the great fit.

1:16:56And, you know, as we are really great organizationally, you know, and all that, uh, our teams will keep improving as more and more people that have that passion are sort of then learning the craft and making great decisions and all that different type of stuff. And so, and that's the journey that we're always, always on and hopefully we'll always continue to do.

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1:18:44Atrioc:Details at lowes.com slash terms. Subject to change. I'm curious. There's so much of a different culture in gaming in China or Asia or name whatever country, right? And the most obvious one is what you just said, mobile, right? Or PC bongs, which are like PC cafes. Yeah. Or versus, you know, American gamers seem to be very different. Is that affecting how you guys design games? When you say we want to make something the player absolutely loves, well, that's going to be very different per person. So how do you navigate that? So generally, no. So we think, you know, chess is chess is chess, right?

1:19:17You don't make a global esport by changing the game, you know, to accommodate local tastes and nuances and all that. And like this, these American made IPs resonate pretty darn well all around the world, you know. And so but how a player gets into the game, the around game does need to change, right? Because the local distribution, the language, the how we service the laws, right? Like we need a Korean social security number to make a league account in Korea, right? Or a vowel account or whatnot, right? And so there's all, like, we had to build custom PC bong software to help PC bong owners administer, like, LAN events, right?

1:19:47And we changed our business model, right? We're going to go into a LAN cafe, you know, and all the champs are unlocked and different things, right? And so, because we have to figure out how to align everybody's incentives and all this other stuff, too. And because the PC bong owner is paid per hour by people who are renting the machine, right? And then whatever game they're playing, they will get a cut of that. you know and so um you know we got to figure out all these interesting things that we had no idea about right when we were you know just getting started um but what we don't compromise on is the game but we do need to ask ourselves right and we try to test and validate you know are there really significant regional differences but a lot of people and a lot of publishers in different regions will tell you chinese players are super different all stuff and it's we totally disagree like we think people dramatically overestimate that player motivations are the same you know exploration and mastery or progression or competition or whatever it is you know they may be different populations they may have slightly different aesthetic tastes or art tastes or like you know different things too but like the core yeah is you know it's the same stuff there may just be you know cultural nuances in a particular market right as to like why a particular sport took off in one region and sort of not another and all this but like say you know soccer versus baseball versus whatever.

1:21:03And it's like games are the same thing. And so, but you got to navigate all those and you got to be curious. You got to ask yourselves those questions, but like, you know, and again, there can be some regional differences. Well, cause like there's like Mahjong culture in China. Right. And so like a lot of people are sort of used to playing strategy games. Right. And like, there's a lot of women who are in these Mahjong clubs, right. that it's like pretty adjacent to TFT, you know? And so like, like seriously, you know, like so literally like seriously, like that's a thing in China. And so that's fascinating.

1:21:40Right. But TFT is still TFT, you know? And so, but it's the what makes Mahjong cool is the strategy and the social aspect and sort of what's happening and the decision-making just like what makes TFT cool, you know? And so, uh, but that preexisting affinity for something similar can help, you know, But like if there's a market or a region that hasn't sort of caught on to a particular game type, it doesn't mean that it won't. It just maybe mean that it hasn't for various reasons. It didn't have the right product or the distribution wasn't right or whatever. Like card games, physical card games are sort of a nascent market in China.

1:22:15Right. And obviously they're massive in Japan. They're massive all over the world. Right. Magic and all this. Do we think that card games won't become successful as like in sort of game share compared to the small place it is now? I think card games are going to likely grow in size in China over time because card games are freaking awesome.

1:22:32Atrioc:You need to package them with cigarettes. Because when we went to China, I would go running along the river and it was just Mahjong clubs of men smoking cigarettes and playing Mahjong just as far as the eye could see. Right. But it's kind of like, well, what's the right distribution mechanism, right? And so how do we go connect culturally in a way that people go, oh, this is awesome and cool, right? But the League IP is huge in China. But like, and so you think Riftbound would, you know, have a bunch of opportunities and all this. But we think long term, right, we got to figure out a bunch of these things.

1:23:02But like some short term lack of it blowing up doesn't mean it doesn't have potential to, you know, over time. Right. This kind of, again, goes to how we think about green and long term being sustainable and all that, you know, and why it's so important to like keep trying and keep improving the product on this. and by the way, Riftbound was derived from all the learning that we had in Legends of Runeterra. And so Legends of Runeterra, by the way, is sustainable and cool and doing great for what it is now. Path of Champions, Pivot, all this other stuff. The community stable and it obviously inspired where we learned a ton about what we could do at Riftbound and that's another way we sort of think about this type of stuff, right?

1:23:38No, it's a good example of a game that is like a single or a double that you've kept going. I forgot about Runeterra. It's actually crazy.

1:23:44Aiden:I thought Legends of Runeterra got canceled at some point. I didn't realize that it is going. Because people freak out, right? And they go, ah, you know, and, and even when we say, here's what's going on and da, da, da, people, you know, guys falling. It's over. Right. And it's like, okay, maybe, you know, we'll, we'll see over time. Right. And that's where we just have to take our lumps. Right. And a lot of times when people are angry and they're shouting at us in social media and or tweets and or Reddit and whatever, it's actually because they care. Right. It's like, it's me and Brandon back in the day in college and, or when we were in our twenties and we're like, what the fuck is this company doing?

1:24:18You idiots. Right. ah like don't you know i love this game you know and so we're like we know dudes we're sorry right like we're trying right we will we're working on it right like that is the feedback loop and how rioters feel right and it's like another way that i talk about social media is it's kind of like a microphone to a mob right it's like you go to the coliseum i went to usc and you watch an usc football game and so you know somebody throws a pass and a guy's about you know in the open you know open in the end zone and drops it, right? A bunch of players, oh, you know, they'll be like, F that guy, you know, and they say thing.

1:24:51Well, social media now lets you tell that person directly how you feel about them in that moment. But you go see that player at a bar later on, 95 % of the people that like send that to you would be like, yo, what's up? And like, want to give a high five or be like, dude, yeah, well, you know, and be like, hey man, like, well, next time. So, you know, humans in person, way different, right? And so, and that's a thing that we try to remind ourselves, right? because again, we've gotten lots of death threats and so have a million writers and all this stuff and the internet can do the internet thing.

1:25:19But like, it's, it often comes from a place of passion, you know, and not all of course, because there's people can very much cross a line and have and do sometimes, you know, but not most, you know, the vast majority of people are, are, are, you know, super reasonable and just sometimes they're super frustrated. Right. And that's where we just think if like, if they could walk around, ride and talk to writers and see all the stuff that everybody's doing. And, you know, I think, I think they would feel good about, uh, about what's in everybody's heart. So, well, speaking of the online mob and speaking of regional differences, I do have a more challenging question for you, which I want to ask about, which is gamer attitudes towards AI and development, which is like the big question in game development right now.

1:25:58The technologies are so new. No one knows how it's going to impact gaming. Obviously there's a huge, we went to China recently, massive regional differences in how they approach it in China. It seemed to be, they're going ham, they're going ham. It's everywhere. And then we saw oh, there's a Gamescom or something recently. So many Chinese developed games that have AI in the trailer. So I mean, you don't have to be your official position here, but I want to hear a sort of riot at a high level, how they're thinking about this technology and what it means for gaming going forward. Yeah, so I think a lot of people's concerns are sort of appropriately focused on two main concerns, right?

1:26:28One is like, hey, we don't want bullshit, right? We don't want AI slop. Like we want quality, right? And we value the art, right? And the sort of human decision-making in terms of all these taste calls and all those other things, right? And by the way, we care about the developers, right? We want these awesome people to be able to continue to make these things that we love and whatnot. And we are completely aligned with those two concerns. And so, and, right, like also to your point around, we'll look at what China's doing and all this stuff. The world's expectations, like we talked about before, are going to keep going up, right?

1:27:02Because the world is not dynamic and whatever we're doing today may not be sufficient for us to continue to surprise and delight and meet player expectations tomorrow. So it's a really interesting challenge for the whole company and the whole industry to think about what are the implications and what do we do with it and how do we continue to make it better to be a player? And I think it's a complicated issue across all those dimensions, but I think ultimately, I fundamentally believe that AI is gonna empower great creators to do incredible things. and so like the taste piece and the creativity piece and whatnot is not gonna go away right and so i think a lot of the concerns relating to that uh that a lot of people have i think are a little um they're they're warranted when companies take the knee-jerk reaction of being like we have an opportunity to improve our margins and cut a bunch of costs and make our teams tiny, you know, whatever it is, you know, but like, I think pretty quickly people are going to figure out that like, Oh, there's like you, the human taste and judgment and artistry or whatever is, is absolutely priceless and can't be, uh, you know, sort of substituted.

1:28:17So

1:28:17Atrioc:how do you actually incorporate it into the company? Cause there's, as you just pointed out a wide range and many, most people listening, I'm sure I've experienced a company, whether they're at it or, you know, it's a product they're using where it's just kind of become AI-ified and everything is AI and it's clearly being forced on everybody from top down versus letting people find it in their own ways and, you know, where are the ethical limits for certain areas? How do you, you know, day to day, how do you, how do you decide how this thing is actually being disseminated? Yeah. So one, we don't force it, you know?

1:28:46So, uh, I think that's already sort of differentiates us. Uh, but two, right? Like it's trying to create mechanisms for learning, you know, and this goes back to the philosophy around make it better to be a player and, you know create and so oh i never finished my you know description of our evergreen strategy the three things number one was live games green number two is create new genre defining games and experiences really hard right but that's the aspiration what we should do and number three is build the best place in the world to make the best games though it's that's what the company's all about right and so if we want the world's best creators to make the best games right like well we need to explore and have tools and have freedom and you know and so we need to have some data architecture and frameworks and people to be like what's appropriate for us and our team in particular areas.

1:29:26And so there's a lot of curiosity. There's a lot of exploration. There's a lot of stuff like that that's happening, you know? And then of course there's also a lot of like nice stuff that, you know, where like people can set little reminders, go through your G suite and whatnot and like automate some shit that you hate to do or whatever. And so like, but those are not the types of things that I think are actually, you know, really concerning people. But again, one is, you know, a lot of people are exploring and they are sort of playing around with different things and all this, but you know, we're not shipping stuff to players, you know?

1:29:53And, you end of the day, we're not forcing anybody to use it. But I think the world is going to keep evolving in different ways. And I think, I think everybody in the industry is exploring in different ways, even if they're not really talking about it. Sure. Just given our time, I really think we should talk about esports a bit because our background is all so intertwined with esports. And I think even with league esports and how that all ties together. Again, I first met you, you don't remember this, but at 2011, I was working for Team Liquid covering StarCraft. And there was a tiny little booth in the corner, which is your guys' first world championship.

1:30:24and you had Freak, I don't know at the time, giving piggyback rides and you guys were so excited over there that I walked over with some StarCraft pros we watched and that got me into League. I mean, it literally was that day. I was there. It just made it such a big deal. And so it grew from that to an extremely big thing. But the esports industry in the interim has become various levels of catastrophe, up and down and up and down. And so I want to hear your POV on the esports industry as it stands now, not only from a riot scene, but what you see in the broader industry because it feels like it's in a lull.

1:30:56It's a downward post-COVID situation. And what are your top three favorite things

1:30:59Atrioc:about Overwatch League?

1:31:04Yeah, I'll start with your question.

1:31:10So, you know, I think the reason it feels like a lull, right, is because the hype train got way ahead of where it was, you know, at the point in time. The COVID problem for a lot of industries, right? Yeah, well, somewhat, but also just like in advance, right? And like, Brandon and I were always trying to pump the brakes for different people. And, you know, various other companies were always trying to sort of pump up expectations and investors and all that, and, you know, different approaches. And I think Riot, some extent benefited from other companies making big investments and, you know, having a very commercial lens to it to sort of elevate the awareness to advertisers and sponsors and potential team owners and whatnot.

1:31:44But, you know, our focus was always like, let's nurture, and I use that word deliberately because it has to be an ecosystem where all of the key stakeholders have a mechanism that works and is sustainable for them, right? It's sort of like the live game screen concept where it's players need to be able to quit school or their job or whatnot and have a full-time career. So they need some amount of stability, right? Which means that they need teams that they can join that are sufficiently capitalized that can afford to pay them a living wage, or better to compete for talent to then have it be something that is real.

1:32:21And in order for that to happen, those team owners need to be able to have a revenue stream. And so is it tournament winnings or sponsorships or what's the right deal structure or whatnot? But in order to do that, we had to, number one priority always is make a sport that's so cool that people want to watch. Because that viewer, that watch, and how many people are into it, et cetera, is what then is a starting point to attract the sponsors who want to go reach those people who can then go help fund the esports teams who then can fund the players to then join the team etc right and or riot can subsidize right which you've done for many years and all this other stuff but our you know league and val in particular have become very sustainable over time as a result of this but many many years ago right we used to joke that it was sort of the black hole of money vortex or all that but we were investing for the long term right um and so but as league you know and world started taking off and all this other stuff and numbers started to get, you know, pretty big and all this, a lot of the people were observing that, right.

1:33:19And then investors were rushing in and throwing a lot of capital around, right. Which then it would flate a lot of valuations, right. And then as teams are flush with cash, what do they do? Right. They of course went to go compete with each other to get the best players, which then made salaries go through the roof and all that. Right. And then that became sort of the new normal, but it was funded not by revenues that were necessarily sustainable, but it was funded by investment dollars. And that wasn't the best ROI players did well, right. For that window. And all this,

1:33:46Aiden:I mean, Pjergsen got a Honda. It was crazy. Well, Faker, I know he is. Yeah. No, he totally is. Right. And he got a G wagon and other stuff, like people, you know, they gave him all sorts of stuff. Right. But like, he's got a building named after him, you know, and he's amazing. As are, you know, many other players too, but like, but that was sort of this bubble that existed and it was driven just like any type of bubble that happens by overinflated expectations for growth, you know, and sort of revenues over a particular period of time. And so as those, as that rate of growth didn't manifest to those investor expectations, the investment dollars then dried up, which then had the net effect of having teams pull back and reducing salaries and different things and less events and, you know, yada, yada, yada.

1:34:34Right. And so that's what But there's still a bunch of stuff and a bunch of activities and a bunch of healthy leagues that are happening and all this too. And there's, you know, EWC coming involved. There's other sort of groups that are trying to add some dollars and add the ecosystem. And, you know, but it's normalized more for what is actually more sustainable. You know, and so I just think it's important for anybody to recognize that, like, sometimes, and, you know, and we could, again, debate whether, like, AI, as an example, is going to hit these insane growth rates that, you know, are justifying these multi-trillion dollar valuations or whatnot, right?

1:35:02You know, just like the 2008 bubble and all this other stuff. It's like sometimes a lot of these economic resets, right? Again, they're driven by overinflated investor expectations, right? But it doesn't mean that the underlying fundamentals. Yeah, the dot-com bubble, for example, right? That's right. And so that's just something for everybody to be aware of, right? Especially as you're doing investments.

1:35:21Aiden:I'll maybe push back or clarify about the sustainability part. When you say sustainable, do you mean for Riot or for the teams? because as the ecosystem has kind of changed and maybe receded in the case, I think I understand league, the landscape of league a bit better right now. The teams in like an NA LCS or an EU LCS, forgive me, I know the names, are not doing very well now. These spots, like some teams are forfeiting their spots or trying to give away the spots because they're not performing well. So when you say sustainability, I'm just curious what you mean. Yeah. Well, so this goes to, well, how much are they spending, right?

1:36:04And versus how much are they bringing in, right? That's just basic business one-on-one, right? Like, are you making more, right? To be able to be profitable at all, to be sustainable or not. And sometimes if teams have gotten too ahead of themselves from a cost perspective, and sometimes, right, like they signed deals or done various things where they can have commitments that are, you know, unsustainable for them, right? Then that can, you know, have this sort of impact. But the demand is there, right? Both in terms of other teams and or, but it's like, it's kind of like what's happening across the game industry in general.

1:36:31There's sort of this reset and recalibration of like, what's the appropriate size and what's the appropriate types of payroll that can, that teams can actually afford based on where they're at. And there's, you know, there's sort of the entrepreneurship where certain teams are doing much better than other teams. Well, why that, you know, a lot of some teams are way better at marketing and building a brand and differentiating and creating content and, you know, all sorts of things, right? Like a hundred thieves built, you know, whole clothing line and a bunch of content. Like there's all these different things that different teams are exploring, but like that's the type of stuff that is being explored.

1:37:02Right. And, you know, if you look at like major league baseball, I was going to be able to, right. And so I'm an owner of the LA, you know, LAFC, you know, which is major league franchise, you know, and like in all these major sports leagues, NFL, NBA, MLS, et cetera, there is a significant differentiation between the top teams and the bottom teams and the sort of the median or sort of, you know, in the middle and whatnot. And like that seems it's a very similar dynamic of what is happening in the various e-sports. They all have that TV revenue buffer that allows it doesn't exist really in e-sports.

1:37:34Well, it does in Korea, right for us with LCK and whatnot and other things. And as the global distribution market for content continues to get more competitive and whatnot too, like I think the long-term trend is good because what is the type of thing that actually helps drive people to actually watch, you know, at a particular moment in time. Well, sports, right? Like it continues to demonstrate that like, when you have a good sport and good product, people will come and watch in the West in particular, right? Like there is a sort of TV and or distribution broadcast gap relative to say what's happened in China or Korea, um, you know, currently, but that doesn't mean that that will always be the case, as well.

1:38:15And the YouTube versus Twitch versus Netflix versus other distribution providers, et cetera, as those ecosystems continue to evolve and their strategies evolve and their content acquisition strategies evolve, so too may these different types of dynamics. You're setting up for a big bidding war with Netflix. No, I'm just saying it's still the leather helmet days, right? In terms of what is esports going to look like over the 21st century and how it's going to manifest. Right. And so but I also believe that there aren't going to be tons of them. Right. Just like there aren't that many big sports leagues.

1:38:49Right.

1:38:49Aiden:And I believe that part, like the era of every game trying to turn their game into an e-sport is like nonsensical to begin with. But it was yeah, it was just never going to be that way. But the community needs to decide. I think what I'm wondering is. When you talk like Korea and China make sense to me, but I look at something like NALCS and what and I this is the lowest viewership year, I think ever right now. And I'm wondering what realistic path the team in that league has to any revenue at all, because not, not saying they can't do anything. Right. Totally. But if I could give you the example is like, yeah.

1:39:28Aiden:If you're a CS team, I think you have a pretty reasonable path to how you can monetize within just the scope of that game's ecosystem. You can make a team that's good enough. You can qualify for the major. and if you're good enough, you get to a certain stage of that tournament and you get sticker revenue. Well, it's feast or famine, right? If you qualify. Yes. Right? And then if you place well, right, you can get a bunch, right? Whereas like if you're part of the LCS, right, or part of the LEC or part of the LCK or whatnot, you also get game revenue, right? If you're part of VAL, right? Like, you know, like we sell digital content that we split a lot with the teams and like those things are starting to do incredibly well.

1:40:01You know, so there's all sorts of other different revenue streams than just sort of distribution and broadcast, right? And Riot, right, like we obviously have an important role to play to your point to find the right mechanisms to help our teams, you know, sustain and survive. And it's not our entire responsibility to solve all of their problems though, right? Like that's kind of the point around, you know, like a T1, right? That one has nurtured, you know, Faker and has this, you know, an incredible track record and all these other things, right? And happens to be in Korea, you know, compared to some teams in the West.

1:40:33But even in the West, right, there's high differentiation between like a cloud nine, you know compared to you know well insert whatever yeah yeah yeah insert you know whatever team that you think may be having some challenges you know and um and like you know part of how we think about is we try to help them learn also how to from best practice standpoint apply some things that can also help them make good decisions from an operating perspective and or grow their own fan base and different things I got too, but like sometimes, and this is one of the healthy things about competition, right? Like if a team, just like if a company or a game, right, isn't able to sort of, you know, sustain maybe a different company or team or a game or whatever will do a better job, right?

1:41:19And so that's why there's also, I think some amount of churn is healthy, but I totally recognize your point, right? Where different esports ecosystems have different dynamics. and one of the sort of philosophies that we've chosen as compared to a dota you know to or a or cs right is sort of when you're in our ecosystem you know sort of a larger sort of guaranteed floor compared to what you would have in cs and with still incredibly high upside you know but you know it's that like achieving that high upside often is a longer term thing from building like a real brand franchise that does incredibly well i think for for what it's worth i always really respected your guys's decision to not follow the inflation of like ti's approach right where like

1:42:03Aiden:it obviously had to go down at some point and i think for the broader non like ti is the world championship for dota they had a system that allowed their prize pool to get to like 30 40 million dollars and a lot of the hype behind that tournament especially if you weren't a hardcore dota fan was just the amount of money that was at stake right and players had funded but as soon as that money evaporated, it changed the whole ecosystem of that game. Totally. And Fortnite, which had a huge, yeah, that $100 million tournament for a while that eventually they had to go. Right, but those are marketing events, right?

1:42:33Like, essentially, which is just not the way to do esports from my perspective. You know, like, you can't force an esport, right? And, like, Riot made some of this mistake, you know, when we're launching Wild Rift, right? You know, which endlessly pressure. You guys try to force an esport for Wild Rift? Dude, yeah. Yeah. We made that mistake. Everyone's throwing a million money at a tournament. It never works. I know.

1:42:50Aiden:Okay, I have a question. that I would be remissed if I did not ask. My esports career, I came up around a lot of Dota guys. Trying to get signed. I worked in... I'm trying to get signed.

1:43:02Atrioc:He's very good at Mario Kart. We're scouting you.

1:43:04Aiden:I worked around Dota guys a lot. I worked at Beyond the Summit. I worked on Dota events. I worked on other games. But something that they... Not my coworkers necessarily. I would say people in the Dota space would bring up all the time when League came up was that you and Brandon a long time ago took down the Dota forum. I think maybe play Dota and like had the person who runs that or he was working with you. Yeah. It all of the like data. It was Dota allstars.com and it wasn't play Dota. So Dota allstars.com all of the forum and player data about like characters and all these things that the community had access to at the time went away and was replaced by like an advertisement for league of legends.

1:43:51Aiden:And so there was this simultaneous loss of like community data and also like a forcing upon of like this new game. This is the story as it's been presented to me. And I would love to hear your perspective, correct a record or how you feel about that decision at the time. Yeah. So first of all, that's not exactly at all what happened, but I don't. Exactly as I suspected. Totally. Exactly as I suspected. the Jada Jada players have given me their perspective. Totally. Well, and here's the thing, right? Like the thing about the internet also is sometimes when you repeat a story enough, right, it's like the legend grows in the telling and or the meme or whatever, especially if it's premised upon some false premise in the first place, if it's not corrected, right, ever to, and even if it is corrected, people just believe whatever they want to believe, it'll just keep going.

1:44:39It becomes reality.

1:44:40Aiden:I would say as three influencers, yeah i i am a i hate this phenomena like it is it is it is an infection in social media now like particularly well it's the same thing that happens in politics yeah yeah you know like it's it's well and again like and even the early internet right like we were all members of the early internet and things i guess and dota and league and all this other stuff like was had some of these different dynamics and all this but but your point so you know so pendragon right uh steve Mescon, right? Was known as Pendragon, right? And he was the, you know, back at the time, like the 16, 15 year old, you know, who built DotaAllStars.com, right?

1:45:18And, you know, he was this passionate community member, right? He met first Steve Feek, right? Who was Ginsu, you know, who was the mod author of Dota AllStars, who was the guy who created Dota AllStars and sort of evolved it from Yule's Dota, you know, back in the day by increasing the item or sort of created the item combination system, right? Increase the level cap from 10 to 25. You know, his bowling ball was named Roshan, which is where Roshan came from, all this stuff, you know? And so, um, anyway, Mescon hit up Pendragon, right? Hit up Feek Gensu at one point. And it was like, Hey dude, like this game's awesome, whatever, like let's build a website.

1:45:53I can help you with it and all this. And so he was like, cool. So Mescon starts building this website and all this. It's dotallsearch.com. It starts to become, you know, this community site and he's volunteering, you know dozens of hours a week uh he's you know there's this community members that are showing up he's getting servers donated from like a guy that works at google and all these other places and again it's like a teenager you know and uh then ginsu transitions the map to ice frog you know who does an incredible job of taking you know dota to higher and higher heights and you know this is sort of the dynamic and then you know pendragon and and uh ice frog sort of work together to sort of help steer the community and this is all like 2007 six maybe this would have been yeah 2000 some between 2004 5 6 you know up to probably 7 like all around in there it's sort of depending on what era you know we're sort of talking about there and anyway that was a dynamic for a while right and like dota was this cool mod of course of warcraft 3 that was growing virally that you know brandon and i played and so many other people played we're like oh this game's awesome right and but it was this was part of the thing we're like wow this is this awesome game that we think is like this birth of this new genre you know we called it moba which is kind of stupid you know it's in it for multiplayer online battle arena whatever but like we were like this thing needs to become its own game you know and that was sort of you know part of the product inspiration to help inform League of Legends you know and um and of course it's sort of the first product that Riot was aspiring to build to sort of be the sort of validation point around you know a great company that could put players at the center and do all these things, right?

1:47:26And so the myths around IceFrog, Pendragon, are pretty interesting, right? And I've never corrected the record, despite the fact that it burns me up inside because Pendragon is totally wrongfully branded as doing this, and that's not how it went down. The reality was, so Mescon, who also then later on was working at Zappos, right which for those who remember is this online shoe company which was renowned for their customer centricity he's a true believer like he is a community serve do the right thing for customers and later when he came to riot became one of our critical employees that helped really drive and cement and codify this insane passion and mission that we all have for doing the right thing for players.

1:48:21Like he was instrumental and, you know, I could go on and on about, about some of these incredible things that, that, that, uh, Steve Petragon did for, for players. And so, uh, but right. As Dota became more and more successful, right. Like there were always discussions and like, and these guys would be getting hit up by different developers, different points of time to potentially go try to commercialize Dota. Right. And so not a novel idea. Right. And so, you know, there was Demigod, you know, and then there was S2 games that was making Han and what Oh yeah. You know, here's the new earth. Right.

1:48:52And so what happened, right. Was, um, I met, so once we, so we hired Gensu back in like late 2006, he was one of the first guys like, and after I tracked him down online, uh, like we'd already started the company, already raised money and all this. And, um, you know, there were, it was a third Gensu, you know, that I sort of tracked down the right person. There was a guy impersonating him in Brazil, you know, all sorts of different things. And, but he was a student at the university of Wisconsin. And, um, anyway, uh, you know, he just, one day he was just like, I'm done, I'm kind of done doing this Dota thing and, you know, moved on and was just like dabbling on games on the side and all this, but, uh, you know, amazing human.

1:49:31But, uh, he ended up was like, wait, you like actually want to give me a job as an associate designer to come work on this game. Okay. That sounds cool. You know? And so, um, so Ginchu joined, you know, and then we were talking about it. He's like, dude, like this, you know, Pendragon's amazing. We should chat with him. And so we got in touch with Pendragon, right? And he's like, yo, guys, like, this is not cool. Like, you can't just, like, go make a game inspired by Dota. Like, what the heck? And we're like, well, we're trying to respect Dota. We think it's awesome and all this other stuff. We think it's this whole genre, right?

1:49:58And he was, like, really uncomfortable the whole thing. And so meanwhile, he hits up IceFrog and they have his conversations. And I'm not going to get into all the different details. But long story short, it turns out IceFrog is working at S2, right? Working on Han. And so when Pendragon found that out, right, we were trying to get him to join Riot, and he was telling us no and turning us down. They were having a bunch of discussions. IceRog tried to go buy the website from him and said, oh, my grandma left me some money, and so here's$25 ,000, let me go buy the website from you. And he was like, yo, dude, we agreed.

1:50:30We're not going to do this whole thing. And why? Where did you get the money? Are you sure? And that's what he said. And he wouldn't acknowledge that he was... Oh, the money's from... I don't know. You don't know. We don't know. The idea is that he... Right. But either way, when Pendragon found it out, he was like, you know, and sort of validated that, that he was there. He's like the, I feel betrayed, you know? And so then, uh, you know, it was like, no, I don't want to say the website. So I started to build his own website. Right. And then said the whole positioning of this guy's bad and doing this thing.

1:51:00And Pendragon went, okay, right. I'll join you, you know, and then came. And then, you know, it was sort of this obviously fracture in the community. And the positioning was that Pendragon is a guy who sort of did all this stuff and that's not how it went down. And so, um, you know, he's obviously gotten lots of hate and lots of death threats and all sorts of stuff for, for many, many years. And, you know, in reality, like he's this super player focused, customer centric guy, right. Who was pouring his heart and soul and building this website and really believed in the, like, you know, we should not commercialize thing.

1:51:34And then, um, you know, everybody, you know, the incentive and temptation of sort of, you know people getting jobs and and you know evolving i think was was sort of a thing and uh but his whole frame was when he was getting assassinated you know character wise by this framing of what didn't actually happen he said you know told me he's like let them have their hero you know and i was like dude like it's full-on dark night he's fucking bad man dude like seriously like i even wrote a letter at one point all this stuff that i was like i really wanted to publish it back in like 2010 or whatever you know and i felt like uh what commissioner gordon or whatnot where i'm like this is so effed up they need this you know and like but you know he's just that's his deal he's like it's better for dota for them to believe for it just for it just to be what it is and for me to like just move on and whatever and not like not do the thing so i'm just gonna just gonna take the site down and remove and we're just gonna move on and so that was that's what he did i mean in the long run it worked out for everybody right like the both and that's that's why like you know i'm actually saying this now 20 years later or whatever because um you know it's just i think pendragon's an awesome person he's done an incredible thing for you know league players and for riot and for i think for dota actually he was you know really an awesome pioneer around community and helped inform a lot of this incredible, like incredible frameworks, you know, that still inform riots thinking today.

1:53:11And, um, anyway, now he's actually building this medical company and it is like this awesome guy. Yeah. And he's just like, his mission in life is to go help people and build communities. Right. He's trying to actually take on the FDA and not take on, but like help, uh, create mechanisms where a lot of great things that could help, lots of people are not able to get to people for reasons that are not awesome. And he's trying to find ways to get those things to people that would benefit from those things. So Mark, you've been incredibly generous with your time. Uh, we can probably talk about esports for five more hours easily, but I do have more esports questions.

1:53:50Yeah. Yeah. We can talk, we can talk all sorts of stuff. You know, I am, uh, I do have a level 20 cause it's currently level capped, uh, in wow forever druid. Okay. On PVP. We're back. I've got, I got five on five. set of the Fang, so I can actually turn into a snake, which is kind of cool and a little bit crazy. Like, they're doing some fun stuff. And, you know, I'm having a blast. They're doing some fun stuff. Not like our MO was going to be. Well, they're doing some cool stuff. But, no, I'm glad that Blizzard's having the success they're having with WoW Forever, and there's momentum, and the community's vibing again, and I hope it's really successful for them.

1:54:23And I will definitely play it on launch. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, guys. Thanks for having me.

1:54:28Atrioc:Thank you, Mark Merrill, and we'll see you all next week. Bye, everybody. Awesome. Peace.