Turning a server migration into a 'quest for better': this is how Riot Games retained 100% of its players during a critical transition.

In late 2022, Riot Games took back the publishing of League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics in Southeast Asia. Which meant launching a new server. And players had to complete a complicated migration process to ensure that they didn’t lose their progress.

However, we turned this challenge into an opportunity to grow brand love and retention, retaining 100% of our players and even attracting new ones.

League of Legends is the world’s most popular PC game and leading esports IP, originally launched in 2009.

An external publishing partner had handled League of Legends publishing for Southeast Asia since its release, providing access and services to players in the SEA region. Riot Games announced that they would be taking on publishing from 2023.

Players would need to manually migrate their account to ensure their hard-won in-game progress would be saved, including unlocked champions, items, and ranking.

Goals:

-Retain at least 75% of our active players

-Increase positive brand perceptions and advocacy of Riot Games

-Achieve positive player sentiment throughout the migration process

Insight: Players would see this as a natural stopping point. Most players had played for many years. The combination of this inconvenience with the busy Nov-Jan window of competitor releases would be enough for many players to leave the game.

Strategy: This was no time for players to give up. Instead, we presented the migration as a ‘quest for better’, underpinned by three core principles:

-Transparency: We promised to be upfront about the challenges ahead and provide players with all the support they needed to migrate to a new platform.

-Positivity: We rallied the community around a future-focused vision of League of Legends, complete with exciting new features, rewards, and in-game events.

-Flexibility: Our campaign was designed to adapt to any obstacle or technical difficulty that may arise, ensuring a seamless migration for all our players.

Introducing the Quest for Better – starring the most lovable creatures in the League of Legends lore, Poros.

Poros are the beloved, fluffy creatures of the League of Legends universe. With their heart-shaped underbellies and playful little horns, they've captured the hearts of players around the world. So when faced with the daunting task of migrating accounts, we knew we wanted their help.

The Poros led players on a journey both online and on-ground, transforming every step of the data transfer into an exciting adventure. Through social content generators, gaming event takeovers, and even raves, they helped the community complete the migration – and celebrate their triumph across the realm of Southeast Asia.

Our campaign broke the migration journey into three phases, each designed to inform and engage players.

To help players prepare for the quest, we launched a video announcement that detailed the upcoming migration, the reasons behind it, and what they needed to do retain their hard-won in-game progress. We also leveraged press and influencers to amplify this message.

Next, we began the journey with Poro-themed tutorial guides and FAQs for local influencers to help guide their fans through the process. We even treated players to a ‘Poro Builder’ side quest – enabling them to customize their own Poro and share it on social media, creating a sense of community and fun.

To conclude the quest, we relaunched League, greeting players with a video featuring Poros traveling across Southeast Asia. We also offered exclusive in-game content through special events and a Lunar New Year celebration that was especially resonant in SEA markets.

We exceeded all of our campaign goals:

-We retained 100% of League players. We exceeded our 75% target, retaining 100% of players through the migration. We even managed to attract players back who hadn’t played League for a long time.

-We even attracted other players to the game, contributing an additional 7% to the player base in Southeast Asia.

-Positive brand perception increased +6%. Players loved Riot taking back publishing of League of Legends. Advocacy of the Riot Games brand in SEA also increased to 66% (compared to 55% baseline).

Player skepticism and the importance of PR and influencers. Through the campaign we learned that many players in SEA markets were untrusting of display advertising. This was due to previous scams from hackers trying to steal game accounts from players. Instead, they found influencers to be the most trust-worthy awareness channels.

Upon learning this we redirected paid media spend to supporting influencers and saw a clear increased performance of the campaign.