How Much Does League of Legends REALLY Cost?

Despite being a free game, League of Legends will actually cost you a lot more than you think.

How Did League of Legends Become Popular?

Let’s be honest, League of Legends wasn’t that amazing during its first year. The graphics were garbage, and the gameplay wasn’t all that different from games like Heroes of Newerth. What set it apart from other titles, was the fact that it was free.

This could be compared to the incredibly popular film “Night of the Living Dead.” This movie is what gave rise to modern zombies as we know them. However, due to some copyright issues, Night of the Living Dead became free right after being released.

This meant that anyone could watch the movie for free, and people who didn’t even like horror movies went to see it, I mean, after all, it was free and who wouldn’t want something free right? They actually ended up getting many people to watch the money and made big bucks from advertising. All because it was FREE.

What does this have to do with League of Legends? During LoL’s early days, free games were a rarity – sure, there were a couple of games that offered you an hour or two of free content but if you wanted to leave the starting area though, you had to get through a paywall.

Other free games were out there, but they are older than we are. The only real alternative was Miniclip, and that site wasn’t known for its multiplayer games.

People thought the idea of League of Legends was a radical one, and many thought it would fail within a year. Fast forward a decade and here we are – LoL is one of the biggest games in the world, and the market is flooded with free to play titles.

Also read: Why is Young Ryze Skin So Special?

How Much Does League of Legends Really Cost?

Well it is a Free game so you all must be wondering why does it cost to play League of Legends? Well it is a free game initially, but with all the shining and attractive Skins and all the big amounts of content, some really get tempted into buying things and making League of Legends cost money.

Cost of Champions

It may seem silly at first but after a while, you will get tempted to purchase the champions, which can be earned totally for free.

It all comes down to pressure and impatience. People enjoy feeling like they’re useful, and they want to try new things. The fastest way to get both those things is by paying for them. You see, if you’re a newbie at League, then the odds are really stacked against you.

First off, you’ll likely have friends who already play the game, and you’ll probably want to impress them. That’s all well and good, except for the fact that when you first start out, you have about five Champions. Sure, Champion capsules make things a bit easier, but it’s still a challenge. You could stick to plain old free rotation Champions of course, but they’ll get snatched away just as you’re getting used to them. The quickest way to get the Champions that you’ll enjoy is to buy them. After all, they’re so cheap. Right?

It certainly may seem foolish to buy champions at first glance, but after a while, they start to be really appealing.

Champions may not seem that costly initially, but once you bring in all 150+ Champions into count, it could cost about $550 to buy all of them. The higher costs one cost about $10 and the cheaper ones cost about a dollar or two, but all combined together become really costly.

Cost of Skins

Then you have the skins which cost anywhere from $5 all the way to $100 and sometimes you will get tempted to buy one skin thinking its only one skin and then proceed to buy many more, just like me. I wanted to only buy Project: ZED but eventually ended up buying the whole Project series well because they just look so good.

Just like this, you will think you want to buy one skin and get roped into buying many. League of Legends is free but still costs money.

Also read: How to Get Out of Elo Hell?

Cost of Miscellaneous items

League of Legends not only has skins, but they also have other miscellaneous items such as ward skins, icons, chests, capsules and event passes. Yeah, Riot Games has a battle pass kind of system for TFT and an event pass system for League of Legends which costs about $10 but if you grind it hard, you can make it really worth.

Some people really think that oh with $10 event pass I can grind and get up to $100 worth of skins, and yes it sounds like a pretty sweet deal, but again it ends up costing you money. There are usually 4 event passes per season, so this is straight-up $40 for event passes. Then some people like having cool wards and icons and end up purchasing each of those for about $5 each.

The True Cost of League of Legends

So far if you see, the cost of everything in League of Legends is :

• Champions – $2 to $10
• Skins – $5 to $100
• Chests and Hextech Crafting – $2 to $50
• Event passes – $10
• Icons and Wards – $5 each
• Time – $Infinite

How Much Money Does an Average Player Spend in League of Legends?

An average League of Legends player spends $119 on average. How much have I spent on League of Legends? I have personally spent more than $800 on League of Legends. Saying this makes me realize that I might have a problem.

How Much Money Have I Spent on LoL?

Riot Games made a feature where you can check out how much money did you spend on League. Be aware that it can be painful to see the money spent on League of Legends. If you’re not afraid of the shock, then check out the link above and sign in to your account. Once you’ve signed in, you should see a big red button “Show Me The Money”

So, you can really see the true cost of League of Legends here and even if you don’t spend a single dime, you will end up spending a lot of time (nice rhyme), and as everyone knows, the cost of time cannot be valued. So, even if we don’t pay with money, we pay with our time.

If you’re wondering: “just how much money have I spent on League of Legends?!”, you should check out our guide.