Any League of Legends fan who follows the title outside just playing it should be well aware of how big the Chinese community is. Riot Games intends to take them into account more when making balance choices.
In the most recent League Patch 14.12 preview, Phreak, a former play-by-play caster and current developer, gave light on the company’s goals for the game. He explained how the team behind patch notes will most likely prioritize Chinese data when creating future gameplay improvements, given how large the Asian country’s servers are in comparison to the others.
“Sure, player populations are like very high in NA, EU West, and Korea. […] And we are getting to a point pretty soon, when we’re going to start doing a better job incorporating Chinese players and Chinese players sentiment in their pick and ban rate data,” Phreak said.
He emphasized that some adjustments may appear unusual at first because they do not match what is required in North American and other solo queues. But Phreak believes it’s a necessary direction to take, given there are “tens of millions of players [in China]. […] It’s going to be weird, at some point in time, you’re gonna run into it, and it’s going to be correct,” he summed up.
Given the popularity of League in China, it’s hardly surprising to hear Riot Games is aiming to take such an approach to its primary game. We do not know the exact amount of gamers in the country because the Chinese government restricts data like this to Western communities, but given that Riot is primarily owned by Chinese corporation Tencent, they probably have excellent reasons to make this decision.