Game developer Riot Games has announced that its upcoming League of Legends APAC league will be held in Taipei, Taiwan.
Set to kick off next year, the APAC League will combine teams from Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao, Japan, Oceania and the rest of Southeast Asia, replacing the current four leagues that represent the regions.
Riot Games has now announced Taipei, Taiwan as the home of the new league, a region with a rich history in the title. Taipei Assassins won the second-ever League of Legends World Championships, while historic Taiwan-based organisation Flash Wolves featured prominent international competitors such as SwordArt, Maple and Karsa.
Announced last month in a post detailing several significant changes coming to the League of Legends Esports ecosystem, the formation of the APAC league — and subsequent reduction in the volume of tier one teams — aims to aid the developer in ‘ensuring revenues are distributed among fewer teams, thereby increasing revenue per team.’
Since the first announcement, Riot Games has unveiled several new details about the APAC League structure. Spots in the eight-team league will be split into two pools; partnered slots and guest slots, the latter of which will be open to promotion/relegation at the end of each season. A ‘stringent process’ will be used to select four partner teams who will have a permanent place in the league, akin to partnered slots that are employed in Riot’s VALORANT Champions Tour leagues.
Two spots in the league will be earned through ‘competitive merit’; one via the PCS playoffs and one via the VCS playoffs. Each spot will be granted to the respective tournament’s highest-placing non-partnered team. While the VCS only features teams from Vietnam, the PCS playoffs include sides from Asia-Pacific as well as qualifiers from Japan’s LJL and Oceania’s LCO.
The final two APAC league places will go to invited teams, ‘ensuring diverse representation and fostering a more inclusive and competitive environment’, according to a blog post by Riot Games.
