League of Legends devs finally address hated font change

A Riot developer just explained the League of Legends font change was a necessary evil, but players can look forward to the return of the original typeset soon.

In early March, western League of Legends players started noticing a new font taking over. This impacted everything from player names over champions to any text on the game client itself. There was no explanation for why this was happening, but players had theories. Some noticed that it looked like the text of clients in other areas of the world, like Korea. Others thought that a bug blurred the font and made it thinner, therefore making it more difficult to read.

Luckily, the change was only temporary. Now League of Legends design lead Jordan Checkman has announced a fix date, players know exactly what the problem was.

When is League of Legends fixing its font?

The League of Legends font change will be fixed in Patch 14.13, which will come out between the end of June and early July. 

According to Checkman, the League of Legends font was changed because of issues with new symbols added to the game. The original font didn’t have a way to show these symbols or even some letters in several alphabets. Riot’s answer was to replace the text with one that did show these symbols.

The original font had no way of using different text if a symbol didn’t exist in the font, so certain symbols wouldn’t show. Players who saw a difference with the new font specifically noticed that letters from languages like Mandarin Chinese and Korean were showing where they wouldn’t before. Before the change, these letters would appear as boxes.

When Patch 14.13 goes live, the original font will automatically use another font if it doesn’t have a symbol. This will allow characters from more alphabets to show and lets players use symbols like hearts.

While players were initially upset about the change, the lack of information about it confused people. After Riot never addressed the change, and most people let the topic go. There was plenty to move on to with changes like the anti-cheat Vanguard or the new mastery system.