League of Legends and Valorant are coming to Epic Games Store

For the first time in the 15-year-long history of the company, Riot Games is expanding its reach to other platforms, as a part of a deal with Epic Games.

Riot, which is one of the biggest games developers in the world with over 200 million active monthly players across all of their games, had been keeping its games tied exclusively to its own launcher, similar to how Blizzard games can only be played via Battle.net.

But that is now a thing of the past, as Epic Games announced earlier today (4th November), that League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, and Valorant are now available on the Epic Games Store.

Riot Games titles are now available on the Epic Games Store

This deal, which as part of a bigger partnership, marks the first time Riot's games have become available outside the company's own launcher.

The four above-mentioned games can now be downloaded directly from the Epic Games Store, but players will still need to install the new Riot Client.

You are now probably wondering what's the point of all of this if you will still need to install the other launcher, especially because these four games are free-to-play anyway, and the answer is simple - marketing.

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League, Valorant and other Riot's games are some of the most popular titles in the world, but that's almost incomparable with the tremendous popularity of Epic Games' battle royale title, Fortnite, whose mainstream popularity dwarfs almost any other game out there.

Having your games visible on the same launcher as Fortnite means reaching a huge new player base, and that's exactly what Riot wants to achieve here. On the other hand, for Epic Games, having such huge titles on their platform is also an excellent marketing move that gives the Epic Games Store much needed affirmation and credibility, as the platform still struggles to compete with Valve's Steam, which is still the indisputable king of PC gaming.

This partnership, which includes Jinx’s arrival to Fortnite, comes amidst Riot's gigantic marketing efforts to promote the launch of the Netflix animated series Arcane, based on the League of Legends universe.

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Don’t forget to check out our League of Legends dedicated section for more news, guides, updates, and esports coverage.

Featured image courtesy of Riot Games.