Since its early conception back in 2009,League of Legendshas been rooted in its free-to-play ideology that allowed for its player base to initially explode and continue to rise even to this very day.
League players didn’t just enjoy the game itself for free, as many could receive free Hextech chests, key fragments, champion capsules, and more for hitting certain milestones or level-ups on their account. That has all but changed since the start of 2025 and LoL’s fifteenth season, with another blow leaking today within the free rewards from the honor system.
Riot Games May Remove Free Honor Capsules And Orbs
Today, areliable LoL leaks page on Xrevealed thatRiot Games aims to remove all free capsules and orb drops from the honor system, instead pivoting high honor rate bonuses to Battle Pass XP solely.
For the non-League fans out there, the honor system is a way to track a player’s overall behavior in games by directly comparing how often teammates enjoy playing alongside a certain individual. After every LoL game, players are prompted with anywhere from one to four honors to distribute across the other nine players, enemy team included.
The honor system has evolved many times over the years, now settling ondifferent tiers of honorthat can be seen directly on your account’s profile page. There are six levels of honor, zero through five, with all players starting at honor level two. Each honor level has three distinct checkpoints that must be reached before a level up. Levels zero and one are only obtainable by poor/negative in-game behavior, with level zero being known as “Dishonorable”, but the real issue today lies in what players earn for levels three to five.
Currently in League of Legends, once a player earns level three honor,they receive a free capsule specifically branded for their achievement in the honor system. From that point on each checkpoint gained earns players a specialty honor orb and leveling up to fourth or fifth-tier honor grants an additional capsule. These capsules and orbs contain either a free champion, skin, ward skin, or emote in the form of shards that can be unlocked much cheaper than they would be in the store.
This is a great system for Riot to incentivize good behavior from its player base, which is even more important for LoL’s fanbase, which is known for being one of the most toxic in gaming. Now if the leak is true, and it is important to highlight, none of this is confirmed by Riot Games yet, all of those potential free domestic bonuses and champions disappear.
Even with the new added bonus to the LoL Battle Pass, players can only accessa majority of those prizes by first paying for the Battle Pass itself, kneecapping another source of free items for League players a far cry from what LoL used to be just a year ago.
How The Honor Rewards Changes Could Impact The League of Legends Community
At face value, this just looks like another big gaming studio trying to improve its profit margins, a tale all gamers have seen before. The battle pass phenomenon has felt inevitable for all multiplayer games since Fortnite popularized it during its massive blowup. However, knowing the League community well and the fact that this change is tied to the honor system creates a worrying trend for the title’s future.
While many League players do not care about the honor system and flame their teammates endlessly, there is a solid percentage of the player base that strives to be positive teammates in their games, and many of those were probably incentivized by the honor rewards.
Morphing the honor system into a glorified Battle Pass juicer and a cool badge on your profile could cause a ton of players to forgo good behavior in their games with less incentive to do so.Being too negative in games will lead to chat restrictions and even bans, but eliminating a clear and free incentive for good behavior will still be detrimental to the overall ecosystem.
This, coupled with the removal offree Hextech chests and key fragmentsearlier this year, has dealt a serious blow to the charitable nature of League of Legends past. It is currently as difficult as ever for new players to unlock new champions, with therelease of Melmarking LoL’s 170th champion added, and now earning any sort of cosmetic skins without just paying for them in the store or through the battle pass. While it will mean a likely bump in Riot’s profit margin, there is serious distaste for these latest changes from the player base as a whole and the honor rewards changes will only add fuel to the fire.
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