Garena Says Farewell, and It’s a Good Thing

Garena is no longer publishing League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics for the South East Asia region. Riot Games will take over the publishing rights without the help of a third party for the first time.

The announcement for the migration of Garena accounts to Riot Games was on November 9. Riot scheduled the release of a centralized server for the SEA region on January 2023. As far as we can tell, the migration is underway.

What Happens to Garena?

I’ve played on Garena servers since 2013. Without League of Legends, I can tell you that it might be the end for the publisher. As the publisher of SEA games for 12 years, it might seem like a bad thing for them.

However, they are known to be the door-stopper for older franchises. A good example is Heroes of Newerth, the known competitor for League of Legends. They owned this MOBA and closed its doors in June 2022.

The game Ring of Elysium also stopped its operations in January 2022. So, we can see that Garena struggles to perform as a publisher. As a player in their servers, it’s good to see the migration process.

Even more, Garena made every effort to stay afloat after Riot announced the migration. They gave significant discounts and sales before they said farewell to the game. If that’s not a sign of hardship, I don’t know what is.

Now, they are shifting focus to the Arena of Valor and other Tencent games. However, it might be an impasse because there’s little to gain. Data shows a significant decline in the player base for the region.

Why is Garena’s Farewell a Good Thing?

They never addressed the amount of toxicity from the player base. It will also be one of the major tasks on Riot’s to-do list. As a League of Legends and VALORANT player, I can say there is a significant difference.

The toxicity in VALORANT is a far cry from the level of degeneracy in League of Legends. That’s because Riot makes an active effort to restrict and punish this behavior. During Garena’s time, this toxic behavior went on for years.

Although Garena did well as a publisher with events and sales, they did not address this pain. I appreciate all their work over the years, but it was simply lacking. Hopefully, we can see this toxicity addressed by Riot during their time as publishers. 

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