Riot responds to criticism of the high budget of "Two Cities": it is not expensive per minute

The League of Legends animated series Frostfall has drawn criticism for its reported $250 million budget, but Marc Merrill, co-founder and chief product officer of developer Riot Games, has defended the high price tag, saying it's not actually that expensive.

In a Reddit thread explaining why the show ended after season two, he discussed the show's budget, saying: "From our perspective, the idea that A Clash of Clans was 'sacrificed' by the high budget of A Clash of Clans is silly. As people have rightly pointed out, the average cost per minute for A Clash of Clans was about a third to a quarter of what an Illumination/Pixar film would cost per minute."

He said he thought many people had trouble understanding that number because "before 'A Battle of Two Towers,' the market for high-quality, adult-audience animation didn't exist, so it was hard for Hollywood to understand why we were investing so much." He later clarified that this only referred to the Western market, not the global market.

In subsequent comments, Merrill noted that "the entire budget for A Battle of Two Towers was spent on talent" and that "character animation alone accounted for 80% of the budget". He said the high budget was due to the fact that every frame of the animation was "handcrafted".

At present, the first two parts of the second season of "The Battle of Two Cities" have been broadcast, and the final third part will be broadcast this weekend, which will bring the story to an end. For fans who like this animation, there is no need to worry that the story ends here, because he also confirmed on social media that Riot has "more other stories to tell" in the future.