A League of Legends champion has been killed off for the first time ever

By Kris Wouk July 30, 2015

League of Legends Gangplank character art — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Strategies change frequently in League of Legends, but a few things are sacred, namely the game’s roster of champions. While numerous champions have been added to the game since launch, none have been killed. Until now.

It seems that Riot Games has found a way to make sure that League of Legends players pay more attention to its carefully crafted lore. For the past few weeks, Riot has been running an event titled Bilgewater, focusing on a city of the same name and the characters that occupy it. The event’s latest development saw the champion Gangplank killed off by his rival, Miss Fortune.

Where players start to care is that as a result of this story event, Gangplank has been removed as a playable champion. Logging into League of Legends, players are greeted with a message that simply reads “Gangplank is dead and has been disabled in all queues,” according to Kotaku.

Considering that League of Legends is a free-to-play game that makes most of its money by selling players various in-game items, champions included, this has players upset. When Gangplank was for sale, he would cost players a little more than the equivalent of $5 if they didn’t buy the champion with currency earned in-game.

A Riot staffer addressed players’ requests for refunds: “Champion death is unprecedented in League of Legends, and we do not take it lightly. We encourage all Gangplank fans to remain calm for a few days until we can fully assess the situation. At this time, we are not addressing refund requests for him or his skins but please know that over the next several days we’ll do our best to make things right for everyone.”

It could be that Riot is taking time to figure out how to reimburse players, but there’s another, more likely option: Gangplank isn’t really being removed from the game. Nowhere is it said that the champion won’t return, simply that he won’t be available for a while. The Riot staffer’s mention of waiting for “the next several days” seems to hint at this.

Riot recently gave Gangplank a complete overhaul, and it seems unlikely that the company would want to throw that hard work away so soon. For now all players can do is wait and see.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…

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