League of Legends developer Riot Games has halted development on the Magma Chamber map.
Rumored to be in development for years, Magma Chamber made its grand debut at the 2013 All-Star Game as part of 1v1/2v2 showdown. However, in December, the Showdown game mode was made available to all players on the Howling Abyss in order for Riot to gather player feedback and data.
"Showdown was a relatively short-lived experience for most players," Riot Games wrote in a post today. "Tons of players tried Showdown out when it was first released, but, after only a week, players worldwide spent less than 1% of all in game time on Showdown. Generally, we heard good feedback about the 1v1/2v2 gameplay on Howling Abyss as compared to Magma Chamber. Players also had ideas about continued improvement of the 1v1/2v2 experience such as being able to do specific top, mid or bot lane matchups on SR."
"Ultimately, we concluded that Magma Chamber simply isn’t the right place for us to further develop a great 1v1/2v2 experience and the mode itself isn’t sustainable as a permanent feature. So, after many discussions and a lot of fact checking, we’re halting development of the Magma Chamber map you saw at last year's All-Star Game. That doesn't mean that a lot of you (and us) didn’t have fun dueling it out on Howling Abyss and we really want to bring back 1v1/2v2 in the future," the developer continued.
"We know we changed our minds after making a commitment and we’re sorry. We hate doing it. The biggest promise we make, and the one that makes us believe this is the right decision, is that we aspire to be the most player-focused game company in the world. We’re always trying to make decisions that we think are in the best interest of players and in this case, we think that the best path forward is to perfect 1v1/2v2 as a Featured Game Mode," Riot concluded. "We’re excited about future possibilities and there are already more projects in the works we think you guys will love."
Are you saddened to see Magma Chamber development stall? On the bright side, Riot still has plans to bring One for All back.
