League of Legends studio Riot Games has set up operations in India. While the company is yet to announce this officially, it has hired its country manager for the role in Anurag Khurana. He is a veteran in the Indian games industry, having worked on one of India’s first PC games, BattleDust: The Championship, at Paradox Studios (not to be confused with the European publisher Paradox) as well as having worked at Guitar Hero developer RedOctane.
News of Riot Games' entry comes after months of speculation amongst industry insiders who have informed Gadgets 360 that Riot has its sights set on India, as well as tipping us off on the change to Khurana's LinkedIn profile which now reads 'Country Manager (India) at Riot Games'.
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India is an interesting market for Riot Games to consider. Reason being,Dota 2 is the multiplayer online battle arena game of choice here with League of Legends a distant second in the e-sports community.
Nonetheless, with mobile game companies like Nazara entering e-sports, and hardware makers such as Nvidia taking making a more concerted effort in the space, the timing could be just right for Riot to capitalise on the sudden surge of activity.
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Riot’s presence in India could possibly lead to the setting up of local servers which would help gamers in the country play League of Legends with lower latency. It could even mean a greater number of local events for the game, and support for the community that plays it.
We’ve reached out to Riot Games for comment and will update this story if we hear from the company.
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