Apparently, less than 1% of League of Legends players are still using Windows XP. Even less are using Vista. You know what that means: it’s time to pull the plug.
As you’ve surely noticed, the gaming industry is, first and foremost, about business. About making that sweet, sweet cashola. How can you tell? Because of all the DLC and season pass shenanigans that publishers keep pulling on us, that’s how.
If it’s not profitable, if it’s not directly related to boosting potential revenue, it’s often just going to be culled. This is how we lose great TV shows. This is how cult favourite games fail to get sequels. This is how League of Legends decided to drop support for Windows Vista and XP, as of 2019.
Now, when you see League of Legends is making news, you’ve often got to take a moment to brace yourself before getting into it. It’s not usually a good sign. As with any mega-hit game, it has its very vocal supporters and its equally vocal detractors. It also has a community with an unfortunate reputation. You can smell trouble a mile away.
Earlier this year, Riot Games were forced to disclose the exact drop rates of their loot boxes, after intense backlash. With this latest move, they’re sure to upset the… dozens of people who still play League of Legends on older Microsoft operating systems.
It makes perfect sense, of course. The numbers speak for themselves. As reported by Rock Paper Shotgun, the developers themselves have announced that less than 1% of players are still running the game on Vista or XP. In a blog post, they stated that it was becoming increasingly difficult to support these old operating systems:
“Microsoft itself no longer supports Windows XP or Windows Vista with security updates. It’s getting harder every day for us to maintain a secure League of Legends experience for the very small number of League players still using XP, requiring a disproportionate investment from our engineering teams.”
With that in mind, and with the inherent dangers of online gaming on an OS that isn’t getting any official updates, it’s probably all for the best. Not that it won’t rankle with that -1%, though.
If you’re in this small group of players, you’ll need to know that official support for Vista and XP will be ending as of patch 9.10, which hits on May 14 2019. What are your options after that? Well, Riot Games helpfully suggests that… you upgrade to a newer version of Windows. “We plan to maintain support for Windows 7, 8, and 10 for the foreseeable future,” they report.
