The Project L “Leak” doesn’t make sense

People are dying for new information on Riot’s Projects. Everyone wants to know when the MMO will come out and when Project L (the fighting game) will get a name and release date.

The company has been taking the ‘less is more’ approach in its marketing department by letting people know that the projects exist, but saying as little as they can about them. Well, it’s working wonders.

Content creators are constantly making videos on these projects which are viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

The need for news can transform something as common as a Riot Survey into an (intentional?) leak of Riot’s new fighting game.

The Project L “Leak”

This whole adventure began with a video posted by a Youtuber named “Innovate Gaming”. Here’s the clip in question:

Project L Survey Leaks Planned Champions

As you can see, the video’s title leaves no room for doubt, but what is shown in the 7-minute runtime actually leaves an entire amphitheatre of doubts.

The Youtuber begins the video by saying he’s been “starved for content for Project L” and that he has a survey “that is clearly for Project L”. Why is this clear? We don’t know, and he doesn’t explain or address this affirmation at all.

The first sentence arcs back to what we pointed out at the beginning of the article: people need new details on Riot’s projects, to the point where they’ll find those details even where they don’t necessarily exist.

We’re not saying this leak isn’t real; maybe Project L will indeed come out with the 23 champions in this survey. What we ARE saying is there is nothing proving that it is, and that is the problem.

A nothing burger

Riot Games sends surveys to players constantly. Players who answer surveys “well” can get new ones as frequently as every two weeks. The purpose of these is never explicitly said and it is often hard to ascertain what it could be.

Why would this survey necessarily be about Project L? The Youtuber seems to believe that the fact that the survey asked him “to pick 3 things of each champion that you were familiar with” implies that they’re thinking of translating them to a different game. Why?

This survey could be used for a dozen different projects. This could be merch, new skins, Riot’s MMO, Runeterra, a new single-player, etc. What made it specifically about Project L?

There is no mention of anything pointing to a fighting game at any point in the video. From what the Youtuber says, the survey itself came down to describing what was most memorable about each character shown in the list, accompanied by images of said characters.

In addition to this, the list already includes the 5 champions that we know will be in Project L.

2XKO (Formerly Project L) – RiotX Arcane: Epilogue | The Right Foundation

In this Riot video from November 2021, we see Ahri, Darius, Ekko and Jinx in action. Illaoi’s concept art is also shown, proving that she’ll be in the game. Why would they be surveying people on champions which have already been translated from LoL to Project L?

This video goes deep into Ekko’s kit and shows that it is pretty much finished (and it looks absolutely phenomenal). They also show a lot of Ahri and Darius’ moves. What would a survey add to these characters at this point in development?

Just be patient

Riot Games is taking the correct approach with these titles. There are no overly ambitious release windows, no constant video updates with new gameplay or whatever it is. They’re working on the games behind closed doors and trying to come up with good stuff.

They’ve confirmed that Project L is in the works and they admitted to planning on going dark “for a while.” There is an endless list of games nowadays that come out of the oven practically raw, so I think we should be thankful that they’re taking their time with these massive undertakings.

We’ll know more about Project L when Riot Games decides to show us more, or when an actually believable leak comes out, but this one isn’t it. This is simply a very hopeful (unfounded) guess from people who’re desperate for more information on a very hyped videogame.