Clearly Riot Games’ has one hot title on their hands. League of Legends has received accolade after accolade, and Riot has struck some strategic partnerships that have placed the free-to-play title at the forefront of gamers’ interest lists. Apparently, they’ve done such a good job, that they’ve been struggling to get the title out the door. Announced in conjunction with this years’ upcoming GDC event in San Francisco, Riot Games has officially partnered with Pando Networks to handle the growing demand for League of Legends.
Pando Networks’ main premise is that they optimize (read: speed up) the delivery of downloadable content. Likewise, the firm provides detailed analytics and performance data to their clients. At the present time, Pando Networks counts more than 5 million game downloads per month amongst their services provided. Riot has chosen Pando Networks’ Game Delivery Services in order to support the growth and popularity of their flagship title, League of Legends. And while Pando’s “off the rack” solutions are powerful in their own right, Riot decided to go with a fully customized solution, enabling the 1 GB title to be downloaded in a matter of minutes, and not days. Pando Networks/Riot Games is fully accessible via PC and Mac, in the US, Europe, and Asia.
“The combination of faster download speeds with an intuitive user experience and a reliable download solution regardless of network constraints has proven successful for Riot,” said Scott Gelb, vice president of technology for Riot Games. “We now convert more website visitors to gamers which has had a big impact on the number of people playing our game.”
Since implementing the Pando Networks solution, Riot Games is reporting an increased delivery speed and download completion rate, with an average download speed of over 1,200KBps, and download completion rate of 90%. This may not seem like a magical number of paper, but when you consider the wide variety of internet connections used, quality of line service, and platform, these speeds and completion rate are very healthy. And remember, as a free-to-play title, obviously the faster (and complete) a download arrives at a potential customers’ doorstep, the higher the potential of converting them to a paying customer.
“Riot Games is one of the hottest online game companies today,” said Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks. “While Pando works with many of the leading free2play game companies around the globe, we have rarely seen such an enthusiastic response to a game as we have seen for League of Legends. We are proud to be providing our scalable solution that successfully meets the demand for such a popular game.”
The inaugural event is billed as a “for developers, by developers” awards show, and featured a wide variety of game tracks including social network games, and free-to-play titles, as well as large scale MMOs.
Additionally, Riot Games took this occasion to announce that these 1 million League of Legends players have spent over 18 million hours in the game. On a daily basis, more than 150,000 players in North America and Europe compete in League of Legends.
A real time strategy game based on Chinese myth, War of Legends presents players with a choice either to support their current less than scrupulous King, or shift their alliances to a righteous upstart vying for the throne. The game offers players the opportunity to rule empires, manage resources, and command massive armies which will inevitably be used to overtake opposing forces. All the while, players must also keep on eye on the homefront, and defend their cities against other players.
